The Five Ranks of Zen

A comprehensive and accessible guide to the Five Ranks, pinnacle teachings of Zen Buddhism on the path to true freedom.

The Chinese Buddhist master Tungshan, known in Japanese as Zen Master Tozan, created the teaching of the Five Ranks, which is honored and studied in both Soto and Rinzai schools of Zen and is a gem of the classical Zen tradition. The ranks—pithy, provocative titles followed by Tozan’s brief poetic commentaries—serve as guides to a radical exploration of the experience of relative and absolute reality, the interpenetrating “Two Truths” of Mahayana Buddhism.  

In The Five Ranks of Zen, American Zen teacher Shishin Wick offers an accessible entrypoint to each of the ranks, which Tozan created in two formulations: the first and better-known is the Five Ranks of the Relative and the Absolute; while the second set, called the Sequence of Merit, is an abbreviated form of the Ten Oxherding Pictures, a traditional formulation of the Zen spiritual journey. Wick presents multiple translations and offers commentary on the ranks’ titles and on Tozan’s renowned verses, as well as offering guidance on these teachings’ application in contemporary Zen practice.