Here it is useful to place Zongmi’s concerns in the context of Chinese appropriations of the distinction between conventional truth (saṃvṛti-satya) and ultimate truth (paramārtha-satya)—a distinction that had roots in both Nikāya and Mahāyāna Buddhism, and that was given perhaps its most developed expression in the work of the Indian thinker, Candrakīrti (570–650). In China, while the “two truths” distinction became a philosophical mainstay, it was also seen as being in tension with the teachings of nonduality since it implies two separate levels of reality or at the very least a contrast of reality and illusion. One of the most influential responses to this seeming inconsistency was put forward by Zhiyi (538–597), one of the founding figures of Chinese Tiantai Buddhism, who forwarded a “three truths” approach that embraced such apparent opposites as existence and nonexistence, enlightenment and delusion, and the sacred and the profane as equal partners of the “Middle Way”. According to Zhiyi, conventional realities/truths (based on day-to-day experience) and ultimate realities/truths (based on the realization of emptiness) are equally involved in bringing about the end of suffering (the Middle Path). And this implies that, in fact, all things and statements can be true as mutually inclusive aspects of a single reality/truth.