Kyōgai

Kyōgai (Japanese: 境界) is a concept in Zen Buddhism for a person's state of mind.^[1] Kyōgai is a Japanese word and does not have a direct English translation,^[2] but it is often variously described as a person's state of being,^[3] or more specifically their "consciousness" or "behavior" or "experience". Though not an accurate definition, the literal translation of the word kyōgai into English is "boundary", and the origin of the word Kyōgai comes from the Pali word gocara (Pali: गोच) and the Sanskrit word Viśayā (Sanskrit: विषया),^[4][5] specifically in their contexts as a pasture where animals graze and the boundary of that pasture.^[2]

Kyōgai
Japanese name
Kanji	境界
Transcriptions Romanization Kyōgai

The kyōgai is a private experience, such that one person's kyōgai will be different from another's,^[5][2] and a person's kyōgai changes with time and experience.^[5] The term is also used to describe a person's behavior or attitude,^[5] for example an routine action done by a person or a person's way of doing things is described as their kyōgai.^[6]

In the Rinzai school especially, it is a person's kyōgai that is judged when being tested with kōans, as opposed to an intellectual understanding of a fixed answer to the kōan itself.^[5]

The term can also less commonly refer to a shared viewpoint, such as a Western kyōgai being used to describe the experiences and understanding of the world through the lens of a person in the Western world.^[2]

References

1. Lin, Pei-ying (2016). "Chapter 2: Buddhist Scholars' Views of China in Contemporary Japan: Buddhist Influence on Japanese Sinology". In Manomaivibool, Prapin; Shih, Chih-yu (eds.). Understanding 21st century China in Buddhist Asia : history, modernity and international relations. Bangkok. p. 31. ISBN 978-616-407-010-3. OCLC 987301946. Archived from the original on 2023-01-11. Retrieved 2022-09-01.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
2. Carter, Robert Edgar (1992). Becoming bamboo : western and eastern explorations of the meaning of life. Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 130–131. ISBN 978-0-7735-6321-6. OCLC 244765994.
3. Enji, Tōrei (1996). The discourse on the Inexhaustible lamp of the Zen school. Boston: C.E. Tuttle Co. p. 14. ISBN 0-8048-3087-8. OCLC 34710895.
4. Thambi, Ajoy; Caroline, Deepa (January 2018). "Vaikom Muhammad Basheer: The zen master under the mangosteen tree". International Journal of English Research. 4 (1): 13–14. Archived from the original on 2022-09-01. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
5. Hori, G. Victor Sōgen (2000). "Kōan and Kenshō in the Rinzai Zen Curriculum". In Heine, Steven; Wright, Dale S. (eds.). The Koan : texts and contexts in Zen Buddhism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 292–295. ISBN 0-19-511748-4. OCLC 191818013. Archived from the original on 2023-01-11. Retrieved 2022-09-01.
6. Hiroshi, Sakamoto (1977). "D. T. Suzuki and Mysticism". The Eastern Buddhist. 10 (1): 54–67. ISSN 0012-8708. JSTOR 44361467. Archived from the original on 2022-09-01. Retrieved 2022-09-01.