We have already touched on how, in part under the influence of the esoteric Buddhist teachings, medieval Tendai notions of practice and attainment shifted from a linear model of practice, in which one gradually cultivates merit and wisdom, striving for buddhahood as a future goal, to what one might call a timeless or “mandalic” model, in which buddhahood is revealed in the very act of faith and practice. Medieval Tendai texts sometimes express this conceptual shift with the phrase, “The assembly on Sacred Vulture Peak is still awesomely present and has not yet dispersed.” Just as enlightenment was redefined as accessible in the present, so the assembly of the Lotus Sūtra where the two buddhas sat side by side in the jeweled stūpa came to be represented not as an event in the distant past, but as still ongoing. Some medieval Tendai writings identify this ever-present Lotus assembly with the liberating discernment of the three thousand realms in a single thought-moment, or more specifically, of the buddha realm within oneself.