 In Tsongkhapa's mature philosophy the Mahāyāna altruistic principle (bodhicitta) is the sole criterion for distinguishing authentic Mahāyāna views and practices from non-Mahāyāna ones. By privileging the principle in this way he is able to assert that any authentic realization of truth is a realization of the way things are, namely, a realization of no sva-bhāva (Sk.) (“own-being, own-nature, intrinsic identity”). For Tsongkhapa, therefore, Hīnayānists (by which he intends followers of the basic Buddhist doctrine of the Four Noble Truths set forth in the earliest scriptures), necessarily have the same authentic knowledge of reality. Were they not to have such knowledge, he argues, they could not have reached the goals they reached (the seventh point).