Chih-i’s understanding of the unifying truth of the Lotus Sutra as a synthesis of the microcosm (one mind) and the macrocosm (three thousand realms), good and evil, and ideals and reality is related to the general attitude in China that laid stress on the actual world. On this point, it differs in nuance from the reverence of the Lotus Sutra found in India, where the wonderful law as the one vehicle was viewed as the truth of an undifferentiated, universal equality. Chih-i’s thinking on emptiness is a clear manifestation of this difference. Chih-i’s logic of emptiness is based on the three concepts of emptiness, transience, and the middle. The first concept indicates the attainment of the state of emptiness by abandoning attachment to actuality (or transience, chia in Chinese). The second concept, which is the reverse of the first, means that one should not remain in the state of emptiness but should return once again to actuality and live correctly in the real world. In the first concept, transience is denied and emptiness is established, but in the second concept emptiness is denied and actuality is revived. The third concept concludes that emptiness must not be forgotten even after returning to actuality or transience; it is the middle path that unifies emptiness and transience. The second concept, returning from emptiness to actuality, reflects the Chinese stress on ordinary reality. These three concepts were expounded in the Sutra on the Bodhisattva’s Original Action (P’u-sa Ying-lo pen-yeh-ching), which was compiled in China in about the fifth century. Chih-i used ideas from the Lotus Sutra to add new flesh to and systematize these concepts.