When the third watch begins, before the moon rises,
don't think it strange to meet and not recognize the other,
yet still somehow recall the elegance of ancient days.[1]
Like so many of the best spiritual texts of the many world’s religions, we don’t really know who wrote the poems that we call the Five Ranks. They’re generally attributed to the 9th century Chinese monk Dongshan Liangjie. Dongshan is an important figure in Chan’s formation. He’s counted as the founder of the Caodong school, which Dogen brought back to Japan as Soto Zen.
The earliest attestation of the poem is in the 12th century, three centuries after Dongshan. And actually, there its attributed to Dongshan’s teacher, Yunyan Tansheng. Perhaps the majority of contemporary scholars today doubt that either monk wrote it.
The poems are considered the great summation of wisdom in the Zen schools. It’s investigated as koan at the end of formal koan introspection practice. In the Rinzai school literally at the end of the formal curriculum. In our school just before taking up the precepts as koan.
Me, I think of these poems as a gift from the universe itself. A word of God, if you will. If God is a word for the great empty and the flowing of wonder as this phenomenal universe.
With all that, back to the first of the poems. In Robert Aitken’s translation.
When the third watch begins, before the moon rises,
don't think it strange to meet and not recognize the other,
yet still somehow recall the elegance of ancient days.
In Ross Bolleter & Wong Yih-Jiun’s version.
At the beginning of the third watch, before moonrise,
Don’t be surprised if there is meeting without recognition;
One still vaguely harbors the elegance of former days.
And in John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland’s version.
It’s past midnight
The moon has not yet risen.
In the deep thick dark you see but don’t recognize
A familiar face from long ago
No need to be surprised by that.
All the five verses are expressions of the two elements of our deepest understanding of our existence, and with that of our minds, and hearts; form and emptiness. This first verse points to a liminal space. It includes our intimations of the great empty, the collapsing of our ideas. But it also has something of the specific, the particular, the phenomenal, all the constellation of words we gather under the general rubric of “form.”
I’m much taken with the varieties of expressing our noticing the intimacy between our tumble into the great open and this world right here. “Somehow recall” and “vaguely harbor” becomes in a freer version “no need to be surprised.”
It’s like the moon reflected in water.
Here we’re offered a sense of the nondual. It’s awakening. But.
We’re also given a very important reminder. Even as we experience the collapsing of our ideas of self and other, at the same time the phenomenal world, that is self and other continues to present. Although in a different way, now more in that “somehow recall,” that “vaguely harbor” sort of way.
This is important. After all our hard practice, after the great quest to break out of our false sense of self, of the world. Once we have let go, surrendered, and bowed. There is that moment, that turning when we’ve seen through the stories.
It turns out this was not the apex, the great summit. We immediately see there are peaks behind it.
We find we are called to not rest in the empty. But rather to realize how it has a phenomenal expression. The nondual is not empty. Well, it is. But it’s also form. Which is itself also empty. Not two.
Not one. Not zero, either. Not two.
Now this is important. These rather abstract terms are pointing to something visceral and intimate in our actual lived lives. Yours and mine. This is the source of our deep joy.
Please forgive my underscoring this. What we discover in this encounter is that glimpsing the absolute, the vast empty, is not the end of our path. It is simply a step, a critical and necessary step, something magical of the first water. But also, it’s a step toward a great and mysterious integration.
What we’re offered here is a way of finding our awakening as our everyday life. Here we move beyond the dualism of emptiness and form. Here we move into the shape of mystery.
Mystery has become a very important word for me. Our English word roots through a winding path to the Greek mustērion, speaking of initiation and silence. The silence literally is closing our mouths and eyes. It speaks of something known for oneself. And it’s a slippery thing. When we believe we’ve pinned it down, it, well, slips away. Think greased pig. Think half recalled dream.
Some people consider the five ranks stages or steps. And it’s reasonable, if not completely correct, to say that this is the first step of wisdom. As we meet this poem as our actual experience, a tension rises in our bodies as if there is a disconnect between the empty and the phenomenal.
But it’s resolved as we accept the invitation of seeing vast emptiness and meeting the issues of this moment. So, a very important moment for us, you and me, on our way into the deep matters of the intimate way.
And what do we find there? Actually, the vast and the particular playing together. At play in the fields of the Lord. Interweaving and interpenetrating.
Here we may catch the pointer within that lovely image of the moon reflected in water. And how the two, the empty and the specific are inseparable. Like steps in a dance. Here we find the harmonies of our lives. The expression of that deep joy.
This opens a way of integration as the next steps, stages, or, as Aitken Roshi tends to prefer calling them, modes. The next poems. Steps may not ultimately be there. Howevere, we encounter each with new eyes. And are invited to follow in different directions, or angles. Or, you know, modes.
We find both the good news and the harsh caution that we’re not separate from our lives and the consequences of our choices and actions.
The intimate way is a spiral into depth. Our journey in this spiritual path is constantly and ever more deeply discovering how the relative world persists even as we see through the delusions of essences. Instead, we find and can experience fully something new and precious – found even in its passingness, found perhaps, just because of its passingness. Our passingness. The world’s passingness.
From the beginning it seems commentators on the poem have seen connections to the ancient oracle, the I Ching. For this poem the associated hexagram is number 57, Xun, the Gentle. I’ve found it enormously helpful as I attempt to unpack this moment of grace which is our encounter within the first mode.
Here we find images of gentle penetration, of flexibility, and how our shades of understanding, and of being, gradually shift. Those steps again. We see a soft but persistent invitation into something precious. It is learning to flow with the shifts and currents of reality. Again, it’s like a dance. The world and our realization as dance.
Within this insight, noticing, encountering, we find how we can adapt to each situation as it arises. Because now we see deeply and authentically into the emptiness of all things. And with that we learn how to live. It’s something like the wind, which plays and flows and penetrates through the world, but does not confront, and cannot be confined.
Here we find the Tao of all things.
Here in this place, we continue to notice hidden depths. This all reveals a gentle but persistent power of the emerging world as our deepest truth, yours and mine. It arises as we understand ever more deeply how emptiness and phenomena are not two.
Again, it’s like the wind.
And this is the way revealed in this poem and its hexagram. The first mode.
It reveals the persistence of realization; quiet, even serene, carrying and holding the world.
That wind reaches everywhere, even into the most secret, hidden places. And it subtly changes everything. It is the peace that passes all understanding, bringing all things into harmony.
The expression of our lives on this intimate way.
image is William Blake’s Oberon, Titania and Puck wiht Fairies Dancing, circa 1785
[1] Translation by Robert Aitken