What it claims
Zazen is the seated meditation form transmitted in the Chán → Zen lineage of Mahāyāna Buddhism. The Japanese compound joins za (seated) with zen — the school's own name, itself a transliteration of chán, itself of the Sanskrit dhyāna (absorption, contemplation). The practice consists of sitting still in a defined posture — usually cross-legged on a zafu cushion, spine upright, eyes half-open and unfocused — and remaining there. What is or isn't meant to happen during the sitting is where the lineage's distinct claim emerges: zazen, in the Sōtō reading, is not a technique used to attain awakening but the activity of awakening itself. The sitting is not preparation; it is the thing.
Sōtō and Rinzai
The two main Japanese inheritances treat zazen differently. Sōtō Zen, transmitted by Dōgen in the thirteenth century after his return from Song-dynasty China, centres on shikantaza — just sitting — a non-discursive, non-investigative attention that holds neither object nor question. The instruction is: sit; whatever arises is not the practice; the practice is the sitting. Rinzai Zen, transmitted by Eisai and refined later by Hakuin, retains the same physical form but pairs it with kōan contemplation — a question or phrase given by the teacher (the sound of one hand, the original face before parents were born) that the student is asked to hold during sitting until the discursive faculty exhausts itself and something else replies. Both schools sit. The argument is over what is happening when they do.
The form
Posture is technical and not negotiable. The cushion lifts the pelvis above the knees so that the spine stacks without effort; full lotus, half lotus, Burmese and seiza on a bench are the standard variants for different bodies. The hands rest in the cosmic mudrā — left palm above right, thumbs barely touching — at the level of the navel. The eyes are open and angled down to a point about a metre in front of the cushion, neither focused nor closed; the deliberate refusal of either pole prevents the drift toward sleep that comes with closed eyes and the drift toward conceptual elaboration that comes with focused looking. Breathing is through the nose, not regulated. A standard sitting period is thirty to forty-five minutes; two periods bracketing a short walking interval (kinhin) is the basic unit of practice in both Japanese schools and in the Western zendō that descend from them.
Where to encounter it
Adyashanti's *Do Nothing* is the index's clearest English-language voice on the just-sitting register — fourteen years of Maezumi-lineage Zen training before he stepped outside the formal container, distilled into a single piece of instruction whose title is exactly the practice. The Plum Village reflection from Br. Troi Duc Niem descends from the same Chán root through Vietnamese Thiền rather than Japanese Zen; the postural instruction is identical, the framing is gentler. Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching on emptiness, signlessness and aimlessness describes the doctrinal background within which Plum Village zazen is undertaken — three of the most uncompromising terms in the Mahāyāna vocabulary, and three of the most relevant to what is or isn't being aimed at while sitting.
What it isn't
Zazen is not a relaxation technique, not a stress-reduction protocol, and not contemplation in the Latin Christian sense of sustained reflection on a sacred object. The instructions to follow the breath, count exhalations, or attend to a kōan are scaffolding for beginners; the more advanced instruction is to drop the scaffolding without dropping the sitting. The vipassanā of the Theravāda lineage is a near cousin — same posture, similar duration, different epistemology — but the Zen claim that the sitting is itself the realisation rather than a method that produces it is not made in the same form by Theravāda teachers. The MBSR-style adaptations of mindfulness for clinical use draw on both lineages but generally drop the realisation-claim entirely, retaining the posture and the duration without the metaphysics.
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