Seated meditation (zazen)

Zazen (Japanese, written 坐禅, "seated meditation") is the disciplined sitting meditation at the core of Zen practice. "Zen" is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese Chan, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit dhyāna, meaning meditative absorption — so the very name of the tradition is essentially the name of the practice. In zazen the meditator sits upright and still, typically cross-legged on a cushion, with the spine straight, the eyes lowered but open, and the breath allowed to settle naturally. The body's stable posture is treated as inseparable from the steadying of the mind.

Within the Zen family, two great Japanese lineages approach zazen somewhat differently. In the Rinzai tradition, sitting is often paired with a kōan — a deliberately baffling story or question (such as "What is the sound of one hand?") meant to exhaust ordinary, calculating thought and provoke a breakthrough into direct insight. In the Sōtō tradition, the emphasis falls instead on shikantaza, "just sitting": an objectless practice with no special technique, no goal to chase, and nothing to figure out — one simply sits, fully awake and present, letting thoughts arise and pass.

What unites both is a conviction characteristic of Zen: that awakening is not a distant prize to be earned by striving, but our own true nature, already present and only obscured. The thirteenth-century Japanese master Dōgen taught that zazen is not so much a means to enlightenment as the very expression of it — to sit wholeheartedly is already to enact the awakened mind. Zazen is therefore best understood not as a relaxation exercise but as a direct, embodied way of meeting reality as it is, moment by moment.