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The Deluded Mind as World and Truth:

Epistemological Implications of Tiantai Doctrine and Praxis in the Works of Jingxi

Zhanran (711-782)

Brook Ziporyn

Northwestern University

A very greatly oversimplified restatement of the classical Tiantai view of the

relation of conscious beings to the world they live in, as put forward by the schools de

facto founder Zhiyi (538-597) and as documented accurately and intricately in terms of

its historical and textual groundings in Hans-Rudolf Kantor’s article earlier in this

volume, can be put like this: every event, function or characteristic occurring in

experience is the action of the all sentient and insentient beings working together. Every

instant of experience is the whole of existential reality, manifesting in this particular

form, as this particular entity or experience. But this “whole” is irreducibly multiple and

irreducibly unified at once, in the following way: all possible conflicting, contrasted and

axiologically varied aspects, the “three thousand natures and characteristics,” are

irrevocably present--in the sense of “findable”—in each of these totality-effects. Good

and evil, delusion and enlightenment, Buddhahood and deviltry, are all “inherently

entailed” (xingju) in each and every event. More importantly, however, these multiple

entities are not “simply located” even virtually or conceptually: the “whole” which is the

agent performing every experience is not a collection of these various “inherently

entailed” entities or qualities arrayed side by side, like coins in a pocket. Rather, they

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are “intersubsumptive.” That is, any one of them subsumes all the others. Each part is

the whole, each quality subsumes all other qualities, and yet none are ever eradicable. A

Buddha in the world makes the world all Buddha, saturated in every locus with the

quality “Buddhahood”; a devil in the world makes the world all devil, permeated with

“deviltry.” Both Buddha and devil are always in the world. So the world is always both

entirely Buddhahood and entirely deviltry. Every moment of experience is always

completely delusion, evil and pain, through and through, and also completely

enlightenment, goodness and joy, through and through.

How does Tiantai Buddhist doctrine arrive at this conclusion, and what are its

human implications? The Tiantai theory rests on two intimately related foundations: the

doctrine of the Three Truths, and the doctrine of “opening the provisional to reveal the

real.” The Three Truths are an expansion of the traditional Nagarjunian idea of the Two

Truths. The first is Conventional Truth, which includes ordinary language (everyday

descriptions of selves, causes, effects, things, beginnings and ends, as well as traditional

Buddhist statements about value and practice, e.g., the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold

Noble Path, the marks of suffering, impermanence and non-self). The second is

Ultimate Truth, which is in the first place Emptiness as the negation of the absolute

validity of any of the terms accepted as conventional truths. But Ultimate Truth also

means the Emptiness of Emptiness, which extends this same critique to the concept of

“Emptiness” itself; in the end, Ultimate Truth is indescribable. It refers to the lived

experience of liberation, and thus even “Emptiness” is relegated to merely conventional

truth.

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It is to be noted that in this theory there are really three categories: 1) plain error

(metaphysical theories which take ordinary speech terms to be designations of absolute

realities; statements about the beginning and end of the universe, God, ultimate reality,

substances, essences, etc.); 2) conventional truth (ordinary speech and Buddhist speech);

and 3) ultimate truth (the experience of liberation, for which even the term “Emptiness”

is insufficient). The criterion for what counts as conventional truth is pragmatic:

whatever is conducive to the comprehension of ultimate truth is conventional truth. But

this would be whatever statements can serve as a means to lead beyond themselves, to the

negation of themselves: expressions that lead the way to the realization of

inexpressibility. Whatever cognitive claims obstruct this pragmatic goal fall into the

category of plain falsehood, not even conventional truth.

This is how it seems to stand in most versions of Indian Mahayana, including the

writings of Nagarjuna, on many readings.1 Tiantai alters this picture decisively by

speaking of not two but three truths. These are Ultimate Truth, Conventional Truth and

the Center (zhendi, sudi, zhongdi, correlated to Emptiness, Provisional Positing and the

Center kong, jia, zhong). This reconfiguration has two direct consequences: first, the

hierarchy between conventional and ultimate truth is canceled. Indeed, even the

difference in their content is effaced: according to the Tiantai tradition, provisional and

ultimate truth are equal in value and ultimately identical. Second, the category of “plain

falsehood” which was implied by the Nagarjunian idea of Two Truths is here eliminated

entirely: all claims of whatever kind are equally conventional truths, and thus of equal

value to and ultimately identical to ultimate truth, or the conception of Emptiness, and its

self-overcoming.

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The Tiantai term for conventional truths is “provisional positing” (jia). Ultimate

truth is simply emptiness (kong). We may better understand the Tiantai position by

retranslating these terms as “local coherence” and “global incoherence” respectively.

Provisional truth is the apprehension of some qualium X as having a certain discernible,

coherent identity. Ultimate truth is the revelation that this coherent identity is only

provisionally coherent, that it fails to be coherent in all contexts and from all points of

view, and thus is globally incoherent. X is analyzable exhaustibly into non-X elements,

non-X causes, non-X antecedents, non-X contexts, which are revealed to be not external

to X, but constitutive of it. No X is discoverable apart from the non-X elements, causes,

antecedents and contexts, which are present here, we may say, “as” X. This “as” may be

taken as a shorthand way of indicating what is meant by the “third truth,” Centrality, the

relation of sameness-as-contrast between this qualium’s identity as X and the effacing of

that identity. When I say “I am using this book as a doorstop,” I mean that it has this

entity has two different identities at once: it is genuinely being a book, and it is genuinely

being a doorstop. So it is for X and non-X. These non-X elements which are present

here as X are revealed simply by closer attention to X itself; they are not brought in from

outside. X appears exclusively as X only when our field of attention is arbitrarily

narrowed to exclude some of the relevant ways it can be considered; attention to its

constitutive elements, antecedents and contexts reveals this very same item, X, is also

readable as non-X. Hence the two seemingly opposite claims of the Two Truths turn out

to be two alternate ways of saying the same thing: to be identifiable is to be coherent, to

be coherent is to be locally coherent, and to be locally coherent is to be globally

incoherent. It is with this move, the third category, that “plain error,” from the Two

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Truths theory, drops out of the picture: all coherences, even alternate metaphysical

claims, are in the same boat, all are identities which are locally coherent/globally

incoherent. The truth of a statement consists simply in its coherence to some given

perspective, which is always the effect of arbitrarily limiting the horizons of relevance.

When all considerations are brought in at once, X has no single consistent non-

contradictory identity.

This fact, that conventional and ultimate truths are synonymous, is what is meant

by the Center. This is also taken to imply that this coherence, X, is the center of all other

coherences in the distinctively Chinese sense of being their source, value, meaning, end,

ground, around which they all converge, into which they are all subsumed. “Center”

(zhong) indicates not just the midpoint between extremes, but “what is within, from the

inside” and also “to hit the mark, to match”—what is truly and exactly the reality of each

entity. All entities are locally coherent, globally incoherent and the determining center

of all other local coherences. Any X subsumes all the non-X qualia that are appearing

here as X: they are instantiations of X, which serves as their subsuming category, their

essence, their meaning, their ground, their destiny. X is, as it were, the overall style of

being which is expressed by its various aspects, which is now seen to include all non-X

elements without exception. Each qualium not only is ambiguated by the presence of all

other qualia, but by the same token disambiguates these other qualia in terms of itself.

Because they are all in the position of being the subsumer, they are also all in the position

of being subsumed. To be X is to be locally coherent (X), globally incoherent (non-X),

and intersubsumptive asness (X expressing itself in the form of all non-X’s, and all non-

X’s expressing themselves in the form of X).

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The second pillar of Tiantai doctrine is the concept of “opening the provisional to

reveal the real” (kaiquan xianshi). This is a way of further specifying the relation

between local coherence and global incoherence, which are not only synonymous, but

also irrevocably opposed, and indeed identical only by means of their opposition.

Provisional truth is the antecedent, the premise, and indeed in a distinctive sense the

cause of ultimate truth, but only because it is the strict exclusion of ultimate truth. I have

suggested elsewhere that the everyday example of the joke could serve as a helpful

model for understanding this structure, with the provisional as the set-up and the ultimate

as the punch line, thus preserving both the contrast between the two and their ultimate

identity in sharing the quality of humorousness which belongs to every atom of the joke

considered as a whole, once the punch line has been revealed. The setup is serious,

while the punchline is funny. The funniness of the punchline depends on the seriousness

of the setup, and on the contrast and difference between the two. However, once the

punchline has occurred, it is also the case that the setup is, retrospectively, funny; we do

not say that the punchline alone is funny, but that the whole joke was funny. This also

means that the original contrast between the two is both preserved and annulled: neither

funniness nor seriousness means the same thing after the punchline dawns, for their

original meanings depended on the mutually exclusive nature of their defining contrast.

Each is now a center that subsumes of the other; they are intersubsumptive. As a

consequence, the old pragmatic standard of truth is applied more liberally here: all

claims, statements and positions are true in the sense that all can, if properly

recontextualized, lead to liberation—which is to say, to their own self-overcoming.

Conversely, none will lead to liberation if not properly recontextualized.

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The above is to be contrasted to an implicit and commonsensical notion of truth

and its relation to falsehood that informs almost all other philosophical and religious

systems, including the vast majority of Buddhist thought. This is that there is some part

of our cognitive apparatus—“Reason,” or perhaps a capacity for unbiased awareness, or

prajna as an insight into Emptiness or an experience of ultimate truth as such—to which

unambiguously true claims can be directed, which can recognize and assess those claims

accurately, and which can then reject and replace its previously held false beliefs. But

this model can gain no purchase in the Tiantai universe. It is not just that our mind is

clouded over or misinformed by erroneous beliefs; it is literally composed of biased and

distorted habituations, to such a degree that every one of its actions and posits, including

its positing of an objective truth that subverts or corrects its errors, is irrevocably tainted

by its unbalanced existential position. “Truth,” however conceived by the deluded mind,

is just one additional delusion, perhaps the most pernicious delusion of all. An objective

and unbiased contemplation of the truth is effectively ruled out by these Tiantai

premises—for any determinate position or stance is intrinsically biased. As the Song

Tiantai writer Siming Zhili (960-1028) puts it:

Because both the mind as such and its concomitants are originally

constituted by the influences of views and attachments (jian’ai xunxi

suocheng), when even the Integrated practitioner is at the level of [Identity

merely in] Name [i.e., mere intellectual understanding], he is still entirely

unable to subdue it. Even his good thoughts are still inseparable from

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views and attachments…. If you try to use this mind directly to

contemplate the Principle of the Real-mark, it would be like trying to

support Mt. Sumeru from a lotus stalk; you would just be fruitlessly

increasing discriminations, and there would be no way to cut off

thoughts.2

This would seem to rule out any hope of escape from the closed circle of delusion. And

yet the above conceptions concerning epistemological and ontological matters are framed

entirely within a soteriological context, and share the general Buddhist optimism about

the possibility of liberation. Indeed, given the Tiantai claims about the relation of

speakablity and unspeakability, all possible assertions without exception are made only

with reference to the bias of some particular biased viewpoint, and only for soteriological

purposes. All statements and claims are by nature biased, situational, pragmatic and

soteriological. What makes this coexistence of radical skepticism and radical

epistemological optimism possible is the distinctive Tiantai form of Buddhist praxis, the

practice of mind-contemplation, designed to lead to a liberating realization of these ideas.

In the works of Jingxi Zhanran, the implicit approach to practice in Zhiyi’s works is

streamlined and intensified. It is characterized, polemically, as the contemplation of and

by the deluded, rather than the enlightened, mind. Here the Tiantai premises are used to

find a practical way out of the vicious circle which it seems to posit: the self-overcoming

of delusion. The following passages are in the form of clarifying question and answers

drawn from Zhanran’s works. The first is from Zhanran’s Jingangpi, and the rest from

the same author’s Zhiguan yili, a brief somewhat catechismic summary of Zhanran’s

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interpretation of Zhiyi’s masterwork, Mohezhiguan. In these passages Zhanran’s

application of Tiantai epistemology to praxis are spelled out clearly and forcefully.

Q: ….I have heard people quote the “Dazhidulun” to say that in insentient beings

Suchness should merely be called “Dharma-nature”; it is only in sentient beings that it

can be called the Buddha-nature. Why do you use the term “Buddha-nature” [with

reference to insentient beings as well]?

A: …… “Dharma” denotes non-awareness [i.e., an object of consciousness, hence

something which is itself non-aware]. “Buddha” denotes awareness. Although all

sentient beings originally possess the principle of “non-awareness” in themselves, they

have not yet acquired the wisdom that would allow them to be aware of non-awareness.

This is precisely why we temporarily make a distinction between awareness and non-

awareness: so as to make people aware of non-awareness. But once there is awareness

of non-awareness, non-awareness is no longer non-awareness, is it? The object of

awareness cannot really be separate from the awareness, can it?

Q: But it is only when one reaches Buddhahood that one can really understand this.

Ordinary people do take them as separate; why do you contradict this view?

A: Are you trying to learn Buddhahood, or trying to learn the ordinary people’s views?

In the ultimately liberating coherence, there is no real difference; it is ordinary people

who themselves consider them separate. Thus [the Buddhas] reveal this to sentient

beings, to enable them to become aware of non-awareness. When you are aware of non-

awareness, [awareness and non-awareness, subject and object, mental activity and

material form] naturally combine into a single Suchness. If awareness were deprived of

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non-awareness, it could not properly be called the Buddha-nature; if there were no

awareness of non-awareness, it would not really be the Dharma-nature. If awareness

were deprived of non-awareness, how could Buddha-nature be established? Hence, the

idea of a Dharma-nature which is not also Buddha-nature is permissible only within the

Hinayana teaching. To count as a Mahayana teaching, the Buddha-nature must be

understood as identical to the Dharma-nature.3

This discussion appears in the context of Zhanran’s defense of his claim that “insentient

beings also have the Buddha-nature.” Buddha-nature means, for Zhanran, “awareness-

nature,” the inextricable character of bearing awareness, while “dharma-nature” refers to

“objecthood,” the character of being an object of awareness, and hence of being itself

non-aware. In this passage Zhanran hopes to show that these two are inseparable, that an

element of non-awareness is constitutive to awareness, and vice-versa. Zhanran uses the

Tiantai “opening of the provisional to reveal the real” to redefine the distinction between

the two: a distinction between awareness and objecthood is first made in order to foment

awareness of the inextricable presence of unawareness in every act of awareness. The

two are first posited and defined as mutually exclusive precisely in order to show that

they cannot be mutually exclusive. This means that there can never be a reduction of

both sides to either awareness or non-awareness—subjectivity or objectivity, mental or

material—as originally defined, but there can be a reduction of all to either side

according to the modified definition which sees them as inevitably mutually entailing.

The cultivation of a “mind-only” contemplation, far from denying the presence of non-

mind realities or of aspects of the world not penetrated by mind, or of which we are not

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aware, actually depends on it, and in fact is meant to intensify this “realist” intuition: we

must become more aware of the aspects of the world which are devoid of awareness,

strengthening the sense of the dead, inert, unaware realm of matter circumscribing us.

But this intensification of the presence and importance of “non-awareness” to us, our

deepening acknowledgment of the neutral, unknowing world around us, is itself an aspect

of awareness: the awareness of non-awareness. This serves to collapse the initial

distinction—not from without, through a dogmatic claim that it is, compared to some

objective truth to which we have access, wrong, but rather from within, by accepting its

own premises and pushing them to their furthest conclusion. This is a first prototype of

the self-overcoming of delusion characteristic of Tiantai practice.

The remaining passages are selected from Zhanran’s Zhiguan yili.

Q: Here we see manifestly black, yellow, red and white [i.e., separate differentiated

things and characteristics]. In what sense are they the Dharma-realm of Suchness?

A: When you speak of black and so on, this is what is seen by deluded attachment.

When you speak of the Dharma-realm, you are talking about what accords with

Liberating Coherence (li). Why use deluded attachment to challenge Liberating

Coherence? Our present contemplation is to contravene deluded attachment and

contemplate Liberating Coherence. One mustn’t go on to contravene Liberating

Coherence and accord with deluded attachment. Moreover, black and the rest are

Conventional Truth, while the Dharma-realm is Ultimate Truth. Or again, black and the

rest are a small portion of Conventional Truth, while the Dharma-realm is the entirety of

the Three Truths. Or again, black and the rest are a small portion of what is seen by the

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human and heavenly eyes, while the Dharma-realm is the entirety of what is seen by the

Buddha-eye. Each eye inherently entails all five eyes, so black and the rest inherently

entail all dharmas. The same applies to the relationship between any one truth and the

Three Truths. For these reasons, you cannot challenge the presence of the entire

Dharma-realm because of [the manifestation of] black and the rest….4

Here we see the application of Tiantai epistemology to the most basic problem of biased

and complete cognition, and incidentally the point that most clearly distinguishes Tiantai

epistemology from Huayan thought, for example. Note that even when contrasting

enlightenment from delusion, Zhanran is still speaking perspectivally, as in the previous

passage: which are you endeavoring to learn, the enlightened (liberating-from-suffering)

perspective or the deluded perspective? Both are merely perspectives, not the absolute

truth in an objectivist sense. But every possible view is “a small portion” of the truth,

and each portion of the truth interpenetrates with every other: all perspectives

interpenetrate. The contrast is not between true and false, full stop, but between a partial

and a comprehensive unfolding of the same truths. “Delusion” really means a form—a

partial form—of truth. But this partial form is necessary to the unfolding of

comprehensive truth, an upaya by means of which it is posited, as in the previous

passage, and hence embodies and encompasses the more comprehensive views with

which it interpenetrates.

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Q: Of the four phases of the [experience of any of the] Ten Realms [not-yet-arisen,

about-to-arise, arisen, already-gone], the arisen has marks that are easy to know. But

how can the not-yet-arisen and the already-gone be contemplated?

A: Although the already-gone and the not-yet-arisen do not refer exclusively and

precisely to one single mental state, they do necessarily take shape within the arisen state

of mind. Thus, one comes to know which realm the arisen state of mind belongs to;

looking to what preceded it from within this perspective, we have what in this context

takes the role of the already-gone, and looking ahead, we have the not-yet-arisen. Thus

the already-gone and the not-yet-arisen can be contemplated from within the perspective

of the about-to-arise and the arisen.

Q: The arisen state of mind can look to what preceded it and find some marks of mind to

know. But if looking to what is yet-to-arise there is anything there to see, this is the

about-to-arise; how can it be called the not-yet-arisen?

A: Looking toward the future and knowing that there are states of mind that have not yet

arisen is what is called[contemplating] the not-yet-arisen. When some particular marks

of mind are recognizably about to arise, this is called the about-to-arise. So these two

marks of mind are completely different. Contemplating this single phase of the mind,

[one sees that] it inherently entails the Ten Realms, the Hundred Realms and the

Thousand Suchnesses. All of these are precisely Emptiness and precisely the Center.

Thus we know that although we are contemplating the four phases of the Ten Realms,

there are in fact no realms and no phases: we contemplate only the Three Thousand in

their identity to Emptiness and the Center. All three names are transcended, and so

subject and object meld perfectly. Thus it is different from Provisional Positing in the

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sense of dependence on conditions, or Emptiness in the sense of lacking a self-nature. It

is the non-duality of Emptiness and Provisional Positing that is called the Center. If we

may borrow a metaphor: the manifesting of all the various states of material form and

mind are like the arising and submerging of implements made from gold or silver. Just in

the gold itself different identities arise, which are neither prior nor posterior to the gold

itself. It is also like a public road, which a private citizen digs up, using the dirt to make

statues. The wise know that it is still the same public dirt consigned to official use, while

the foolish say that some statues have actually come into existence. Later when the

governmental official wants to travel the road, these statues are recovered to fill in the

holes in the road. The statues neither arise nor perish, and the road too is neither new

nor old.5

Zhiyi, in describing his method of mind-contemplation in the Mohezhiguan and

elsewhere, had noted that the mind is difficult to frame as an object, and thus had

delineated four marks of mind to make it more easily distinguishable: not-yet-arisen,

about-to-arise, arisen, and gone. The distinctive mark of what constitutes mind, for the

purposes of contemplation, is its temporality, with special emphasis on the bordering

between states of mind distinguishable in a sequence through time. This same emphasis

on the borders is also applied to the subject-object relation, and the presence-absence

contrast. Here Zhanran makes clear that all of this is stipulated purely with reference to

contemplation of a given mental state, and that the not-yet and gone phases are to be

understood not as absolute absence, but as the presence of that absence internal to any

given state: its own prior and subsequent absence are present to it, and within it, indeed

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are constitutive of it. To be a moment is to find oneself in a situation, with a vista of

before and after surrounding one; but for this before and after to be operative in the here

and now, they must also in some sense be internal to it. This is structurally analogous to

Zhanran’s comments about awareness and non-awareness in the Jingangpi, cited above.

The “not-here” is present in and to the “here.” Note that Zhanran then specifies how this

contemplation changes our understanding of Provisional Positing and Emptiness. In

their identity to one another, Provisional Positing does not mean merely “dependence on

conditions,” and Emptiness does not mean merely “absence of a self-nature.” Rather, by

the interfusion of the Three Truths, each means both, and each further means Centrality.

Provisional Positing then means the inherent presence of each and every determinate

mark, pervading all times and places, and Emptiness means the interfusion of these

marks, and these two, quite obviously, are now seen as synonymous. Zhanran’s final

analogy deserves some comment. What we call our present deluded state of mind is

compared to the statues made of dirt from the public road. The very same thing is also

part of the road itself—i.e., the course of the Buddhas. That is, the same thing, in

different contexts, has different functions, but neither one nor the other need actually

change to do so. To understand this analogy, and Zhanran’s cryptic final comment, lest

it be thought that this implies a “leveling” of the marks of the particular states of mind

into an undifferentiated whole of the Buddha-mind, it should be compared to the

metaphor of the sky and the illusory flowers, below.

Q: The external material form that makes up inanimate beings is not endowed

simultaneously with mind. How can it have replete within it the Three Meritorious

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Properties [Liberation, Wisdom, Dharmakaya], such that you say the Three Meritorious

Properties pervade all places?

A: It is not only the external material form that is not simultaneously endowed with

mind; the material form inside one’s own body is just the same as grass, trees, tiles and

bricks. But if we are talking about the inherent entailment of the Meritorious Properties,

it is not only the internal mind that is a transformation of mind. Thus it is said of both the

internal mind and external material form that, because mind is neither internal nor

external, material form too is neither internal nor external. Thus each is both internal

and external. Because of the purity of the mind, the Buddha-land is pure, but also,

conversely, because of the purity of the Buddha-land, wisdom is pure. Because both

mind and material form are pure, all dharmas are pure. Because all dharmas are pure,

mind and body are pure. How can we say only that the external material form lacks

mind?6

Here we have a further development of Zhanran’s ideas of awareness and non-awareness,

and the manner in which they interfuse. Neither is primary, each is reducible to the

other. Either one can be described as primary, according to upayic circumstances, the

soteriological needs of any present conversation. In the sense that the external world is

insentient, our own bodies and minds are also insentient; in the sense that our bodies and

mind are sentient, the external world is also sentient.

Q: [Zhiyi’s Mohezhiguan] says, ‘Believe only in the Dharma-nature; do not believe in

anything else.’ There is only the Dharma-nature; nothing else exists. But then what are

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all the diverse dharmas we see before us? And why is it also said that the Dharma-

nature inherently entails all the many dharmas?

A: Because sentient beings for long aeons have been exclusively attached to the diverse

dharmas, and did not believe in the Dharma-nature, this statement is made as a

corrective to destroy this ancient prejudiced way of calculating, so that in all the diverse

dharmas they will see purely and only the Dharma-nature. But to see the Dharma-nature

is to see that the Dharma-nature is purely and only all the diverse dharmas. This Nature

that is also all the diverse dharmas is originally without either the one name or the other.

It is called either [diverse] dharmas or [one] Nature in accordance with the need to

refute or establish upayically.7

Neither unity nor diversity is primary. It is not the case that the world appears to be

multiform, deluded and biased, but is in reality one. Rather, either of these ways of

stating the case is equally valid, to be applied as a corrective to a previous bias.

Q: All the texts say that mind and material form are non-dual. But if we want to

contemplate this, how do we set up our contemplation?

A: Mind and material form are one substance; neither precedes the other. Each is the

entire dharma-realm. But in the sequence of contemplation, we must start with the

internal mind. Once the internal mind is purified, this pure mind will encounter all

dharmas, and naturally meld with them all perfectly. Moreover, we must first understand

that all dharmas are mind-only, and only then begin contemplating the mind. If you can

comprehend all dharmas to the end, you will see that all dharmas are nothing but mind,

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and that all dharmas are nothing but material form. You must understand that every

existence comes from the distinctions made by one’s own mind. When have dharmas

themselves ever declared that they were the same as or different from one another?

Hence the Zhanchajing says, “There are two types of contemplation. The first is

Consciousness-only. The second is of the Real-Mark [i.e., of the ultimate reality].” The

Real-mark[practice] is the contemplation of Liberating Coherence (li), while the

Consciousness-only[practice[ works through individual Events (shi). Although

Liberating Coherence and Event are non-dual, the ways for contemplating them are

slightly separated. Only one who is able to understand this can be spoken to about the

Way.8

Again, reality is ultimately neither material nor mental. But the contemplation of mind

is made primary for the sake of Buddhist praxis, precisely because it is mind that is the

source of the problem of delusion and suffering for sentient beings. All is mind, all is

matter. But in what sense are things said to be “mind” from the point of view of praxis?

The mark of mind is the making of distinctions. Dharmas themselves do not distinguish

themselves from one another, do not predicate sameness or difference of themselves.

Zhanran here quotes a Chinese apocryphal sutra, the full title of which is Zhancha shan’e

yebao jing (“The sutra of prognostication and investigation of good and evil karmic

retribution”), which gives a fuller exposition of the practice of the “contemplation of

consciousness-only,” as follows:

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In all times and places, wherever physical, verbal or mental karma is being created, you

should observe and know that it is all mind only. This goes also for all objects and

states: whenever the mind fixes its attention in some object of cognition, you should

notice and be aware of it, never letting the mind go obliviously chasing after objects

without noticing its own activity. Rather, observe each and every movement of the

attention. Whenever the mind traces or attends to something, you should return it to

make the mind follow after that act of attention itself, so the mind is aware of it. Know

that you own inner mind is what is producing thoughts and acts of attention; it is not the

objects themselves that have thoughts or make distinctions. That is to say, the inner

mind produces countless views of long and short, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong,

gain and loss, decay and advantage, existence and non-existence and so on, while the

objects themselves have never had thoughts which give rise to such distinctions. You

should know that all objects are themselves devoid of any thoughts and distinctions, so

they are themselves neither long nor short, neither beautiful nor ugly, and so forth, up to

neither existent nor non-existent. In themselves they are free of all marks. Thus you

should observe that all dharmas are born from the thoughts of the mind. In the absence

of this mind, there is no dharma and no mark that could view itself as being different

from anything else. You should hold and attend to [this operation of] your inner mind,

and know that there are only these deluded thoughts and no real external objects. Attend

to it without cease. This is called cultivating and learning the contemplation [that all is]

mental consciousness only. If the mind is inattentive and does not realize that its own

attention is operating, it believes there to be external objects before it. This is no longer

called the contemplation [that all is] mental consciousness only…..9

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The function of the mind is to make distinctions, which is what it is to make predications,

including those of existence and non-existence, i.e., that there even is or is not an object

here to be cognized, about which some predications might be made. It is fundamentally

a faculty of dividing. It divides itself from the objects before it, reifying both, and

simultaneously separates out the objects from one another, identifying them as this or

that, and cognizing various characteristics inhering in them by which to distinguish them.

Where it makes a border, it posits a determinate thing within the border. The act of

cognition is here regarded in a way very consistent with indigenous Chinese

epistemological theories: knowing is a skill in dividing things out of a larger context.

Where there is no dividing, there is no thing. To be aware of a thing is here not

conceived according to the metaphor of a receiving of an impression, or the lighting up of

what was in darkness, or a clearing away of a blockage; it is not a kind of disclosing or

illuminating, not a revealing or a reception, but rather a dividing. Where there is any

quiddity or characteristic of any kind, there is a distinction, a parsing, a forming of

boundaries between “this” and “another.” Without this bordering, no characteristics can

exist. But things do not border themselves; it is a particular biased perspective and

cognitive apparatus of a sentient being that decides to divide up the world in one way or

another, setting the limits to how much of the given counts as “this thing” and how much

as “that thing,” where things begin and end. This is what constitutes the world of shapes,

colors, entities, characteristics. When contemplating mind, then, where is mind to be

found? Mind cannot directly be an object of mind. By mind-contemplation, the

attentiveness to, say, the stream of words and emotions through one’s “interior

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monologue” is not meant. These are mental objects, not the distinguishing function of

mind as subject and perceiver. All these things are distinguishable, are perceivable,

hence all belong to the realm of objects. Rather, wherever one notices a characteristic of

any kind, any sort of definitive presence, one is to see the activity of mind. The

greenness of green, the redness of red, the bookness of book, the spaciness of space: these

are mind. And this mind is not the pure mind, but the deluded mind, the mind that

makes arbitrary and biased distinctions. This deluded mind is the creator of all particular

things, including the Buddha, and it is this deluded mind that is to be the object of

contemplation in Tiantai practice. Hence, in the passage from Zhiyi translated in

Kantor’s article in this volume, we find first an exhaustive cataloguing of specific aspects

of determinate existence: a kind of sweeping through all imaginable distinctions into

specific characteristics available to the mind as it is operating here at this moment,

designated as “the three thousand natures and marks.” Zhiyi’s discussion of “the

inconceivable realm” explicitly begins with a statement of his modus operandi; in

Kantor’s translation, “As this realm can be hardly expressed, we first expound the

conceivable realm, in order to find an easier way making the inconceivable realm

evident.” We have here an exercise in invoking the awareness of the totality of the

known—whatever one can presently perceive, conceive, imagine. An effort is made to

extend this to all imaginable aspects: the possible, the actual, the subjective, the

objective. Every substance, every attribute, every aspect, every possible view of every

possible thing, everything one is capable of noticing, is to be included here in the

“conceivable realm” (siyijing), and Zhiyi’s exhaustive enumeration may be viewed as an

exercise encouraging one to practice noticing more and more of what is noticeable,

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leaving nothing out. Then we turn to the “inconceivable realm”: what is left out of this

exhaustive surveying? Not an additional “known” but the condition of it, present in it

all, as the very process of surveying it all: “Mind.” This is then the “inconceivable

realm” (busiyijing). It is to be noted in noting the “knownness” of the known, the

“clarity,” the “distinctness,” the “presence,” the “being-there,” in their separation from

one another, their being precisely what they are, in their disambiguation, their identity.

That is the presence of “mind” in them. Viewing the mind is viewing this. We might

describe this as the aspect of “ness” to the redness of red, the greenness of green, the

hotness of hot, the coldness of cold. Where there is a thing, there is its “distinctness,” its

identity, its “being itself and none other.” That aspect of all things is one’s own

(deluded) mind. That things are present to you as they are is your mind. It is this that is

contemplated in the contemplation of mind as the inconceivable realm.

Q: [Zhiyi’s] Fahuaxuanyi says that the object is able to contemplate the subject.

Although many scriptures are quoted to verify it, it is hard to understand the liberating

coherence of this claim.

A: If we follow the merely upayic teachings, there is no way to see the liberating

coherence of this idea. But it is quite easy to integrate it coherently into the ultimate

teaching. We take mind itself as the object, while mind is also the subject that is doing

the contemplating. Thus subject and object are both mind, and both the mind and its

substance pervade everywhere. Each state of mind reflects on another state of mind—the

coherence of this is quite clear. Thus at the beginning of the section on the Inconceivable

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Object it says, ‘The inconceivable object is itself precisely the subject doing the

contemplating.’ From this we can derive four different but equally accurate

descriptions: 1) the object is aware of the object, 2) the object is aware of the subject, 3)

the subject is aware of the object, 4) the subject is aware of the subject. As soon as there

is any real awareness, it is beyond description. But the awareness should be described,

for it then goes beyond what can be completely comprehended by the awareness alone.

Conversely, as soon as there is any real description, it cannot be exhausted by

awareness. But the description should become an object of awareness, for it then goes

beyond what can exhausted by the description alone. Thus it is different from what

people of the world normally think of, namely, an inert object as what we are aware of

and contemplate. It differs also from the one-sided Hinayana idea of the deluded mind as

the object of contemplation. Nor is it the same as the idea of artificially setting up

Suchness as the object of contemplation. These differences conceptions of the

contemplated object also apply to the contemplating subject—do not carelessly confound

them.10

Here we have the most distinctive aspect of Tiantai thought, distinguishing it from most

other Buddhist “mind-only” doctrines. Mind-only also means matter-only, and each

means both. We cannot assert a one-way perceiver-perceived relation. This is also seen

in Zhanran’s awareness-non-awareness point, and further explicated below in the

metaphor of the empty sky and the illusory flowers. Hence it is just as accurate to say

subject is perceiving object and to say object is perceiving subject, or that subject is

perceiving subject, or that object is perceiving object. Indeed, as Zhiyi says, each of

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these alone is the entirety of the dharma-realm, described in three alternate ways: as

subject, as object and as the act of subject encountering and perceiving object. “The

entire dharma-realm confronts the entire dharma-realm, and the entire dharma-realm

arises as a result.”11 Note however that this does not mean that none of the descriptions

is accurate, or that we should instead say that no arising or perceiving takes place, that in

reality these three reduce into an undifferentiated totality; any of the descriptions is

equally accurate, according to the demands of upaya, the only determinant of any claim

whatsoever. The differentiation is itself inherently entailed, and necessary to the

unfolding of the non-differentiation. Zhanran’s further comments here on the relation

between contemplation and verbal description are especially telling. Neither is more

ultimate than the other, and each exceeds the other. Finally, Zhanran distinguishes this

from several other views of subject-object relations, and delusion-truth relations. It is

not an active and aware mind that unilaterally perceives an inert and non-aware object, as

common sense would assume. Nor is the Tiantai contemplation of deluded mind like the

Hinayana contemplation of deluded mind, where the latter is something to be transcended

and discarded when the real truth is realized, where the real truth is conceived of as

something lying beyond the deluded mind, separable from it. Nor is it the entertaining of

a real truth—Suchness—as the direct object of contemplation, apart from the deluded

mind itself. The contemplator too differs: it is not one-sidedly active as opposed to

passive, perceiving as opposed to perceived. Rather, the contemplator is all three

thousand pure and impure natures and characteristics; the object of contemplation,

equally, is all three thousand; the activity of contemplating itself, arising from the

interaction of these two, is also all three thousand.

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Q: ….[The Mohezhiguan] says, ‘[When we speak of “one” single moment of mental

activity] we are not regarding it in the same way as ordinary people of the world, for

whom a single moment of mental activity clung to [as definitively “one,” where “one”

and “diverse” are regarded as definitive, mutually exclusive characteristics12] is capable

of inherently including the Three Thousand. Is this the case only in this context, or

everywhere?

A: Everywhere.

Q: Then is it that this clung-to mind does not inherently include the Three Thousand?

A: This is said only with respect to the object to be used in contemplation. The clung-to

mind itself is originally all dharmas. We come to see that this mind of clinging is born of

conditions, and hence is illusory and false. [And yet] the Three Thousand, being mere

aspects of [lit., within] this falsity, are in their own essence [i.e., apart from this mental

activity] devoid of self-nature. [Thus] they are themselves precisely the inconceivable

integrated and wondrous Emptiness, Provisionality and Centrality of the nature of mind

itself. It is like [illusory images of] flowers in the sky. Since there is no difference in

substance between the flowers and the empty sky, this empty sky does not correspond to

either the word ‘flower’ or to the word ‘empty sky,’ for the latter was originally posited

in contradistinction to the flowers. This emptiness has no name. Extending this point in

detail, the same applies to all things.13

A moment of mental activity is in reality neither one nor many. As shown in the passage

translated in Kantor’s article in this volume, it does not merely “produce” or

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“encompass” all dharmas: it is all dharmas. That is to say, either “this moment” or “all

dharmas” are equally valid descriptions of it. Which is appropriate is determined by the

needs of any given upayic situation. But here Zhanran describes the Tiantai mind-

contemplation practice clearly. All determinate marks of the world are seen to be

aspects of this moment of mental activity—as we saw above, things themselves do not

declare themselves “same” or “different,” so wherever we see sameness or difference—

that is, wherever we see anything at all—we see the activity of this deluded mind. But if

all is mind, then mind no longer means mind as contrasted to non-mind. Mind as

substrate or producer crashes by virtue of its very success: when seen to be everywhere

without exception, such that even the negation of it can only be it, it no longer means

what it originally meant. In Zhanran’s metaphor, mind is like empty sky, and all

determinate marks are like the illusory images of flowers floating in the air, as a result of

an eye disease. Once the flowers are seen to be nothing but sky, sky means “sky-and-

flowers,” and similarly flowers, since they mean sky, mean “sky-and-flowers.” Hence

because all things are mind, they are empty. But because all things are empty, mind is

empty. Yet mind determines these things in this one particular way because of its

current state of delusive bias. It is provisionally posited, and thus they are correlatively

provisionally posited. But its particular state cannot be produced from itself, another,

both or neither; looking purely at its place in the temporal sequence of diverse mental

states, its relation to its border with other states, entailed in its contrast to them and hence

to its particular identity, proves unintelligible. Hence each of these marks is the

Emptiness, Provisionality and Centrality of the nature of mind itself; they are inherently

entailed, pervading all times and places, and intersubsumptive. We can now further

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understand the claim that object perceives subject: the manifestation of each biased

appearance in my mind right now is also an upayic self-presentation of each reality.

Either is as much the agent and the patient as the other. The sky-flower metaphor helps

us understand the statue-road metaphor cited earlier. In keeping with the claim that “the

individual colors are a small portion of Conventional Truth,” and hence are truths

themselves, which however interpenetrate with the excluded portions of truth, the statue

is to the road as the flower is to the sky. The statues are nothing but road, and hence

“road” no longer means what it did when the contrast between the two was in place.

Hence neither the road nor the statues, neither the sky nor the flowers, neither the mind

nor all dharmas, ever arises or perishes. All are inherently entailed in every particular

time and place.

Q: Are all the Great Master’s (Zhiyi) oral transmissions purely to cure various diseases,

or is there any other essential heart of the teaching he transmitted?

A: They are all to cure various diseases. But there is one verse that says:

“The teacher taught the following maxim:

The Ultimately Real mind is connected to the Ultimately Real object,

Thereby producing Ultimately Real conditioned states in sequence.

Real pours into Real, one after another,

And thus effortlessly one enters the Real Liberating Coherence.”

I explain this as follows: If the mind connects to the object, then the object necessarily

connects to the mind as well. When mind and object connect to one another, this is

called the Ultimately Real conditioned state. And then this is done by the following

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moment of mind, so that one such mental event follows another without interruption.

Each mental event connects to the previous mental event. This is called “[One

Ultimately Real after another Ultimately Real] pouring into one another.” This means

also the mind pouring into the object, the object pouring into the object, the object

pouring into the mind. Each mind, each object, each moment of mental activity pours

into all the others; when this continues in every sequential moment without interruption,

one effortlessly moves into the identity with Buddhahood at the level of contemplation

and practice, the identity with Buddhahood at the level of versimilitude, and the identity

with Buddhahood at the level of partial realization. This is called entering into the Real

Liberating Coherence.14

Here we see again the distinctiveness of Tiantai thought. The final result of seeing that

all determinate characteristics encountered in experience are produced by our own

deluded cognitive divisions, and thus have no reality of their own, is not to dismiss them

as ultimately unreal, nor to correct our misperception (it’s all in my head, all I have to do

is see it differently and it will be different!). Rather, the final upshot is that each and

every determinate characteristic I encounter is even more real than I formerly believed it

to be: it is ultimate reality. My very act of misperceiving in this particular way is itself

ineradicably built-into reality. My illusion is the very self-disclosure of the ultimate

truth. So the world I observe, with all its mountains and rivers, its obstructions and

materiality, its politics and struggles, far from vanishing into illusion or being reduced to

mind, is very real, absolutely real, in its every detail. Every aspect is equally real. All

dharmas are absolute reality. Each dharma is absolute reality. The world as we see it,

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or as each individual deluded sentient being sees it, is not merely an illusion. Each

misperception is the ultimate truth. Whatever colors, shapes, situations, valences,

tendencies, characteristics my crazy deluded mind may be experiencing, these are not

merely to be refuted, deconstructed, shown to be empty, and discarded; rather, precisely

when so deconstructed, the reconstitute themselves as not merely contingent partial

realities, but as the totality of absolute reality, of absolute truth. Because they are

illusions, they are the truth. Every illusory perception entertained however fleetingly by

any sentient being is the absolute truth.

1 This claim is somewhat controversial, as Nagarjuna’s epistemological position is notoriously ambiguous and subject to many interpretations. The picture is further complicated if we factor the Dazhidulun (*Mahaprajnaparamitasastra), a text attributed to Nagarjuna and extant only in Chinese, into our interpretation, but most scholars consider this attribution spurious. Zhiyi’s understanding of Madhyamika thought, however, relies heavily on this text. 2 T39.88b. 3 T46.783a. 4 T46.451c. 5 T45.452b-c. 6 T46.451c. 7 T46.452a. 8 T46.452a. 9 T17.908a. 10 T46.452b. 11 T46.9a. The alternate version of the text, given in the Taisho, is “The Buddha’s dharma-realm confronts the dharma-realm, giving rise to the dharma-realm, so that none is not the dharma of the Buddha.” Later Tiantai writers tend to use the version without the character “Buddha” at the beginning of the phrase, rendering the more general meaning given here. See Zhanran’s citation of this passage at T46.451b, quoted above. 12 “And again, when we speak of ‘one single moment of mental activity,’ we do not mean the same thing as what people of the world attach to as ‘one single’ moment where ‘one’ and ‘diverse’ are regarded as fixed characteristics. We merely say ‘one’ to designate what is neither one nor diverse. It is like the way a single moment of mental activity, when covered over by the phenomenon of sleep, can dream of the events of a limitless span of generations.” Zhiyi, Mohezhiguan, T46.127a-b. 13 T46.452c. 14 T46.453a.