What this concept is saying
修證階級 (*xiūzhèng jiējí*, “ranks or stages of cultivation and realization”) ordinarily means an ordered series of spiritual attainments: one practices, realizes, and advances from a lower position to a higher one. Yet in the passages gathered in the *Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp* (《景德傳燈錄》), the expression is used in almost the opposite way. The text does not supply a ladder of named attainments. Again and again, it asks what happens when the mind turns awakening itself into a ladder, assigns itself a place upon it, and tries to climb above others.
The target is therefore not disciplined practice. It is the reification of attainment: treating realization as a possession, a social identity, or a measurable station occupied by a separate “me.” The Record attacks several forms of this attachment, each from a different angle.
1. “Not falling into ranks”: even the sacred cannot become an identity
When Qingyuan Xingsi (青原行思) met the Sixth Patriarch, he asked:
“What should I undertake so as not to fall into ranks?”
He then said, “I do not even undertake the holy truth” (聖諦亦不為). When asked what rank he had fallen into, he answered:
“If I do not even undertake the holy truth, what rank could there be?”
—*Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp* (《景德傳燈錄》)
“Holy truth” (聖諦) here must not be reduced to “having no moral values,” nor should “not undertaking it” be mistaken for rejecting the Dharma. The point of the exchange is that even “the sacred” can become something fabricated and occupied: *I am doing the holy thing; I am now a holy person; I have reached the holy level.* Xingsi refuses to establish such a position. If no sacred identity is being manufactured, there is no spiritual shelf upon which the self can be placed.
This is a particularly sharp Zen diagnosis. Ordinary attachment says, “I want pleasure, success, or recognition.” Refined spiritual attachment says, “I want purity, awakening, and recognition as one who has awakened.” The object has become nobler, but the structure of appropriation—“this attainment is mine”—may remain intact.
2. “Who discusses high and low?”: realization is not comparative status
In the exchange associated with Licun Ziman (酈村自滿), a monk evokes a fish attempting to rise through the blue heavens but remaining obstructed by levels. The master replies:
“If it has the form of a dragon, who discusses high and low?”
—*Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp* (《景德傳燈錄》)
The image does not mean that a dragon has won the spiritual competition by reaching the highest level. That reading would preserve the very hierarchy being dissolved. The contrast is between the fish still measured by successive heights and the dragon for whom “high versus low” is no longer the governing question.
So freedom from ranks is also freedom from comparative measurement. Once realization is interpreted primarily through “ahead” and “behind,” practice easily becomes another prestige economy. One person’s concentration, insight, eloquence, lineage, retreat history, or apparent serenity becomes a unit of comparison. The Record does not respond by announcing an even higher rank beyond comparison. It questions the measuring mind itself.
3. “Still first grade or second grade”: a dramatic attainment can remain measurable
A monk asks Jingshan Hongyin (徑山洪諲) about someone who passes through the Dragon Gate without relying on wind or thunder. The Dragon Gate image suggests a remarkable transformation or breakthrough. Hongyin answers:
“It is still first grade or second grade.”
When the monk recognizes that this still belongs to ranks and asks about the “matter beyond” (向上事), Hongyin replies:
“I do not know of your Dragon Gate.”
—*Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp* (《景德傳燈錄》)
The passage is not merely dismissing a lesser attainment in favor of a superior one. Its movement is more radical. First, even an impressive passage through the Dragon Gate is exposed as “first grade or second grade” so long as it remains nameable and measurable. Then, when the monk tries to establish an ultimate achievement above all achievements, the master declines even the premise—“your Dragon Gate.”
This matters because the desire for “the matter beyond” can secretly reproduce the ladder. The mind hears that ordinary attainments are limited and immediately imagines an unlimited attainment at the top. It converts the teaching that dismantles rankings into the highest possible ranking. Hongyin does not cooperate with that move.
4. “It had no ranks from the beginning”: ranks cannot be arranged into ultimate reality
When Ruiyan Shiyan (瑞巖師彥) is asked how discussion might avoid falling into ranks, he says:
“It cannot be arranged.”
Asked why, he answers:
“It had no ranks from the beginning.”
Asked what position it occupies, he replies:
“It does not sit in the Hall of Universal Light.”
—*Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp* (《景德傳燈錄》)
The crucial expression is “from the beginning there were no ranks” (從前無階級). Ranks are not hidden metaphysical objects awaiting correct classification. They are arrangements made for purposes of description, instruction, recognition, or comparison. One cannot discover the ultimate rank of that which was never constituted as a ranked object.
The refusal to “sit” in a fixed place also prevents awakening from becoming a spiritual throne. The awakened person is not presented as an ego installed permanently in a celestial seat. The later response, “Its name is weighty throughout the three realms; where would people not turn toward the court?”, places unrestricted efficacy beside the refusal of fixed position: not occupying a rank does not imply inert emptiness or withdrawal from the world.
Taken together, the four exchanges dismantle four related constructions:
- Qingyuan Xingsi dismantles identification with sacred achievement. - Licun Ziman dismantles comparison by high and low. - Jingshan Hongyin dismantles measurable breakthrough and the fantasy of a final super-rank. - Ruiyan Shiyan dismantles the idea that awakening occupies an intrinsically existing position.
This places 修證階級 within the path of liberation in a precise way. Ethical discipline, meditation, instruction, correction, and maturation all operate in time. A beginner and an experienced practitioner do not necessarily have the same capacities. Conventional distinctions can therefore be useful. But liberation cannot be reduced to a better-conditioned self collecting spiritual credentials. The teachings are medicine; practice is the taking of the medicine; awakening is not a trophy awarded to the patient.
The Record is addressing attachment at a subtle stage of the path. First one relinquishes attachment to coarse objects. Then one may become attached to calm, insight, purity, correct understanding, or the status of being unattached. “No ranks” is medicine for this refined appropriation. It is not permission to abandon the medicine that brought the illness into view.
A walkthrough in everyday life
Imagine a contemporary commuter who has begun meditating seriously. On the train, she opens an app that records consecutive practice days. She has completed several retreats, reads Zen literature, and has recently experienced an unusually quiet sitting. During the commute, she sees an acquaintance post about attending a first retreat.
The movement through “ranks” can be watched almost frame by frame.
First, a useful distinction appears: she has practiced longer than the acquaintance and may have more familiarity with posture, attention, and emotional turbulence. This is a conventional difference in training. Denying it would be artificial. A person who has practiced first aid for years generally has skills a beginner lacks; acknowledging that does not establish an absolute hierarchy of human worth.
Then appropriation begins: “I am an advanced practitioner.” A changing history of training becomes a fixed identity. This is the point illuminated by Qingyuan Xingsi. The mistake is not that she meditated, learned, or matured. It is that “the sacred” has become something she performs in order to construct and occupy a sacred self.
Next comes comparison: “My practice is deeper than theirs.” She scans the post for signs of naïveté and enjoys detecting them. This maps to the fish caught in “high and low.” The mistake would be to interpret the dragon image as, “I am the dragon; that person is merely a fish.” The reply “Who discusses high and low?” undercuts precisely that self-congratulation.
Then memory supplies evidence. She recalls the profound quiet of her recent retreat: ordinary self-consciousness briefly disappeared, perception seemed open, and time felt absent. She concludes, “That must have been a breakthrough.” This is the Dragon Gate moment. The experience may have been significant; the Record does not require us to deny that something happened. But once it is classified as a possession proving her rank, it becomes “first grade or second grade”—something entered into the mind’s spiritual résumé.
She catches the problem and makes a subtler move: “Fine. Real awakening must be beyond every experience and every stage. I will attain *that*.” Now “beyond ranks” has become the highest rank. This is why Hongyin refuses “your Dragon Gate.” The imagined summit still depends on the climber, the climb, and the prestige of arrival.
Finally she tries to settle the issue intellectually: “So where exactly is the state of no-rank? Is it pure awareness? Nonduality? A permanent background consciousness?” This corresponds to asking what position it occupies. Ruiyan’s “It cannot be arranged” blocks the attempt to place no-rank inside a conceptual chart. “No ranks” is not a special mental state sitting above thought, emotion, and ordinary life.
The train arrives. Someone pushes past her; irritation rises. Here the teaching becomes practical. Can irritation be known without adding, “An advanced practitioner should not feel this”? Can she apologize if she snaps, without defending a spiritual self-image? Can she make room for another passenger without thinking that kindness proves her attainment? Practice continues—perhaps more honestly—when it no longer has to certify a rank.
The same structure appears in intimate relationships. During an argument, one partner says, “I have done years of therapy and meditation; you are still reactive.” Real differences in emotional skill may exist, and harmful conduct should not be excused. But a useful observation has been converted into high and low. Spiritual language now protects one partner from hearing criticism. “No ranks” does not mean pretending both people behaved equally well. It means not turning clarity about conduct into an absolute identity: the enlightened one versus the unawakened one.
It appears in parenting too. A parent notices anger arising and thinks, “After all this practice, I should be beyond anger.” Shame then joins anger because the parent’s supposed position has been threatened. Seeing “no fixed rank” allows a more responsible response: stop the harmful behavior, regulate the body, repair with the child, investigate the conditions of anger, and continue training. No spiritual throne needs defending. Far from weakening accountability, relinquishing rank can make accountability easier because failure no longer has to be hidden.
And it appears in algorithmic life. Platforms turn almost everything into visible metrics—followers, streaks, levels, ratings, engagement. Meditation platforms can do the same with minutes sat and courses completed. Such metrics may support consistency, just as a map may support travel. But an algorithm can count sessions; it cannot establish liberation. Nor does the absence of metrics establish liberation. Deleting the app can itself become a superior identity: “Unlike beginners, I am beyond counting.” The measuring mind survives the discarded measurement.
Why contemporary people need it
Contemporary culture is unusually skilled at converting processes into profiles. Work becomes a title, learning becomes a certificate, exercise becomes a dashboard, and personal life becomes a public narrative. Spirituality is easily absorbed into the same machinery: awakening becomes personal optimization, teachers become brands, and practice becomes evidence that one belongs to a more conscious class of people.
The teaching on 修證階級 exposes the suffering inside that machinery. If practice is a rank, every difficult emotion threatens demotion. Another person’s insight becomes competition. Praise feeds the identity; criticism endangers it. The practitioner may become less teachable precisely because being “advanced” has become too important.
“No ranks” restores practice to immediacy. The relevant question is no longer primarily “Where am I on the ladder?” but “What is being grasped now? What is being avoided now? Is this response increasing greed, aversion, and delusion, or loosening them?” These questions do not produce a glamorous identity, but they return cultivation to its liberative function.
The teaching also protects against despair. Someone may assume, “I am only a beginner, so genuine freedom is far away and present conduct hardly matters.” Yet if awakening is not an object located on a distant spiritual floor, this very act of seeing grasping as grasping is not meaningless. One still trains patiently, but the path is no longer merely a waiting room for a future self.
There is an important tension here. Buddhism contains many conventional descriptions of paths, fruits, grounds, and progressive cultivation. The Lamp passages should not be inflated into a claim that all Buddhist accounts of stages are false, or that learning and maturation do not occur. Their concern is the attachment that takes a pedagogical distinction as an ultimately existing hierarchy.
A map can say that one landmark comes before another. Trouble begins when the traveler tries to live inside the legend printed in the corner of the map. In the same way, stages can orient practice, reveal missing foundations, and prevent premature claims. They become fetters when they support self-exaltation, self-contempt, or fixation on attainment.
“No ranks” therefore belongs neither to complacency nor to nihilism. It is the wisdom that keeps cultivation from solidifying around a cultivator. One practices wholeheartedly while seeing that “my attainment” is not an independent substance. One accepts instruction without turning the teacher into the owner of a higher species of being. One recognizes growth without manufacturing a permanent achiever behind it.
Common misreadings and clarifications
“No ranks means there is no need to practice.”
This confuses the emptiness of fixed spiritual status with the absence of causes and consequences. Habits are conditioned; attention can be trained; cruelty and kindness have different effects. The Record’s masters are not offering indifference as awakening. Their exchanges themselves belong to a disciplined tradition of questioning, testing, and practice. What they refuse is the conversion of that discipline into a possessable rank.
“Everyone is already equally enlightened, so conduct does not matter.”
The cited passages do not say that every person’s understanding, freedom, or conduct is functionally identical. “Who discusses high and low?” removes comparative fixation; it does not erase the distinction between harming and helping, delusion and clarity, honesty and self-deception. Invoking ultimate equality to evade responsibility is another form of attachment—this time attachment to an idea of emptiness.
“No ranks is itself the highest rank.”
This is exactly the trap dramatized by the question about the “matter beyond.” The mind abandons ordinary levels only to crown itself with transcendence. Hongyin’s “I do not know of your Dragon Gate” refuses to turn the destruction of the ladder into a penthouse.
“Not undertaking the holy truth” means rejecting Buddhist truth or morality.”
In this exchange, 聖諦亦不為 functions to prevent the sacred from becoming a manufactured position. It cannot responsibly be generalized into “truth is irrelevant” or “anything goes.” If anything, relinquishing the identity of holiness makes ethical scrutiny more exact: one can no longer excuse harm by appealing to one’s supposed attainment.
“Ranks are completely useless.”
The passages say that the matter at stake cannot be ultimately arranged into high and low. They do not require us to discard every conventional distinction. Teachers may adjust instruction to a student’s capacity; communities must distinguish trustworthy conduct from abuse; practitioners need to recognize when foundations are missing. Such distinctions are tools, not essences. Their validity depends on their purpose and consequences.
“A powerful meditative experience proves awakening.”
The Dragon Gate exchange warns against precisely this conclusion. An experience can be vivid, transformative, and worthy of careful integration without becoming proof of an abiding spiritual status. Experiences arise under conditions and are remembered through interpretation. Neither celebrating nor dismissing them automatically constitutes wisdom.
“Modern psychology or neuroscience has proved this teaching.”
Contemporary research can illuminate how identity is constructed, how comparison affects emotion, or how repeated practice changes attention and behavior. Such findings may provide useful analogies. They do not establish the soteriological meaning of “no ranks,” and scientific accounts of consciousness remain contested and incomplete. A neural description and a Zen challenge answer different kinds of questions; resemblance is not identity, much less proof.
“If I stop comparing myself, I have understood no-rank.”
Comparison may simply become subtler: “I am less competitive than other practitioners.” The teaching asks us to notice not only the content of the ranking but the impulse to secure a self through ranking. That impulse cannot be defeated by awarding oneself a better score for having seen it.
The heart of 修證階級 in these Lamp passages is thus not a doctrine that nothing develops. It is a refusal to make liberation into an object possessed by someone standing above someone else. Training unfolds; capacities mature; mistakes are corrected. But when awakening is appropriated as “my place,” the path has quietly been rebuilt as another world of acquisition.
The masters’ answers keep removing the proposed resting place: no sacred identity to manufacture, no high or low by which to measure, no Dragon Gate to certify arrival, no final seat in which awakening can be installed. What remains is not passivity. It is practice released from the burden of becoming somebody through practice—responsive everywhere, yet nowhere enthroned.