 Many of Zhiyan’s mysteries have a paradoxical flavor, presenting shi with apparently contrary characteristics. But Zhiyan finds mystery rather than contradiction. His insight seems to involve a sort of aspectualism, whereby contrary characteristics are ascribed to different aspects of one and the same shi, and where opposition among these aspects is a matter of perspectival limitation rather than inherent contradiction. This perspectival aspectualism supports, as a corollary, Zhiyan’s doctrine of the six characteristics. According to this doctrine, each shi creates all others while retaining its particularity, includes all others within itself while retaining its difference from them, and integrates others into a whole without cooperating with those others to do so. But Zhiyan provides little by way of explanation for these characteristics. Nor does he provide explanatory detail for locating the full diversity of experience in a common foundational source of mind. These tasks fall to his successors. 