Tiantai (including Zhiyi)

Considered the first Sinitic Buddhist school, the Tiantai tradition was founded in the sixth century. The Lotus Sūtra is revered as the most important scripture in Tiantai. Although the school traces its lineage back to Nāgārjuna in India, its de facto founder is Zhiyi, whose works have become authoritative in Tiantai. Zhiyi's philosophy equally values doctrine and meditation, or theory and practice. The unique doctrines, in accord with the Perfect Teaching, making Tiantai distinct from other Buddhist schools include “the three thousand dharmas of/in/as one moment of thought” ( yinian sanqian ), “inherent inclusion” ( xingju ), “inherent evil” ( xing'e ), and “identity” ( ji ). The meditation method is to observe one's moment of thought being simultaneously identical to the “three truths”: emptiness, provisional positing, and the middle ( yixin sanguan ).