 The third teaching in Fazang’s panjiao is what he calls the Final Teaching of the Mahayana. Fazang has in mind teachings associated with tathagatagarbha theory, as present in texts such as Awakening of Faith in Mahayana. According to Fazang, the Final Teaching improves upon the Elementary Teaching by virtue of correctly understanding ultimate reality as pure and undefiled—not as repository consciousness, but as tathagatagarbha. The Final Teaching also transcends the limitations of the prior two teachings—each of which focuses on one of the pair “existence” and “emptiness” to the exclusion of the other—by treating ultimate reality as having two aspects: an aspect of existing, and an aspect of being empty. 