Jiafuzuo
Glossary: jiafuzuo 结跏趺坐, the crossed-leg sitting posture — the manual tradition's base position, with its two standard forms and its modern sitting-protocol translation.
Jiafuzuo (结跏趺坐, jiéjiāfūzuò) — the “bound crossed-leg sitting”: the classic meditation posture in which both legs are crossed and the insteps settle on the opposite thighs. The word is precise about the engineering: 结 (tie/bind) the 跏 (crossing), the 趺 (instep/sole) settled on the thighs. The manuals distinguish two standard forms — the demon-subduing seat (降魔坐, right leg first) and the auspicious seat (吉祥坐, left leg first) — a distinction about which leg crosses on top, not about anything more exotic.
Usage note: the term entered Chinese with Buddhism — its earliest received usage is Faxian’s Foguo Ji (4th c. CE) — and was adopted across the whole Chinese sitting vocabulary, Daoist and Neo-Confucian included, exactly like the tiaoxi breath ladder. This site renders the double-crossed form as “full-lotus posture,” the general family as “cross-legged sitting,” and keeps the sitting protocol explicit that the posture is an instrument, not a requirement: the tradition’s own manuals grade posture by stability (the half-lotus, the kneeling seat, the chair all appear in the received record), and the leg-numbness pattern documents the modern consensus that forcing the full form is the fastest road to injury. The form serves the sitting; the sitting does not serve the form.
Sources
- Standard dictionary definition (zdic): the Buddhist sitting posture, both feet crossed onto the thighs, in two forms — the demon-subduing seat (降魔坐) and the auspicious seat (吉祥坐)
- Faxian, Foguo Ji (4th c. CE): 'the bodhisattva entered, sat facing west in jiafuzuo' — the earliest received usage in the Chinese record