Five Ranks
The Five Ranks, by Chinese Soto (Caodong) master Tung-shan, are fundamental to Sōtō and Rinzai Zen teaching, expressing the interplay of absolute and relative truth and the fundamental non-dualism of Buddhist teaching.
The Five Ranks
The ranks are based on a translation of five stanzas from a poem attributed to Tung-shan, who may have received it from his master before him:
- The Apparent within the Real/The Actual within the Ideal
- The Real within the Apparent/The Ideal within the Actual
- The Coming from within the Real
- The Arrival at Mutual Integration
- Unity Attained
Absolute-relative
When Buddhism was intriduced in China the doctrines of Buddha-nature and Sunyata were being understood as akin to Tao. It took the Chinese world several centuries to realize that sunyata has another meaning[1]. The Prajnaparamita-sutras and Madhyamaka emphasized the non-duality of form and emptiness: form is emptiness, emptiness is form, as the heart sutra says.[2] The idea that the ultimate reality is present in the daily world of relative reality fitted into the Chinese culture which emphasized the mundane world and society. But this does not tell how the absolute is present in the relative world:
To deny the 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?
[3]
This question is answered in such schemata as the Five Ranks of Tozan[4] and the Oxherding Pictures.
See also
External link
References
Sources
- Kasulis, Thomas P. (2003), Ch'an Spirituality. In: Buddhist Spirituality. Later China, Korea, Japan and the Modern World; edited by Takeuchi Yoshinori, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
- Lai, Whalen (Year unknown), Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey, http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/HistoricalZen/Buddhism_in_China.pdf
- Liang-Chieh (1986), The Record of Tung-shan, Kuroda Institute
- Loori, John Daido (2000). "River Seeing the River". In Stephanie Kaza, Kenneth Kraft. Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism. Shambhala Publications. ISBN 1570624755.
- Miura, Isshu; Ruth Fuller Sasaki (1966). Zen Dust: The History of the Koan and Koan Study in Rinzai Zen. First Zen Institute of America in Japan. ISBN B0006BZGV6. "Out of print"
- Verdú, Alfonso (1966). "The "Five Ranks" Dialectic of the Soto-Zen School in the Light of Kuei-Feng Tsung-Mi's "Ariya-Shiki" Scheme". Monumenta Nipponica (Sophia University) 21 (1/2): 125–170.
- Verdú, Alfonso (1974). Dialiectical Aspects in Buddhist Thought: Studies in Sino-Japanese Mahāyāna Idealism. International Studies, East Asian Series Reprint No. 8. Kansas City: University of Kansas, Center for East Asian Studies. http://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace/handle/1808/1196.