This is one of the most specialized terms in the Caodong (Cáodōng 曹洞) lineage of Chan (Zhán 禪) Buddhism, and it lives inside one of the most elaborate pedagogical maps in the tradition: the **Five Positions of Merit (功勳五位, *gōngxūn wǔ wèi*)**, preserved in the *Rentian Yanmu* (《人天眼目》, T2006) and related texts. If the term feels obscure, that is partly the point — it was never meant to be casual language. It is a precise marker on a map of practice, and what it marks is the moment when your effort is genuinely oriented toward truth but has not yet collapsed into truth. Let me walk through what that means in its own terms, and then through what it can mean in ours.
What this concept is about
The map it lives in
The Five Positions of Merit runs in a five-step sequence:
| # | Position | (Key match, partial/whole) | (Key match, sovereign/minister) | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | 向 (*xiàng*, "pointing") | 正中偏 (zhèng zhōng piān) | 君 (*jūn*, sovereign) | | 2 | 奉 (*fèng*, "serving") | 偏中正 (piān zhōng zhèng) | 臣 (*chén*, minister) | | 3 | 功 (*gōng*, "functioning") | 正中來 (zhèng zhōng lái) | 君視臣 (sovereign regarding minister) | | 4 | 共功 (*gòng gōng*, "co-functioning") | 兼中至 (jiān zhōng zhì) | 臣向君 (minister facing sovereign) | | 5 | 功功 (*gōnggōng*, "functioning-upon-functioning") | 兼中到 (jiān zhōng dào) | 君臣合 (sovereign and minister united) |
The source text opens the whole discussion with a single line that determines everything that follows: "功勳五位者,明參學功位至於非功位也" — *The Five Positions of Merit illuminate how the position of practice-progress reaches the non-position*. So even the name "positions of merit" is ironic; the map is built precisely to show that the position-ness itself dissolves. 共功 sits in the second-to-last place — the threshold right before dissolution.
The Q&A that defines it
The defining exchange recorded in the *Rentian Yanmu* is unusually spare:
Q: "How is 共功?" A: "不得色 (*bù dé sè*)." Verse: "素粉難沈跡,長安不久居" — *Plain powder cannot sink its traces; in Chang'an one cannot dwell for long.*
不得色 — literally, "cannot obtain form/color." The word 得 (*dé*, "obtain/grasp") in Chan usage is the technical term for *realizing* or *taking hold of the matter*; 悟 (awakening) is often glossed as 得. The negation "cannot obtain" therefore points to the impossibility of definitively taking, possessing, or crystallizing anything. 色 (*sè*, rūpa) is not just visible color but the whole domain of form — anything with feature, shape, or definable appearance. The teacher is not making a nihilistic claim that nothing has form. They are pointing out that no form can be definitively grasped, fixed, owned, settled into.
The verse unpacks this in plain images. 素粉 (*sùfěn*) is the cosmetic face powder of the period, used to cover blemishes; even laid on thickly, it cannot "sink" (沈 *shěn*, submerge) the underlying 跡 (*jī*, traces) — the marks of how things actually are. Surface polish, performance, branding does not reach the traces. 長安 (*Cháng'ān*) is the imperial capital — the seat of worldly power, recognition, and entanglement; it is not a place to 久居 (*jiǔjū*, dwell for long). The world of forms and positions cannot become one's permanent residence.
These two images — powder failing to sink traces, Chang'an failing to be a long home — are the classical way of saying: the surface cannot be made into the ground, and the worldly position cannot be made into one's resting place. The trace remains; the capital is real. Neither is somewhere to settle.
Its paired positions, neighbor and parallel systems
The neighbor: 功功. The next position sits right beside 共功, and their Q&A are deliberately paired opposites:
- 共功: 不得色 / *plain powder cannot sink its traces; in Chang'an one cannot stay long* - 功功: 不共 (*bù gòng*, "not shared / incommunicable") / *混然無諱處,此外更何求 — "wholly without place of concealment; beyond this, what further to seek?"*
This pair of negations is essential. 不得色 negates grasping at form. 不共 (the very term that 功功 answers with) negates the shared/common structure itself. At 共功, the practitioner sees through possession — cannot hold onto any form, knows the powder doesn't sink traces, knows Chang'an isn't home — but they still know themselves *as the one who knows this*. The two-sided structure of practitioner-and-what-is-practiced remains. At 功功, that two-sidedness itself dissolves. The two negations are different in kind, not in degree.
The other parallel systems. The *Rentian Yanmu* does not stop at the Five Positions of Merit. It maps them onto two further five-step systems, each giving 共功 its specific character:
- **In the Five Positions of Partial and Whole (偏正五位, *piānzhèng wǔwèi*), 共功 is 兼中至** (*jiān zhōng zhì*, "reaching within the inclusive"). Not yet arrived (到, *dào*), but reaching (至, *zhì*) toward what includes both partial and whole. The practitioner is oriented, in motion, but not yet where motion ends.
- **In the Five Positions of Sovereign and Minister (君臣五位, *jūnchén wǔwèi*), 共功 is 臣向君** (*chén xiàng jūn*, "minister facing the sovereign"). The minister — the dynamic, functioning, serving aspect of practice — is reverently directed at the sovereign — the principle, the absolute, the unsayable ground. But they are not yet merged.
Crucially, the source pairs this with the phrase 各不相觸 (*gè bù xiāng chù*, "each does not touch the other"). The minister and the sovereign are in genuine relation, but they do not coincide. The practitioner is oriented toward truth without being identical with truth. 共功 is the position of authentic orientation that does not collapse into identity with its object.
A textual complication the source itself flags
The *Rentian Yanmu* honestly records that the names of these positions have suffered textual corruption. In a passage attributed to 寂音 (Jìyīn, the historian-monk), the text notes that 五位 names have been transmitted out of order, and specifically that 偏中至 was altered to 兼中至 in some recensions, producing confusion.
The text also records two different equations for 臣向君: in one place matching it with 兼中至 (which is what I have used above); in another matching 臣向君 with 偏中正, giving the answer "不墮諸異趣,凝情望聖容" ("not falling into other paths, focused-feeling gazing toward the sage's face"), while reserving 兼帶語 ("inclusive, carrying-through") for 君臣道合 (sovereign and minister united), with the answer "混然無內外,和融上下平" ("blended without inside and outside, fused, above and below level").
These discrepancies are not bugs to be smoothed over; they are part of the source. When the concept is invoked, the actual pairings the *Rentian Yanmu* uses — 共功 / 兼中至 / 臣向君 with the qualifier "各不相觸" — must be preserved. Conflating 共功 with adjacent positions is exactly the kind of error the source warns against.
A walk-through in everyday life
Mapping a technical Chan position onto contemporary life only works if the mapping honors every classical component. Let's take it piece by piece, then watch how it sounds in real scenarios.
The classical components to keep intact are:
1. 不得色 — no form can be definitively obtained, possessed, fixed. 2. 素粉難沈跡 — surface polish does not reach or erase the underlying traces. 3. 長安不久居 — the worldly seat of recognition/entanglement cannot be one's permanent dwelling. 4. 臣向君,各不相觸 — practice is genuinely oriented toward truth, but they do not coincide. 5. 不得色 vs. 不共 — the negation is of grasping, not of the structure itself; that structure (and its final dissolution) is 功功's territory.
Now, concrete scenes where this precision matters:
Scene 1: The mid-career practitioner of long inner work
Imagine someone ten or fifteen years into serious therapy, meditation, or a recovery program. They have done real work. They no longer perform. They see through the cosmetic packaging — the polished LinkedIn self, the curated public version — that they and others used to mistake for ground. They know 素粉難沈跡: surface cover-up doesn't reach traces. They know 長安不久居: the seat of professional achievement cannot be a long home, because they have already had to leave it once or twice (burnout, restructuring, the next phase of life).
Yet they still identify as a practitioner. The form of "someone who has done the work" has a particular shape in their life — and they know it is a form that cannot be definitively obtained. The recovery isn't possessed as a permanent attribute, the meditation isn't a state they own, the therapy isn't a self they have arrived at. The structure of practitioner-and-practiced remains. 臣向君, each not touching the other.
If you collapsed this into a casual term, it would be "non-attachment." But 共功 is more specific: non-attachment *with the structure of attachment still visible* — that is, the practitioner has not yet stopped being identifiable as a practitioner, even though they have already seen through the content of that identity. 共功 names exactly the position of "I no longer grasp at the form, but the orientation — minister facing sovereign — is still there."
Scene 2: The parent who has done their own emotional work
A parent who has spent years unlearning inherited patterns. They no longer project. They see through the packaging of role-playing that parenting often becomes. The 素粉 — the "good-parent" persona, the school-play version of the family — doesn't sink the traces of what is actually happening with their actual child.
But they remain a parent. That relationship has form. They are still *the parent of these particular children*, and that is a shape with feature and trace. It cannot be definitively obtained (the child is not possessed, the role is not a settled identity), but it is also not nothing. They are 臣向君: oriented toward something larger (the child's own becoming, the unconditional that is not them), but distinguishable from it.
The common misreading would be: "They must move past this and become something else." No — the *Rentian Yanmu* is precise. 共功 is one step before 共功's neighbor 功功, which dissolves the two-sided structure entirely. Until then, the structure remains, oriented but not merged. The parent's task is not to transcend parenthood but to inhabit it as someone who has seen through possession.
Scene 3: The activist, artist, or builder past the naive phase
A founder, artist, or activist who has been around long enough to know their work is not them. They have learned that 粉末 (cosmetic polish) cannot sink traces — their wins don't erase their unfinished business; their results don't cover the deeper dynamics at play. They know Chang'an isn't forever home — neither acclaim nor failure can be their permanent address.
And they keep working. They don't quit. They don't perform transcendence. They are 臣向君, the minister facing the sovereign — function oriented toward the ungraspable, but not claiming to have merged with it. The function is real; the orientation is real; the 各不相觸 is real.
The most common mis-mappings to flag
Contemporary readers, when they first meet the character 共, almost always translate it as "shared" or "communal/together." This is the most natural misreading, and it's the one the source itself is structured to prevent. In everyday Chinese, 共 means "shared, together, in common." But the technical meaning here is determined by 功功's opposite: 不共 ("incommunicable," "not shared"). 共功 is the precision term for the structure of orientation *before* the structure dissolves. It is not "doing things together" — it is the precise posture of practice that is oriented toward but not merged with its object. Treating it as a call to communal practice or collaborative action misses the technical point entirely.
The second common misreading is to take 不得色 as nihilism — "there is no form." That is not what the source says. Form exists; the powder exists; Chang'an is real. The trace remains. What doesn't obtain is *definitive grasp*. Reading the negation as ontological collapse ("no form exists") rather than as practical realization ("no form can be definitively held") flips the doctrine and leads either to quietism or to the mistake of thinking 共功 is a stage of having nothing left to do.
The third misreading is to treat 共功 as a stage one should aim to remain in or graduate from. The source explicitly says "功位至於非功位" — the whole map aims at non-position. 共功 is a precise marker on a pedagogical diagram, not a developmental waystation to be lingered in. The image is of a steady going-toward that eventually loses even its "going" character.
Why contemporaries might actually need this
Several features of contemporary culture make this otherwise highly technical term surprisingly relevant.
The cult of measurable progress. We live inside a culture that has, for some decades now, treated every human process as if it were a fitness graph. Personal growth is a KPI. Healing is quantified. Awakening is something you "complete." The Five Positions of Merit was already a response to this temptation in the Chan world, where the same danger existed a thousand years ago — and the source explicitly answers it by naming the final destination as 非功位, the *non-position*. You don't arrive at a place called "fully realized." The map aims at the un-mapping. In a culture still selling "higher states" and "leveling up," 共功 names something useful: the very position of sincere practice that no longer mistakes itself for the destination.
The achievement paradox of long-term practitioners. Anyone who has done serious practice — meditation, therapy, recovery, spiritual study, creative discipline — for years knows the strange late-stage discomfort of not knowing what they are anymore but also not having stopped doing the practice. Am I "advanced"? Am I "done"? Should I move on? 共功 has a name for exactly that discomfort, and a diagnosis for it: you are at the second-to-last position, function is genuinely oriented toward truth, but the two have not merged. Neither quitting the practice nor claiming attainment is the response. Continuing-without-grasping is. The tradition named this explicitly, and it is not unusual to find oneself there.
The contemporary distrust of "spirituality." Many people today rightly distrust the performance of "I am enlightened," and they are skeptical of any tradition that promises a destination. But they often swing to the opposite extreme: a flat pragmatism that refuses to look at all. 共功 is the precise refusal of both errors. The powder doesn't sink traces — performance doesn't reach what's real. But the practice, oriented toward the sovereign, has not stopped. The position is neither credulous nor cynical. It is the actual structure of sustained, dignified, non-possessive work.
The "two-sided but not merged" structure is everywhere now. Contemporary life is full of relationships and commitments in which people have done real work and can see through their forms — marriage, parenthood, citizenship, faith community, professional identity — without having dissolved those forms. 共功 is the classical name for that exact situation: 臣向君,各不相觸. The minister faces the sovereign, the function orients toward the principle, and they do not coincide. This is not a failure state. It is a precise, dignified position. Naming it helps people stop trying to either transcendence-collapse or bitter-resignation, neither of which fits.
Common misreadings and clarifications
To close, let me lay out the principal ways this concept gets distorted, with the corrections that follow from the source itself.
1. Reading 共功 as "shared/communal effort." The most natural modern misreading. In this technical context, 共 is meaningful only in opposition to 功功's 不共. It does not mean "together." It means "the structure of orientation before the structure dissolves." Conflating it with collaborative practice or group effort misses the precise posture that the term is meant to mark.
2. Reading 不得色 as nihilism. The negation is *practical*, not *ontological*. The source does not say form doesn't exist. It says no form can be definitively grasped. 素粉 doesn't sink traces — not because there are no traces, but because sinking them is not what powder does. Chang'an can't be a long home — not because Chang'an isn't real, but because long-term residence there isn't possible. The negation is of *possession*, not of *being*.
3. Confusing 共功 with 功功. They sit side by side and their answers are deliberately paired: 不得色 vs. 不共; "the powder cannot sink traces" vs. "no more place of concealment." 共功 still preserves the structure (practitioner and what is practiced); 功功 is that structure dissolving. They are not interchangeable. If you've got the powder-can't-sink-traces insight but still know yourself as the one who has it, that's 共功. If the structure has dissolved, that's a different position entirely and the source uses a different term for it.
4. Treating 共功 as a stage to aspire to indefinitely. The source text says the whole map aims at 非功位 — the non-position. 共功 is the second-to-last position on a map that explicitly aims at ending the mapping. Lingering in any "position" is itself the kind of attachment the system was built to dissolve. The image is more like: keep practicing in such a way that eventually even your sense of practicing-as-orientation loses its shape.
5. Smoothing over the textual variants. The *Rentian Yanmu* records two different equations for 臣向君 (in one place matching with 兼中至, in another with 偏中正), and acknowledges that 偏中至 was altered to 兼中至. When invoking the concept, the actual pairings the source uses — 共功 / 兼中至 / 臣向君 with "各不相觸" — should be preserved. Picking whichever equation suits a current argument obscures what the source actually says.
6. Reading 素粉難沈跡 as "ordinary life is illusory." The verse is not saying ordinary life is fake. It's saying surface polish is not ground. That is a specifically practical, not metaphysical, observation. Cosmetics don't transform what is underneath; worldly position doesn't become home. This leaves the trace-real and Chang'an-real; it only denies them the status of being-ground.
If a single image is to be carried away from this, it might be the one the *Rentian Yanmu* itself places at the center of 共功: the practice that no longer grasps at its own form, but has not yet become indistinguishable from what it practices. That is the precise middle of the journey — minister genuinely facing sovereign, powder genuinely failing to sink traces, Chang'an genuinely impossible as long home — and the tradition built an entire pedagogical map to make sure the position could be named accurately rather than glossed over. That precision is the offer 共功 makes to contemporary readers who can recognize themselves in it.