Yíngshān 瑩山 (Keizan Jōkin 瑩山紹瑾)
The second great founder of the Japanese Sōtō 曹洞 school of Zen, succeeding after Dōgen 道元. Japanese reading: Keizan Jōkin. Posthumous imperial titles: Sōji Emmei Kokushi 總持圓明國師 (“National Master of Total-Retention and Perfect-Brightness”) and Butsuji Zenji 佛慈禪師 (“Buddha-Compassion Chán-Master”). Lifedates 1264–1325.
Fourth-generation dharma-descendant in the Japanese Sōtō line: Dōgen (d. 1253) → Ejō 懷奘 (1198–1280) → Gikai 義介 (1219–1309) → Keizan (1264–1325). Received dharma-transmission from Tettsū Gikai 徹通義介.
Sōji-ji 總持寺 founder (1321): Keizan’s most enduring institutional-architectural legacy was the founding of Sōji-ji, which became (alongside Dōgen’s Eihei-ji) one of the two principal head-monasteries of the Japanese Sōtō school. The Sōtō school’s expansion from Dōgen’s small teaching-community into a mass-level national Buddhist tradition happened primarily under Keizan’s leadership at Sōji-ji.
Major writings:
- Denkōroku 傳光錄 (“Record of the Transmission of the Light”) — his masterwork, a 52-chapter lineage-biographical narrative tracing Zen transmission from Śākyamuni through Dōgen.
- Zazen-yōjin-ki 坐禪用心記 (“Record of Things-to-Attend-to in Seated Meditation”) — a major meditation-manual.
- Keizan shingi 瑩山清規 (“Keizan’s Pure Rules”) — his influential monastic-regulations text.
- Sān gēn zuò chán shuō 三根坐禪說 KR6q0242 — the short exposition on three-capacity seated meditation preserved in the Kanripo corpus.
Keizan’s doctrinal-institutional work transformed Sōtō from Dōgen’s intimate teaching-circle into a broad-institutional national tradition. He is consequently honored as one of the two co-founders of Japanese Sōtō (alongside Dōgen).
Standard English biography: Faure, Bernard. 1996. Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism. Princeton. Includes Keizan. See also Bodiford, William. 1993. Sōtō Zen in Medieval Japan. University of Hawai’i Press.