''Zazen gi'' (), also known in various English translations such as ''The Standard Method of Zazen'' or ''Principles of Zazen'', is a book of the

Shōbōgenzō is the title most commonly used to refer to the collection of works written in Japan by the 13th-century Buddhist monk and founder of the Sōtō Zen school, Eihei Dōgen. Several other works exist with the same title (see above), and it is som ...

by the 13th century

Sōtō Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai school, Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Caodong school, Cáodòng school, which was founded during the ...

Zen Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...

monk Eihei Dōgen. The book appears tenth in the 75 fascicle version of the

, and it is ordered 58th in the later chronological 95 fascicle "''Honzan'' edition". It was presented to his students in the eleventh month of 1243 at Yoshimine shōja (吉峰精舍), a small temple where Dōgen and his sangha practiced briefly following their sudden move to

Echizen Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan in the area that is today the northern portion of Fukui Prefecture in the Hokuriku region of Japan. Echizen bordered on Kaga Province, Kaga, Wakasa Province, Wakasa, Hida Province, Hida, and Ōmi Provin ...

from their previous temple Kōshōhōrin-ji earlier in the same year and before the establishment of

Eihei-ji file:Plan Eihei-ji.svg, 250px is one of two main temples of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism, the largest single religious denomination in Japan (by number of temples in a single legal entity). The other is Sōji-ji in Yokohama. Eihei-ji is loc ...

. Unlike other books of the Shōbōgenzō, it is not as much a commentary on classical Chinese Chan literature as it is a guide for the practice of

zazen ''Zazen'' is a meditative discipline that is typically the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition. The generalized Japanese term for meditation is 瞑想 (''meisō''); however, ''zazen'' has been used informally to include all forms ...

. The title comes from earlier Chinese texts of the same name and purpose, with a well known example found in the ''

Chanyuan qinggui The ''Chanyuan qinggui'' (; ), or ''The Rules of Purity in the Chan Monastery'', is a highly influential set of rules for Zen monasteries compiled by the Chinese monk Changlu Zongze in 1103. Although many other monastic codes aimed at the Zen schoo ...

'', from which Dōgen quotes extensively. His more famous ''

Fukan zazengi ''Fukan zazengi'' (), also known by its English translation ''Universal Recommendation for Zazen'', is an essay describing and promoting the practice of zazen written by the 13th century Japanese Zen monk Eihei Dōgen. The date of its compositio ...

'', as well as '' Eihei shingis ''Bendoho'', also owe much to this Chinese text and are thus closely related to the Shōbōgenzō's ''Zazen gi''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zazengi Soto Zen Zen texts