 This contextualism is applied intricately and thoroughgoingly to Buddhist teachings themselves, including especially its most foundational teachings about the basic character of existence: impermanence, suffering, and non-self—and also about the solutions to those conditions: enlightenment and Buddhahood. Are all things permament or impermanent? Are there selves or no selves? Can we end suffering or can’t we? For Tiantai the right question to be asked for understanding and applying doctrine is not “is it true?”—since all doctrines are “true” in this sense of “liberating” in some contexts, and not in others—but rather “in what sense, and in what context, is it true, i.e., liberating?” It is in this connection that we must understand the Tiantai “classification of teachings.” Among the many rubrics used for this purpose in traditional Tiantai, the most philosophically important is the classification of the four types of contents of the Buddha’s teaching (化法四教), called the Four Teachings, namely, Tripitaka, Shared, Separate, and Perfect 藏，通，別，圓).