''Daigo'' (), also known in English translation as ''Great Realization'', 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 and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Cáodòng school, which was founded during the Tang dynasty by Dòngshān L ...

Zen Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...

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

, and it is ordered 26th in the later chronological 95 fascicle "''Honzan'' edition". It was presented to his students in the first month of 1242 at

Kōshōhōrin-ji ''Kōshōhōrin-ji'' (), more commonly known by its abbreviated name ''Kōshō-ji'' () and sometimes by its full formal name ''Kannondori Kōshōhōrin-ji'' (), was the first independent zen temple in Japan. While Kennin-ji was established in 120 ...

, the first monastery established by Dōgen, located in

Kyoto Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...

. According to Gudō Nishijima, a modern Zen priest, the "great realization" to which Dōgen refers is not an intellectual idea, but rather a "concrete realization of facts in reality" or "realization in real life". Shohaku Okumura, another modern-day Zen teacher, writes that Dōgen equates the term ''daigo'' with the network of interdependence in which all beings in the universe exist rather than something that we lack and need to obtain. Given this, Okumura writes that Dōgen is encouraging us to, "to realize great realization within this great realization, moment by moment; or perhaps it is better to say that great realization realizes great realization through our practice."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Daigo Soto Zen Zen texts