It expresses the interplay of absolute and relative truth and the fundamental non-dualism of Buddhist teaching.
This work is attributed to the Chinese Caodong (Sōtō) monk Dongshan Liangjie (Japanese: Tōzan Ryōkan), who lived during the end of the Tang dynasty, as well as two sets of verse commentaries by him.
[1] The teachings of the Five Ranks may be inspired by the Sandokai,[2] a poem attributed to Shitou Xiqian (traditional Chinese: 石頭希遷).
Eihei Dogen, the founder of the Japanese Sōtō School, references the Five Ranks in the first paragraph of one of his most widely studied works, Genjōkōan.
The Five Ranks are listed below with two translations of the original poem, the first by Miura and Sasaki,[4] and the second by Thomas Cleary, followed by commentary and analysis: In the third watch of the night Before the moon appears, No wonder when we meet There is no recognition!
[5]In the third watch, beginning of the night, before the moon is bright, do not wonder at meeting without recognition; still held hidden in the heart
is the beauty of former days[6]This rank describes the Absolute, insight into the empty nature or not-"thing"-ness of everything.
[6] The scholar Heinrich Dumoulin describes the first rank as the realization that "all diverse things and events are in their essence the same, formless and empty.
[5] According to Hakuin, this rank is only the beginning of Zen insight, but it can become a trap for people who take the absolute to be the end-station: "Although inside and out may be perfectly clear as long as you are hidden away in an unfrequented place where there is absolute quiet and nothing to do, yet you are powerless as soon as perception touches upon different worldly situations, with all their clamor and emotion, and you are beset by a plethora of miseries".
[5] A woman who's overslept encounters an ancient mirror; clearly she sees her face- there is no other reality.
Hakuin describes that at this point one "is neither conversant with the deportment of the bodhisattva, nor does he understand the causal conditions for a Buddha-land.
[5] Within nothingness is a road out of the dust; just be able to avoid violating the present taboo name and you will surpass the eloquence of yore
[6]The fourth rank describes "the bodhisattva of indomitable spirit"[web 1] who "go[es] into the marketplace extending their hands, acting for others".
[7] According to Sekida, this rank is described in case 13 of the Mumonkan: One day Tokusan went down toward the dining room, holding his bowls.
[9] It was centuries later that Chinese Buddhism took Sunyata to mean the underlying unchanging essence of reality, the non-duality of being and non-being.
But this does not tell how the absolute is present in the relative world: To deny the duality of samsara and nirvana, as the Perfection of Wisdom does, or to demonstrate logically the error of dichotomizing conceptualization, as Nagarjuna does, is not to address the question of the relationship between samsara and nirvana -or, in more philosophical terms, between phenomenal and ultimate reality [...] What, then, is the relationship between these two realms?