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  It is also known for its doctrine of the Three Truths; its classification of Buddhist doctrines into Five Periods and Eight Teachings; and its particular form of meditation.

Tiantai Buddhism in Japan as Tendai, which for a time was the dominant school of Buddhism in Japan.

In 845 the Tang Dynasty Emperor Wuzong ordered all "foreign" religions in China, which included Buddhism, to be eliminated.

However, Tiantai did not become extinct in China. In time, with the help of Korean disciples, Guoqing was rebuilt and copies of essential texts were returned to the mountain.

Tiantai had regained some of its footing by the year 1000, when a doctrinal dispute split the school in half and generated a few centuries' worth of treatises and commentaries.

The Three Truths proposes a "middle" acting as an interface of sorts between the absolute and the conventional.

This "middle" is the omniscient mind of Buddha, which takes in all phenomenal reality, both pure and impure.

These were (1) the period in the Buddha's life in which a sutra was preached; (2) the audience that first heard the sutra; (3) the teaching method the Buddha used to make his point.

Zhiyi identified five distinct periods of the Buddha's life, and sorted texts accordingly into the Five Periods.

He identified three kinds of audiences and five kinds of methods, and these became the Eight Teachings.

Although the Five Periods are not historically accurate, and scholars of other schools might differ with the Eight Teachings, Zhiyi's classification system was internally logical and gave Tiantai a solid foundation.

In different ways, much of Zhiyi's teaching lives on in Pure Land and Nichiren Buddhism, as well as Zen.