It is not Buddhistic to seek the original principle or to consider the absolute as separate or independent. Here the Tendai School at once comes back to the ideation theory but expresses it somewhat differently. It is set forth that a conscious-instant or a moment of thought has 3,000 worlds immanent in it. This is a theory special to this school and is called ‘three thousand originally immanent,’ or ‘three thousand immanent in principle,’ or ‘three thousand immanent in nature – or sometimes ‘three thousand perfectly immanent.’ The immanency, either original, theoretical, natural or perfect, conveys one and the same idea; namely, that the one moment of thought is itself 3000 worlds. Some consider this to be the nearest approach to the idea of the Absolute, but if you consider the Absolute to be the source of all creation it is not exactly the Absolute. Or, it may be considered to be a form of ideation theory, but if one thinks that ideation manifests the outer world by the process of dichotomy it is quite different, for it does not mean that one instant of thought produces the 3,000 worlds, because a production is the beginning of a lengthwise motion, i.e., timely production. Nor does it mean that the 3 000 worlds are included in one instant of thought because an inclusion is a crosswise existence, i.e., spacely coexistence.

Although here the 3,000-world doctrine is expounded on the basis of ideation, it is not mere ideation, for all the dharmas of the universe are immanent in one thought-instant but are not reduced to thought or ideation.

That the world is immanent in one moment of thought is the philosophy of immanence, phenomena being identical with conscious action. It may be called ‘phenomenology,’ each phenomenon, matter or mind, expressing its own principle or nature.

The principle each phenomenon expresses is the triple truth of harmony (as void, as temporary and as mean), i.e., noumenon originally immanent, perfectly immanent, immanency in principle and immanency in nature. This means simply that a thing or being itself is the true state. Hence the phrase: “Everything, even the color or fragrance, is identical with the Middle Path, the Truth.”