The Three Truths in Tiantai Buddhism

Abstract

All Mahayana schools adopt some version of the Two Truths theory, with one exception: the Tiantai school, which alone among all Buddhist schools moves from the Two Truths epistemology to a Three Truths model of truth. The Three Truths are actually three different ways of looking at any object or state. Each implies the other two, and each is one way to describe the whole of that object, including its other two aspects. This cup is a cup: that is provisional truth, conventional truth, local coherence. This cup is not a cup: that is ultimate truth, its emptiness, its global incoherence. To be a cup is not to be a cup: that is its Centrality, its Non-duality, its Absoluteness. This cup is all things, all possible ways of being, all universes, as this cup. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Inc..