This volume represents the first comprehensive study in English of the teaching of the Threefold Truth, perhaps the single most important doctrine in Tien-t'ai Buddhism. Its author, Paul Swanson, stands as the first of a new generation of Buddhist scholars attempting to provide a comprehensive analysis of Tien-t'ai for the West and thus to open new vistas for understanding East Asian Buddhism as a whole. As the first major school of Buddhism in East Asia, Tien-t'ai marked a watershed in Chinese philosophy. Subsequent developments in Buddhist thought defined themselves in terms of the position they took in its regard, and this is what makes its understanding so critical for the study of Buddhist intellectual history.