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坐禪用心記

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Text ID
KR6t0292
Date
1300–1325
Dynasty
日本

Zuòchán yòngxīn jì 坐禪用心記

Notes on the Use of the Mind in Zazen by 瑩山 Keizan Jōkin (撰), 卍山道白 Manzan Dōhaku (校)

About the work

A single-fascicle manual of zazen practice by 瑩山 Keizan Jōkin (1268–1325), the second great patriarch of Japanese Sōtō-Zen. Composed at Tōkoku-ji 洞谷寺 (the early name of Yōkō-ji 永光寺) in Noto. The Taishō recension is the Enpō 8 / 1680 Manzan Dōhaku 卍山道白 (1636–1715) re-issue, with Manzan’s preface dated Enpō 8 / Buddha-Bodhi-Day (延寶庚申佛成道日 = 1680-01-08 NS, written at Sugijubayashi Daijō Hōkoku Zen-ji in Kaga, where Manzan was then resident).

Abstract

The text is the principal complement to Dōgen’s KR6t0286 Fukan zazen-gi: where Dōgen’s manual is brief and gives the posture-and-thought prescription, Keizan’s Zazen yōjin-ki expands the discussion into a broad treatise on the use of the mind in zazen — covering not only seated meditation proper but the full circle of contemplative life in which it is embedded.

The text opens with a striking statement of the doctrine of shūshō ichi-nyo (practice and verification are one):

“Zazen, broadly speaking, makes a person directly clarify the mind-ground and dwell at ease in the original portion. This is called manifest-revealing the original face; also called manifesting the local-ground wind-and-light. Body and mind together fall away (shinjin datsuraku); seated and reclining are alike far apart. Therefore: not thinking good, not thinking evil, transcending ordinary and sage, traversing the discrimination of confusion-and-awakening, departing the boundary of arising-and-becoming-Buddha. Therefore rest from the ten-thousand affairs and put down all conditions, do nothing at all, the six-roots without function. — Who is this? Once he is not yet known by name, he is not to be called the body, not to be called the mind.”

The text then proceeds through systematic teaching on:

  • The unity of body and mind in zazen.
  • The non-dichotomy of clarity and confusion: just as clear water has neither outside nor inside, so too the mind in zazen.
  • The illusory nature of conditioned mental states: thought-shapes emerging from the underlying kṣaṇika (instant-by-instant) impermanence.
  • The principle that zazen is not a means but is itself the realisation — the central Dōgen-Keizan move that distinguishes Sōtō Zen from instrumentalist meditation traditions.
  • Practical instructions on posture, breath, mind-attention, and rising — paralleling but expanding on the Fukan zazen-gi.

Manzan’s 1680 preface explicitly frames the Zazen yōjin-ki as evidence of a continuous Sōtō tradition that the late-17th-century Sōtō-school revival was attempting to recover: “The full-moon-likeness of Lóngshù (Nāgārjuna) is fundamentally without lack. Yet at the moment a thought arises like clouds, it veils the nature-sky; the square-inch fogs and obscures the mind-ground: then dim-dim murky-murky, no different from the long night. All these proceed from failures in the use of the mind in zazen. For this reason our patriarch Master Keizan, having investigated the source of the samādhi, turned the sea of words and composed this single record-volume — raising waves and ripples for posterity, to demonstrate the technique of using the mind. … I happened to obtain this record and could not bear to keep it bagged. In a moment of post-meditation I collated and printed it. The wish is to make the bright-bright illuminating universally extend to the entirety of the ten directions; to take the entirety of the ten directions and make of it the corner of the meditation-cushion and the surface of the seat-cloth — that is the mind of liu-tsu (transmission).”

The dating bracket is the period of Keizan’s mature teaching at Tōkoku / Yōkō-ji (c. 1300–1325).

The text is the principal Sōtō-Zen meditation-manual after Dōgen’s Fukan zazen-gi and is recited or read at every Sōtō Zen training-monastery. Together with Keizan’s KR6t0291 Denkō-roku and KR6t0295 Keizan shingi, it forms the Keizan triad of Sōtō foundational texts.

Translations and research

The principal English translation is by Thomas Cleary, Timeless Spring: A Sōtō Zen Anthology (Weatherhill, 1980), which contains a complete translation. Earlier translation by Yuhō Yokoi with Daizen Victoria, Zen Master Dōgen: An Introduction with Selected Writings (Weatherhill, 1976), appendix. For the textual relationship to Dōgen’s Fukan zazen-gi, see Carl Bielefeldt, Dōgen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation (Univ. of California Press, 1988), comparative discussion in chs. 4–5.

For Keizan’s broader teaching, see William Bodiford, Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan (Univ. of Hawai’i Press, 1993).

Other points of interest

The Manzan 1680 editio princeps preface is itself a landmark of late-17th-century Sōtō-school renewal — Manzan Dōhaku and his contemporary Tenkei Denson 天桂傳尊 led the late-Edo fukko (return-to-the-ancient) movement that recovered medieval Sōtō texts from the Higashiyama-period decline of Sōtō scholarship. The Zazen yōjin-ki recovery is one of the most consequential of these, since the text fed directly into the modern Sōtō zazenkai practice manuals.

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