Zazen

• 1. Introduction

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  Zazen is a meditative discipline and the primary practice at the heart of Zen Buddhism. Picture a meditation hall in a Zen monastery, the kind called a zendo, where practitioners sit in silence on cushions called zafu, placed on flat mats called zabuton. A bell rings three times to mark the start of practice, and the room settles. What happens next is harder to name than to do. How does a person think of not thinking? And what has this deceptively simple act of sitting meant to practitioners across more than fifteen centuries of Buddhist tradition? Those are the questions zazen invites, and the answers are more varied, more disputed, and more alive than any single school of thought would suggest.

• 2. Ancient Roots

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  Kumārajīva, the celebrated translator who lived from 344 to 413 CE, lent his hand to an early text called the Zuòchán sān mēi jīng, a manual on the samadhi of sitting meditation. That title points to something important: the practice now called zazen has a recorded history stretching back to the earliest layers of Chinese Buddhism, where the term zuòchán appears in the Dhyāna sutras. The Chinese Tiantai master Zhiyi, writing in the 6th century CE between 538 and 597, produced influential works on seated meditation that shaped how later generations understood the practice. The generalized Japanese term for meditation is meisō, but zazen gradually became the informal label for all forms of seated Buddhist meditation, not just within one lineage.

• 3. The Ritual of the Hall

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  Shunryu Suzuki describes the posture of zazen with precise attention: legs crossed, spine erect, hands forming what is called the cosmic mudra, with thumbs lightly touching at roughly the level of the navel. The eyes are kept half-lowered, neither fully open nor shut, so that the practitioner is neither distracted by external stimuli nor turning away from them entirely. Breathing comes from the hara, the center of gravity located in the belly. Legs may be folded in full-lotus, half-lotus, the Burmese position with ankles placed in front of the sitter, or seiza, a kneeling position using a bench or zafu. Modern practitioners sometimes sit in a chair, using a wedge or cushion on an incline or behind the lower back to preserve the natural curve of the spine. Before sitting and after rising, a practitioner bows in gassho to their seat and then to fellow practitioners. When a long period of zazen ends, the bell rings once or twice, a signal called hozensho, and practitioners may move into kinhin, a form of walking meditation.

• 4. Schools of Thought

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  Rinzai school practitioners sit facing each other with their backs to the wall, while those of the Sōtō school face the wall or a curtain. That difference in orientation hints at a deeper divergence in method. In the Rinzai school, zazen is typically combined with koan study, and the practitioner, once they have developed concentration, focuses consciousness on a koan as an object of meditation. The Sōtō school makes less use of koans or none at all, preferring shikantaza. Hakuun Yasutani, whose lectures for beginners were quoted by Philip Kapleau, organized zazen into five kinds: bompu, which develops meditative concentration to aid well-being; gedo, which includes zazen-like practices from other religious traditions; shojo, associated with small-vehicle approaches; daijo, aimed at gaining insight into true nature; and saijojo, which corresponds to shikantaza. Beyond Japan, the practice of repeating a huatou, a short meditation phrase, is common in Chinese Chan and Korean Seon. Nianfo, the silent recitation of the Buddha Amitabha's name, is practiced in traditions shaped by Pure Land practice and was taught by Chan masters including Zongmi.

• 5. The Breath and the Mind

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  Dainin Katagiri Roshi taught watching the breath, while Shunryu Suzuki taught counting the breath, a technique known as sūsokukan. Both approaches belong to an early stage of training in zazen that resembles traditional Buddhist samatha meditation, building what some sources call one-pointedness of mind as an initial experience of samadhi. At that point, a practitioner might move toward koan practice or shikantaza. Kōshō Uchiyama and Shohaku Okumura took a different position: neither counting nor watching the breath. Okumura put it directly: "We don't set our mind on any particular object, visualization, mantra, or even our breath itself. When we just sit, our mind is nowhere and everywhere." Yasutani Roshi held that developing the power of concentration, in Sanskrit called samādhi, is one of the three aims of zazen. Dogen, by contrast, warned that the aim of zazen is not the development of mindless concentration.

• 6. Shikantaza

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  Zazen is considered the heart of Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhist practice, and shikantaza is its most distinctive expression. The aim is just sitting, which means suspending all judgmental thinking and allowing words, ideas, images, and thoughts to pass through without engaging them. Practitioners do not take any specific object of meditation; instead they remain as fully as possible in the present moment, aware of whatever is occurring around them and passing through their minds. Dogen stated the method as a paradox in his Shobogenzo: "Sitting fixedly, think of not thinking. How do you think of not thinking? Nonthinking. This is the art of zazen." That phrase, nonthinking, is not a description of an empty mind but a pointer toward something that cannot be resolved by ordinary cognition, which is precisely why Dogen held it distinct from mere concentration.