"Gyo" means "facts, actions or a behavior" and "ji" means "actualization, observance of the precepts" or more simply "facts through which is, or will be, actualized the observance of the precepts". We find ourselves then with a new koan: what is the observance of the precepts? That too, in the zen Buddhism, has a quite particular dimension.

When someone receives the shiho, the Dharma transmission, he gets three documents. But obviously these documents are the symbols of something, much more real but much less visible, which is transmitted then by the master. It is a bit like if he was transmitting us a virus. And by the way, in the ancient times, during the ceremony of the transmission of the shiho, the blood of the master and the one of the disciple were mixed together and the documents were sealed with this blood. Now in Japan, most of the shihos have turned in ceremonies, which are quite formalistic, which represent only an additional rank in the hierarchy of the soto sect. That is why I have chosen to follow the authentic