The “perfect interfusion of the mirror and its images,” the second of Saichō’s two references to oral transmission, represents a variation on the same teaching, this analogy having been used by Chih-i to illustrate that the three truths are perfectly integrated and inseparable. Here one must imagine not a glass mirror, but one made of bronze or some other metal, polished to form a reflecting surface. The luminous, reflecting quality of the mirror represents emptiness; the images reflected in it represent conditioned, provisional existence; and the mirror itself represents the middle. These three are always inseparable and simultaneous, three aspects of one reality. (Page 122)