This relation of neither-sameness-nor-difference, a formula used by many Mahāyāna Buddhist schools but often interpreted as applying not to “Conventional Truth” but only to “Ultimate Truth” (on which see below), and thus understood simply as an instance of apophasis...is in Tiantai instead developed into what might be described as the “asness” relation, applying to all putative or real entities without exception, affecting even what is within the scope of Conventional Truth: each determinate thing is the totality of all other possible things as this thing.