This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good afternoon. So... So Sarah and I were trying to figure out what to talk about, and I've been spending time with the five ranks. And then she said this thing, like, oh, I'm thinking about this dynamic middle way. And I said, well, that's great, because you can look at the five ranks as basically unfolding this idea of the middle way. The five ranks seem to come from Dungshan. And so Dengshan, he's the toe of Soto Zen, so one of the founders of this line in China.

[01:00]

And Dengshan lived, I think, 807 to 869, I think. Anyway, if I find the date, I'll let you know for sure. But ninth century. And here I can pass them out. They are, in Dungshan, they're five kind of fairly abstract or philosophical sounding three-character titles. And then with each one of those is a poem. And so there's various ways of rendering it, but you could say the apparent within the real or the phenomena within the universal. That's the first rank. And then there's just the inversion of that, the real within the apparent or the universal within phenomena.

[02:00]

The third is emerging within the real, emerging within universal. The fourth has various titles, but the most basic seems to be proceeding within phenomena, proceeding within the apparent. And then the fifth is arriving within together or integration. And, you know, when we chant the Jewel Mir Samadhi, and it says, it is like the six lines of the illumination hexagram, relative and ultimate interact. So there's relative and ultimate or, you know, apparent and real, universal, particular. Piled up, they make three. The complete transformation makes five. So this is usually heard in the tradition as a reference to the five rings. And... Well, just to say a kind of general overview of what they are is usually the first one is kind of understanding or some kind of insight or awakening to emptiness.

[03:08]

Then the second one is often then seeing emptiness in things, manifesting through things or with as things. And then the third is being kind of either... a deeper absorption in emptiness, or if we look at the poem, it's kind of like speaking from emptiness. And then the fourth is starting to kind of engage both at the same time, and then the fifth is a complete integration. So this is just kind of a general overview. In terms of like the background, the kind of the back, oh yeah. What was it? Yeah. How many more do we have? Here's some more display. Everyone have one?

[04:12]

So kind of like, you know, in Indian Buddhism, we have the two truths in Nagarjuna, conventional truth and ultimate truth. And when this teaching comes to China, it had a kind of big impact. But they got involved with questions around the two truths that never came up in India. And the way that Chinese Buddhism worked with the two truths unfolded in really different ways. And so one of the kind of problems they had is You have this kind of conventional truth, which is something like our everyday idea about how things seem to have their own existence. There's me, there's chairs, there's tables, there's rooms, and we're not all happening in relationship. We're actually independent existence. This is just the way things appear through our process of perception and conception.

[05:20]

And then there's this ultimate truth, which is that things happen... completely in relationship. Nothing happens by itself. And this truth is... We can't grasp it. It won't appear in conception. But it can be realized, and realizing it is liberating. And... In China, though, one of the problems they got into fairly quickly is... if we have these two truths, is that just a conventional truth? Or is that, sometimes they say, well, ultimate truth is non-dual, so does that undermine this distinction between the two truths? And so they kind of, they ended up getting into things like, well, there's the two truths, and then there's a third truth to reconcile any kind of duality between these two truths. And then actually one system actually then like,

[06:22]

Well, then you have a new thing to reconcile, so then there's a fourth truth, and it can just go on forever. And they had these kinds of problems. They took non-duality and applied it to the two truths in a way that didn't really happen in India. Another thing is that in Indian Buddhism, they liked, you know, it's very philosophical, and so they would use terms and define their terms, and it's precise. And... and analytic. And there's strong currents in Chinese Buddhism that just weren't interested in this. And these were the kind of currents that would grow into Zen. And so rather than, so they often didn't stick with the terms of conventional truth and ultimate truth, but use things like, you know, dark and light or straight and bent. So these concrete imagery that then also gave you a lot more flexibility, like how does it apply to your life and so on.

[07:23]

So if you actually really get into Two Truths and Nagarjuna and then look at how that unfolds in Tibetan Buddhism, book-length discussions of what exactly is conventional truth compared to our everyday experience and so on, and carefully distinguishing all that. Whereas in Chinese Buddhism, it was more of just like, how does this just relate to our everyday life? That's what we want to know about. And how does that relate in turn with this ultimate truth or with something that's liberating? So actually literally in the five ranks, the terms are, we can see it at the top of the page here, there's the kind of the literal meanings of show are straight, upright, main or central. And then things like ultimate or true or real, complete, universal.

[08:25]

These are more like kind of interpreted extensions. And so on. And then extending it further, emptiness, sameness, true nature, oneness, wisdom, universality. And then other images we see in the Jewel Mir Samadhi and Dungshan are host and then dark. And then likewise for the hen, the other term in this dynamic is... the literally leaning, bent, slant, askew, crooked, minor, and then by extension of the relative, the provisional, eccentric, apparent, partial phenomena, form, the many, differentiation, and so on. Or in terms of other imagery, guest, or light. So I'll touch on the Sandokai. Um... And some of the concerns, you know, for how, you know, Chinese Buddhism's approaching the two truths is that, is kind of in tune with what Sarah was saying last time.

[09:37]

It's something that actually affirms our life. So they weren't interested in a real hierarchical approach of like, there's our everyday life and then there's some liberating transcendent thing up here. And so we get rid of this and get away from this to realize this. But actually that like, You know, right here, it's together. It's just one actual organic situation. And so, you know, you want that, but then also liberation. Like, you don't want to just say, well, you're just stuck with your life, that's it. There's no point in practice. So what's liberating, but also just right in the midst of this suffering life. And another way of looking at this is like, you know, you have these two truths. And so like a non-prioritizing approach and a non-reductive approach. And kind of holding up both truths. And so kind of before Denshan is this Sakito Kisan.

[10:38]

So he's the author of this Sandokai. And so Sandokai, San is like the side of differentiation. Difference, many things... branching streams, the light. And then do is like sameness, identity, unity, the spiritual source, the dark. And then there's this kai. And harmony is one translation, but kind of more literally like to meet, to tally. Or I think Suzuki Roshi says like shaking hands. Or coming to an agreement. And then in the poem, we have images like the front and back foot and walking, or a box and lid fitting, or arrow points meeting. Which for me, all that is kind of more dynamic than harmony. Harmony to me is kind of static, whereas I think actually the idea of meeting and tallying is something like turning, always turning and unfolding.

[11:45]

So Dungshan... wrote this text on the page here. This is basically, you know, he wrote this and then he wrote another kind of five ranks, kind of different set of titles, different set of poems. Most people feel like the two sets of five ranks are kind of distinct. Sometimes people feel like they correlate. And then that's all he wrote. So he didn't really spend a lot of time on the five ranks or that's, you know, it's always preserved. one of his disciples, Saushan, wrote a lot about the Five Ranks. So there's a lot of text about the Five Ranks in his stuff. And then when it came time for later Zen people to start talking about the Zen tradition, they said, well, there's the Soto people, and they talk about the Five Ranks. So that was kind of like a way to kind of get a handle on this lineage. But actually, you know, Saoshan's line didn't last very long.

[12:52]

And one of Dongshan's other disciples, Yungju, that's where we come from. And I actually say, you know, spending time with Saoshan, I don't really love it. I kind of love these poems. I love Dongshan's poems. But I didn't really get turned on by Saoshan. And so, you know, and the five ranks, then they get kind of... could have alternately kind of like held up and and reviled or scorned by this introduction yeah you can find like good chunks of his stuff on the five ranks in in various sources um in this there's in the library in the jolmir samadhi study that i did all those years ago there's like there's pages and pages of saoshang and um I won't get into all the different books now. In China, the Rinzai house got into the Five Ranks.

[14:02]

Some later Soto Zen people got to him. Dogen really hated the idea that Soto Zen is about the Five Ranks. He's usually kind of critical of the Five Ranks, but I actually think if you look at it carefully, he's often just saying, don't say that So Do Zen is the five ranks. This is just one teaching that came up in the tradition, but don't reduce it to that. And sometimes he sort of seems to like them. Sometimes it seems like he's almost talking about the five ranks. He doesn't mention them, but you can see certain passages as unfolding the five ranks. And one quote he said is, don't cling to the five relative positions. The truth of old master Shakyamuni is not small thinking like that, and it does not esteem thinking like that as great.

[15:04]

So, and as far as we know, Dogen like Neberecht really spent a lot of time explicitly unfolding the five ranks. A few generations after him, Dasan Joseki, he's in our lineage, he kind of, he really got into the five ranks. And then kind of Off and on after that, Soto Zen people would really get into him for a while. Hakuen, who kind of really is what ended up becoming the father of a contemporary Japanese Rinzai Zen, he got into the Five Ranks. He wrote a really important commentary that's been translated. It's enjoyable to read because Hakuen is kind of fun. And he included, so then the five ranks and most contemporary Rinzai Zen lineages, they're kind of treated as five koans at the kind of culmination of koan training. Near the end, either the last or second to last or third to last thing is the five ranks.

[16:08]

Some of the things Hakuin says, surely the five ranks is a torch on the midnight road, a ferry boat at the riverside and one has lost one's way. a ship that carries people across the poisonous sea surrounding the rank of the real, the precious wheel that demolishes the impregnable prison house of the two voids. But then he also acknowledges all this kind of problematic part is like, I've never seen anything to equal the perversion of the five ranks, the carping criticism, the torturous explanations, the adding of branch to branch, the piling up of entanglement upon entanglement. So, one of the things with the fibrinx is, you know, if you just look at Dungshan, it's not easy. You know, anyway, it's like 9th century Chinese poetry and some kind of fairly abstract titles.

[17:12]

So then it's kind of tempting. Well, let's look at Saoshan, because he wrote a whole bunch about the five ranks, but then he starts turning them and twisting them and doing all this other stuff. And it's even hard to tell if he's talking about the same thing as Dengshan. And then there's later people, and they keep turning it. And in a way, it's great that they keep turning it. But if you're using the turnings to try and understand this original thing and understand each other, it's a big mess. It just gets very tangled, and it doesn't work. And so that's, I think, you know, and also I think any time you have something like this, like five ranks or five modes, people start looking, well, is this like a system? Is this like a structure? And I can put all sorts of stuff into this structure. And it becomes kind of rigid and becomes kind of like a conceptual thing rather than a kind of practice thing. So... My feeling about the five ranks is I like to just stick with these poems, Dengshan, and I like the kind of feeling of just letting them be kind of fluid and dynamic and just let them flow how they flow and don't get too worried about nailing them down and kind of let them be like koans.

[18:33]

And the koans are something we can live with and they live with us and just see how they unfold with our practice. I also like to think of, you know, kind of like, I don't know, like either children or, you know, that you take care of them and just, you know, let them have their own life and they'll take care of you. There is this mention in the Jumira Samadhi of the illumination hexagram and... there's some feeling that there's like hexagrams associated with the five ranks and there's no definitive take on this and there's like a variety of speculative takes on this and this is one of the nest of complications with the five ranks so i don't really want to get into that too much um um and then also there's just like even within dungshan's records there's like different titles for some of the ranks and they have different implications you know for how you might

[19:41]

approach the five ranks. And then later on, Sao Shan reorders them, other people reorder, retitle. So this is part of how they get complicated. I think one question to kind of have in mind is, how come Dong Shan doesn't say, well, here's why I'm giving you this. It's just like, here you go. So what is this offering? And, you know, five what's, you know, what are they for? Are they, you know, or, you know, five ranks of what, or five modes of what? And, you know, I kind of like taking each one as a koan or each line of poems as a koan. You can kind of work with them that way. And, you know, there's, Hakuin kind of makes them into kind of like, and the way I kind of presented them earlier, there can sound like a sequence, almost like a practice stages, you know?

[20:55]

And so starting with an initial awakening and then, you know, extending that into like, you know, more into everyday life, then going deeper into this absolute, working with both and then integration. So this is just kind of like Hakuin's way of working with them Um, and it kind of does, it's a nice story, you know, and, um, but I think, um, I think we can work with each one as being a kind of, uh, complete in itself and relevant for us. And so I think, you know, like, um, I think they can have a kind of a life, a turning that can work with us wherever we're at. Um, Another thing I want to say is that I think kind of a foundation for looking at these or working with the five ranks is like being in touch basically with our pain or with our suffering or with our grasping, with how suffering is working.

[22:06]

That's kind of like being in touch with that is then the kind of ground for working with these five ranks. And if you feel like getting totally conceptual and out of touch with that, kind of like Touch down and feel the depth of your, you know, the most tender place, you know, the bottom of our grasping. And that that's where these things kind of make sense. Hakuin actually, he says a nice thing. All of you who wish to plumb this deep source must make the investigation intimately with your entire body. And as I was working with these this summer, one of the things I kind of ended up feeling was that, well, stages sound like kind of like places, like fixed static places.

[23:19]

And each poem to me actually felt like it was turning, it was moving, it was unfolding. So that's kind of like, for me, that's how these were coming alive. And so that's kind of like where I'm kind of talking from in bringing these up. All right. And so then I thought I would try to talk about the first and the second today and then three, four and five tomorrow. And so any questions before going on to the first rank comments? Yeah, I was just wondering. How well the five ranks of the bombs are linked historically to a Dongshan figure? Are they very debatable or are they fairly established?

[24:20]

I don't know of any scholar that's really taken up that question specifically. There's certainly a lot of question about the Jewelmere Samadhi, and actually from fairly early on, like in the Sun Dynasty, people were already saying that this wasn't written by Dungshan, this was written 200 years later. I think the Five Ranks seem to have an earlier provenance than the Jewelmere Samadhi. You start seeing layers of comments on them from people in the Tang Dynasty, so I think they have a good shot. But it's a big question about all of Tang Dynasty Zen. There's almost no records from the Tang Dynasty of anybody saying anything. It's all later. So scholars have big questions about, like, you know, so everything's from, like, 100 plus years later. You know. Did these people, do we know these people existed? You know, so it's a question.

[25:21]

Yeah, historically, yeah. out that documentation? There was some disruptions, but it also just seems like, as far as we know, that's when the literature started being formed. Maybe around 950 or so. Most of this stuff started being written down for the first time, and how it was transmitted up to that point, we just don't know. Probably there were some things that were written down and being passed around, and they just didn't get preserved. All right. Okay, so the first one, phenomena within the universal, you could say the apparent within the real, the crooked within the straight. When the third watch begins, before the moon rises,

[26:28]

Don't think it's strange to meet and not recognize the other, yet still somehow recall the elegance of ancient days. These colons are by mistake, so just ignore the colons. Sorry about that. So this first line, when the third watch begins, this is midnight in the Chinese timekeeping system at that time. So this is before the moon rises, so this is total darkness. And so this is like the darkness of Sandokai, the darkness of letting go of knowing, letting go of discriminating thought, or not discriminating. And I think you could think of this as being kind of a spectrum of things, like You could think of it as a deep realization of emptiness, or just a little letting go of knowing.

[27:33]

Just releasing or feeling that grasping and having it release for just a moment. For some people, these are stages. For other people, these are just moments of practice that we'll go through over and over again in different ways. So second line, don't think it's strange to meet and not recognize the other. So there's this meeting without recognition or meeting without knowing or meeting without apprehending or grasping. And so this is sort of like, you know, sometimes we think about this image of darkness and this idea that We're not knowing that there's nothing, then there's nothing. You know, what happens to consciousness?

[28:35]

And, you know, do we stop perceiving at this point? And this is saying there is a meeting. So it's not like a, it's not a going to a blankness. There's actually a meeting happening. And this is saying don't think it's strange, you know, like kind of, you know, just... be open to this kind of possibility that there's another way of being, you know, in the situation of experience. There's a colon in the Book of Serenity, Case 20. Let's see if I can remember it. I think Fayan says to his teacher, did Song. I'm going to go on pilgrimage. And Ditsang says, what's the purpose of pilgrimage? And Fayan says, I don't know. And Ditsang says, not knowing is most intimate.

[29:37]

So this is this kind of like meeting without recognition. It's intimate or most intimate. You know, Sarah talked about, like, there's this, like, top part of the iceberg we can see in this whole bottom part that we don't know, but we can have a complete meeting. It can be complete meeting. Because, you know, we don't know this... Well, basically, you know, the whole iceberg is this complete happening in relationship, the real. And... We don't know that, but we are it. It's how our life happens. It's how we are. It's what we are. So we don't have to become someone else to realize it. And this other... I think this is kind of a funny...

[30:56]

To me, it sounds like Dungshan. Dungshan has this way of talking about intimacy. So, you know, Juhlmer Samadhi, which is, you know, it says, you are not it, it actually is you. I'm not sure what the current translation is. And that's from his Enlightenment poem, which I'll talk about later. So this is part of how he talks about it. This is part of his poetic way of talking about this. And then the last line, yet still somehow recall the elegance of ancient days. So, you know, often in Zen, when they talk about ancient days or anything in the past, it's actually, it's about something deep in the present. So, so this isn't really, um, So he's bringing up a kind of, almost a mood of nostalgia, but it's actually about something deep in the present, and it's a kind of longing.

[32:03]

And so one way of understanding this, or working with this, is like, even in a kind of realization of emptiness, you know, the true natures, our true natures, Seeking, you could say, a deeper actualization, an ongoing actualization. Suzuki Roshi actually, one of his terms for Buddha nature is inmost request. So sometimes we put down seeking in the context of true nature, because our seeking is usually seeking out somewhere, away. But Suzuki Roshi is actually saying that our true nature is a kind of seeking, a kind of request. And that part of what these five ranks are is to kind of appreciate the depth of the request. And so Hakuin, he says about this line, like, my only fear is that a little gain will suffice you.

[33:09]

So you might have this kind of intimacy of not knowing, but not to kind of be satisfied with that or get attached to it or make it into something, try to get back to it. but it's just part of how our practice turns. All right. Does that make sense? So should we go on to second mode? Any comments before we go on? So we have this like, so first mode is like this intimacy of not knowing, you know, could just be a little bit of letting go, could be a deep appreciation of emptiness, but then also this, you know, that our true nature itself, there's a seeking of the true nature that's always looking deeper or broader or, you know, clearer or

[34:25]

Not just me, but with everybody. So the second poem. So again, here we have like this, you know, again, it's kind of interesting that he has these kind of like, you know, kind of abstract titles and then these kind of poems with all this kind of concrete imagery and it's kind of a tension. So the universal within phenomena, the real within the apparent. An old woman oversleeping at daybreak meets the ancient mirror. and clearly sees a face that is no other than her own. Don't wander in your head and validate shadows anymore. So usually this is read as sort of like, you know, this kind of appreciation of phenomena. So there's this darkness way of realizing emptiness, but actually having this vivid appreciation of phenomena as manifesting ultimate truth. And, or you know, sometimes you could point to like this, sometimes we have this story that, you know, this is not in all the accounts.

[35:34]

So I'm not sure when it starts, but anyway, you know, when the Buddha woke up, he saw the morning star in his final awakening. So something, so he's like, there's this morning star and, you know, well, what could be happening there? So, you know, hi. We're happening together. We're not separated. But it's with a phenomena. It's with a phenomenal experience. Awakening with, you know, so it's not like we stop seeing or hearing or tasting, smelling, touching, or even thinking. But then awakening is not any of those things. It's a different way of how we happen with this situation of having an experience. Suzuki Roshi has a few comments on the five ranks here and there. And he said, an old woman means form.

[36:35]

I thought that was interesting. Form or the seeming or the apparent. Aiken says that this old woman, that this particular phrase refers to a kind of muddle-headed person. So we could also look at it as kind of delusion or deluded people or us. And this oversleeping at daybreak meets an ancient mirror, meets the ancient mirror. And so this is like, you know, the mirror, this is the mirror of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi. And that mirror and this mirror kind of connected to Dengshan's awakening. So I thought I'd tell that story. So Dungshan's been studying with his teacher, Yunyan, for quite a while, and he's gonna leave.

[37:40]

And he asks his teacher, if after many years someone should ask if I'm able to portray your likeness, how should I respond? And Yunyan says, just this person. And in that moment, Dengshan was lost in thought. Yunnan said, Acharya, having assumed the burden of this great matter, you must be very cautious. And Dengshan still had doubt. And so he left. He went on his journey. And... Sometime down the way, he was crossing a creek and he looked down in the creek and saw his image reflected and had his big awakening. And then he wrote this poem.

[38:45]

Earnestly avoid seeking without, lest it recede far from you. Today I am walking alone, yet everywhere I meet him. He is now no other than myself, but I am not now him. It must be understood in this way in order to merge with suchness. So this is kind of similar to, I think, the Jomir Samadhi's drawing from this kind of image. And this, yeah, this kind of, I mean, you can see kind of a kind of dynamic anyway of this kind of... unity and differentiation of like, you know, it is you and it's not you. You are, you know, we happen in relationship. We're not separate. We have no independent existence, but we are unique individuals. We have individual integrity that's not obliterated by ultimate truth.

[39:54]

So these are both true. And part of these, I mean, one thing you see with the five ranks, I think, is like, and in Zen, is a kind of comfort with contradiction, which I think in Indian Buddhism, they just were not comfortable with contradiction. Like, they didn't like it. It had to be, they wanted it to be reasonable. And so they usually found a way for it to work out. But then they were somewhat stuck with that reasonable explanation. Whereas I think Zen is more content to just give you some contradiction and actually some things that are contradictory can be true and actually work. And you can have contradictory truths. So, an old woman oversleeping at daybreak meets the ancient mirror and clearly sees a face that is no other than her own.

[41:10]

And so then, don't wander in your head and validate shadows anymore. So this can also be heard as sort of like, so there's validating shadows. So there's this awakening with phenomena, like the Buddha seen the morning star, or it could be with a teaching, or it could be if something did it, And we could have some, you know, awakening and have some... Well, basically, something happens that we can't grasp, and it's powerful or moving, and we will make a graspable idea about it. Somewhat inevitably, you know, It's great if you don't.

[42:31]

And so just to partially like hear this, like, don't, you know, not validating shadows of just being very careful about what our ideas about practice are, what our ideas about what's happening in Zaza and what's happening when we have an opening, what we're doing here. Just being like, what is our idea about it? This is also part of my thinking about, or part of the feeling I feel like about stages. that we, you know, when we see our life as a kind of path, it's kind of a reduction, you know, like so much is happening, you know, and we kind of say like, well, you know, I kind of, that's my path, you know, that's my linear path. And it's sort of like, so much is left out of that kind of image. And so I kind of feel like, you know, We could look at these as being one path, these five blanks, or they could just be five paths.

[43:35]

We can be a lot of paths in a lot of ways. Yeah, so this validating shadows, not getting caught in our insights, not kind of making them into some place to abide. not holding on to them, or not holding on to anything that practice seems to be giving us, anything we enjoy about it. Actually, the way to take care of our practice and the way to keep taking care of awakening is not to grasp it, not to hold on to it. And this is also part of this... For me, this inmost request is like, it's not like kind of a static thing of like, well, this is what I want. And so once you get it, then we're done.

[44:37]

You know, so practice realization for Dogen, like one part of it is, you know, practice is not this thing we do with this instrumental thing of going towards some goal and that we then would stop doing if you've got the goal, like, That's one way of looking at practice and awakening. And for Dogen, it was sort of like, you know, practice realization, practice awakening. And from the beginning, it's the practice of awakening. There can be like a big opening, but then, you know, it doesn't actually change practice. It's still the practice of awakening before and after and during that opening. The practice is not something you're doing to get somewhere. It's basically acting on this inmost request, enacting it, expressing it, bringing it to your life.

[45:37]

All right. We have 15 minutes, I think, or so. So if there's any questions or comments, so I thought we'd save the next three ranks for tomorrow. Recently I lined up some essays in Dogen that And it was kind of like this playful thing. And it was, number one was One White Curl, which begins with the fish jumping into the boat and the fishermen. And then number two was Old Mirror, which felt like, you know, broken into a thousand pieces and 12 monkeys running around with the mirror on the back.

[46:53]

And then the third was moon, the moon. And then the fourth was painted rice cake. And so I find it really easy to do this kind of thing. And then number five. I'm looking for number five. But did you ever come up with your idea? own language that was expressing through your life an understanding of the five ranks that you ever played with in that way as a kind of practice? In a kind of very simple way. Not in kind of trying to correlate it with Dogen so much, but just like Yeah, I mean, I think the first rank I had, I think I had something like, I don't know where I am, but I'm home, something like that.

[48:00]

I can't remember what I had for the second rank. Yeah, I mean, I just, it's very simple, kind of concrete things that, you know, for me resonated. Yeah. [...] And some passages in Dogen, you know, like Mel talks, I think Mel says, like, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. Is that the first rank? And then to study the self is to forget the self. That sounds like the first rank. So maybe to forget the self is the first rank. Actualized by myriad things is the second rank. Dropaway body and mind is the third rank. I don't know what the fourth rank is. Because the fifth rank to me is to be no trace realization remains and no trace continues endlessly. So to me that's all like fifth rank-y. So did you, do you recall the fifth rank?

[49:07]

Do you think you might have actually had a phrase for the fifth rank? Yes, that's the tough one. Well, I think, I mean, you know, the fifth rank is, you know, everything you said today that wasn't about Buddhism, you know. Well, that could, I mean, that's like a way of understanding, I mean, we'll talk more about it, but, you know, we need this kind of, we seem to need this kind of, set up a kind of dichotomy to wake up and kind of have something, some, you know, some way of working with our life that's not just being stuck in our life, but that actually, no trace is like, you're just wholeheartedly your life. That's actually, that's awakening. And I mean, I guess you could say the wholeheartedly is kind of the difference. So we're stuck in our life because we're not totally wholehearted. And being totally wholehearted is this, it's kind of subtle and kind of deep.

[50:11]

And like, so all this stuff is just like, how, what is totally wholehearted? What is, and, and, um, just this person and so this is like kind of philosophically before the five ranks the the there's these philosophical schools in china that had big influence on zen so one was hua yen based on the avantam sakha sutra and yogacharya teachings and they had a teaching of the four dharmadhatus and this is seen as like a key precedent of the five ranks and the the first two dharmadhatus are kind of distinct the dharmadhatu of phenomena the dharmadhatu of the principle, so basically form and emptiness. Then the third is the dharmadhatu of the interpenetration of principle and phenomena, which is basically the first four ranks, and they actually talk about all these different ways that phenomena and principle work. Phenomena height of principle, phenomena express principle, so on. And then the fifth is the dharmadhatu, the dharma realm of the interpenetration of phenomena with phenomena.

[51:18]

And so they don't, there's no mention of principle and a kind of no trace kind of spirit of just like, just how our life is happening, just the stuff, just the apparent actually totally, yeah, it's totally there. Yeah. And, but, you know, we sort of seem to need to set up this other idea to come and work our way to the deepest realization of that. And we can't see. We can't just go straight to the end, it seems like. But that's kind of where, you know, it's kind of circular. I don't know if it's a question, but, you know, when you're reading this material and other consistent material that shows up, I just see child stories in them. I just, like, I hear it, and it won't come forward to me. I think it was, you know, it might be somewhat mystical, I don't know, I think it's because I don't understand why I've said it that much, but it all, to me, it just transfers into these child stories.

[52:25]

It just comes down to the simplest kind of communication to tell a story. And so, you know, when I write during different periods of writing, there was a desire to reach different audiences. So in this type of writing, who was the audience that this would come to? And it wasn't something that was taught at such an early age, you know, the language drew you to this first information dialogue that apparently could do. Grandparent. That's kind of what I feel when I read it. So it's not just in the audience. Well, I think, you know, we don't totally know. My guess, I think the way that the tradition holds the five ranks is, this is for kind of monastic, pretty serious practitioner audience.

[53:38]

That's the way the tradition usually holds it. You know, what Haquan basically sees, like, the first stage is a fairly profound awakening, and then this other stuff is like post-enlightenment training, you know, in his kind of picture. You know, so he has, like, advanced practitioners in mind. But we don't, but we actually don't, for a lot of teachings, you know, we don't necessarily know, like, was it a lay or monastic? But, you know, or, you know, I don't know about children. Why not? And the one that wrote for the elders, but with the monastery there, there was you. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what they... There could be... I mean, I think there would be, you know, a distribution of, you know, experienced people running the place, somewhat like what we have here, but, you know, senior staff, probably much more, I would say, probably at this time, more senior than what you see at Tassajara, like people...

[54:49]

the people running the place being 10-year, 15-year people. Thank you. I'm done. Until tomorrow, okay? Okay, so that leads me to think that this information was so simplistic. It wasn't attributed to the general public, right? It wasn't this first exclusive. We don't know. We don't know. Because this is kind of an interesting thing. Most of Dunshan's records are dialogues, kind of like koans. More like what we traditionally think of a koan. It's just like a student and a teacher. And usually it sounds like monastic students. But this is different. This is like a piece of writing. And so we don't know what it was for. Genjo koan, for instance, was a letter to a layperson. So that was written fairly early in Dogen's life and not primarily addressed to a monastic audience, although then I think he then had his monks read it for his whole life.

[56:15]

I think it's associated with the different trigrams, and the trigrams make the hexagrams, and in the song, the joker slices, and the implementation has to be, I don't know what to do, [...] I don't know what to do. Well, you know, there's like that little bit in the Jomir Samadhi, and that seems to be all that there is, you know, from ancient China. And so then over the years, there's been all these kind of speculative, like, well, what are the So you can find, I think, at least three different accounts of, like, well, there is this trigam or this hexagram or these two yin-yang symbols associated with the different ranks all coming together to become this elimination hexagram, which is fire, fire.

[57:29]

That would be the fifth all-encompassing rank or load. And so I didn't want to get into that partially because they're not definitive, partially because, like, all of them seem to have problems, you know, or don't, or don't, I mean, there's a little, like, you can kind of, like, usually the first one's associated with the wind trigram, which does, and wind has a kind of principle of penetration. And the second one's associated with lake trigram, so lake and reflection, mirror, kind of see that? Then the next two are, like, I think it's, like, Wind Lake and Lake Wind. So two ways of bringing those two together. And then the illumination hexagram is like a double fire. It's sort of like if you kind of combine those, I guess. So how you would derive those, there's like ideas about it, but no definitive account.

[58:35]

And that's one of those kind of nest of complications. People get into this and... but where does it get to you? And Hakuin actually, Hakuin was working with his teacher, basically finished studying the five ranks, but didn't understand this line from Jolnir Samadhi. Really wanted to ask his teacher about it. His teacher was evasive. He asked the Dharma brother, you know, find out. And then his Dharma brother found out, and then he comes to see Hakuin, and he's like, oh, I don't want to talk about it. And then Hakon's like, well, here, have some sake. Come on, let's relax. And then before they even get to the topic, Hakon's like, I got it. And then he's like, you don't need to tell me. And so then that was sort of like, you know, we could look at it as being some kind of like trigrams and hexagrams correlating with the five ranks, or it could just be something more like,

[59:40]

You just get it. Not like a lot of individual... But just like... The transformation makes five. Okay. Illumination. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving.

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