Zen

About Zen Meditation

Zen meditation refuses almost everything other traditions offer. There are no stages to climb, no states to attain, and no technique in the ordinary sense — you sit down, and the sitting is the whole of it. This is called shikantaza, 'just sitting', and it is either the simplest practice in Buddhism or the most difficult, depending on how badly you want something to happen. Zen arrived in China as Chan around the sixth century, absorbed Taoist directness, crossed to Japan in the twelfth, and split into two temperaments: Sōtō, which sits without a goal, and Rinzai, which uses koans to exhaust the reasoning mind until it lets go. Both hold the same conviction — that awakening is not produced by practice but expressed by it. This guide gives you the posture, the eyes, the breath, and the honest difficulty.