The Five Ranks attributed to Dongshan Liangjie set out five short verses pairing two terms Chan commentary translates roughly as the apparent, or conventional, and the real, or absolute: the apparent within the real, the real within the apparent, coming from within the real, arriving within both together, and unity attained. Read in sequence they trace a movement rather than a static classification, from ordinary perception, through recognizing the absolute nature underlying it, through the discovery that the absolute itself is only ever encountered inside ordinary particulars, and on to a state in which the distinction stops being useful at all. Later Caodong and, in Japan, Soto teachers used the scheme as a diagnostic tool for a student's stage of practice as much as a philosophical statement, checking which rank a given understanding still belonged to rather than treating enlightenment as a single undifferentiated event. The teaching is often read alongside the story of Dongshan's own awakening on seeing his reflection while crossing a stream, since both make the same point in different registers: what is sought is not separate from the ordinary image already in front of the practitioner, only unrecognized as such.