What Is Zen? | “Zazen Is Not Learning Meditation” — Why There Is No Such Thing as Sitting Well

“Zen” may be the Japanese word that has travelled furthest from home.

It turns up in furniture catalogues, app names, hotel room descriptions. In most of those places it means something like calm, uncluttered, minimal.

Meanwhile, the people actually training in Zen temples in Japan get up at 3:30 in the morning, clean, go out begging for alms, and sit until night. Quiet, yes. But probably not a conversation about interior design.

Where did the gap come from? And what is Zen, actually?

One thing first. This article will not tell you what Zen “is”. Zen is a religion; its schools disagree; and — as you will see — the most senior figures in those schools are on record telling each other that the differences everyone repeats are not the real ones. So we will separate what is documented from what is not.

What this article covers

Zen is not one school — in Japan it means three: Rinzai, Sōtō and Ōbaku
Sōtō’s answer is shikantaza — sitting is not a means to anything
Rinzai’s answer is the kōan — you are handed a question and made to doubt it thoroughly
The famous “Sōtō faces the wall, Rinzai faces the room” difference, which the schools themselves call inessential
What sitting actually involves — posture, breath, mind, half-open eyes, breath counting, and the stick
Why a training monastery’s day is far busier than you would guess
How “ZEN” reached the West — and why its main messenger was not a monk
Why wa-kei-sei-jaku, the famous tea-ceremony phrase, was almost certainly not said by Rikyū

Zen is not the name of one school

A map, first.

Zen is the branch of Buddhism built around zazen — seated practice that settles body and mind. In Japan it covers three schools: Rinzai, Sōtō and Ōbaku.

Roughly dated:

Rinzai — brought over in the Kamakura period by Eisai (1141–1215)
Sōtō — also Kamakura. Dōgen (1200–1253) brought it from China; Keizan spread it across the country
Ōbaku — much later, in the Edo period. Ingen, a Chinese monk of the Ming dynasty, arrived in Japan in 1654 and founded Manpuku-ji in Uji in 1661. His line called itself the “Ōbaku branch of Rinzai” until it was recognised as a separate school in 1876

The dates for Eisai and Dōgen come from the official Myōshin-ji site (Rinzai), the two Sōtō founders from the official Sōtō site, and Ingen’s dates from Manpuku-ji’s own pages.

On scale: Rinzai is divided into fourteen head temples; with Ōbaku that makes fifteen, and together they count over seven thousand temples nationwide (from Rinnou-net, the joint official site of the two schools). Sōtō has two head temples: Eihei-ji in Fukui and Sōji-ji in Kanagawa.

A footnote worth having: Ingen did not only bring Zen. According to Manpuku-ji, he is also credited with introducing the green bean that still carries his name in Japanese (ingen-mame), along with watermelon, lotus root, moso bamboo — and the wooden fish drum you hear in temples.

The Sōtō answer: sitting is not practice for anything

So what is happening when someone sits?

The official Sōtō site puts it like this:

“Sōtō zazen is shikantaza — just sitting, wholeheartedly. We do not sit as a means of achieving some other purpose. The very form of a person sitting is the form of a Buddha; it is the form of awakening.”

That is the sentence that trips most people up.

Normally you start something for a reason. Better focus. Better sleep. Less irritability. Expecting those from zazen is entirely natural.

And the official Sōtō explanation quietly closes that door. Not a means.

In Fukan Zazengi, Dōgen’s short text on sitting, there is this line:

“What is called zazen is not learning meditation. It is simply the dharma-gate of ease and joy; it is the practice-realisation of thoroughly exhausting awakening.”

The paraphrase the Sōtō school itself offers is one clause long: “To sit in zazen is itself awakening.”

The word being pushed away there is shūzen — practising meditation, training at it. That is not what this is, Dōgen says. You are not sitting in order to get good at sitting. The sitting already is the thing.

Which means Sōtō zazen comes with no ruler for measuring how well today went. There is no good sitting and bad sitting. The morning you were half asleep and the morning your head was full of noise both count as having sat.

Dōgen also refused to make sitting special. The official site notes that he “found in every daily act the same value as zazen, and taught that they be carried out as Zen practice.” Washing your face counts. So does cooking.

The Rinzai answer: no great doubt, no great awakening

Now the other answer.

Myōshin-ji, the largest Rinzai branch, describes itself this way on its official site:

“Rinzai is called kanna-zen. It takes up episodes from the old Zen masters as kōan — what people call Zen riddles — and from the position that ‘without great doubt there is no great awakening’, it deepens the mind through doubt about the self and seeks awakening.”

The kōan is the famous riddle. A teacher gives you one; you sit with it. Then comes sanzen: you go, one at a time, into the teacher’s room and present your answer. At a training monastery this happens daily — and during ōzesshin, the week-long intensive periods, three to five times a day.

Where Sōtō says stop seeking, Rinzai appears to say doubt harder.

Doubt what, though? Yokota Nanrei, abbot of the Rinzai head temple Engaku-ji, writes: what the kōan is trying to make clear is “that your own mind, just as it is, is Buddha.”

And then he explains it with a panda.

The panda

The abbot told this to a group of young Sōtō monks who came to visit. It appears on Engaku-ji’s official site, quoted from his own book.

There is a long queue at Ueno Zoo to see the panda. Standing in the queue is a panda.

People tell it: “You’re a panda. You don’t need to queue to see one.” But it has no idea it is a panda. Hand it a mirror and it does not know what a mirror is.

So the panda sets out to become a panda. Blacken the rings around the eyes. Chew some bamboo. Study panda behaviour. But however well it imitates a panda, it is still imitating.

Then one day it slips in a puddle. It lifts its face, shakes off the muddy water — and there in the water is a panda, making exactly the same movement.

“Ah. That was me.”

After that, no more queueing. The seeking stops, and it goes on living an ordinary day, as a panda.

That is the gentlest door into the Rinzai line about the mind already being Buddha. Practice is not for becoming something. It is for noticing what is already the case.

And once you see that, the two schools stop looking so far apart. Dōgen’s “zazen is not learning meditation” and the panda are pointing the same way: neither is describing a process of adding something and turning into something else.

“Facing the wall” is not the real difference

Here is the distinction every introduction repeats.

Sōtō sits facing the wall (menpeki). Rinzai sits with backs to the wall, facing each other across the hall.

That is indeed how it looks today. But the person on record calling it not the essential difference is the abbot of a Rinzai head temple:

“People generally say that facing the wall is Sōtō and facing each other is Rinzai. That is certainly how it is now, but it is not the essential difference between Sōtō zazen and Rinzai zazen.”

He gives the reason. Recent scholarship suggests Rinzai originally faced the wall too, and that the present arrangement took shape in the Edo period under the influence of Ōbaku teaching, newly arrived from China. “They seem originally to have faced the wall in the same way. This is not a difference of essence.”

The Institute for Zen Studies covers the same ground on its blog, noting that an Edo-period Rinzai rulebook for training halls, the Shōsōrin Ryaku Shingi, instructs practitioners to sit facing the wall. The blog’s author then suggests the change may trace to Hakuin Ekaku, the mid-Edo reviver of Rinzai kōan practice: once monks were going in to the teacher’s room constantly, it was simply easier to already be facing the room than to keep turning away from a wall.

That last part is offered as the author’s conjecture, not as established history.

And one more thing. After explaining the differences from Sōtō, Myōshin-ji’s official site ends with this:

“There is no difference in fundamental doctrine.”

The schools say so themselves. Which suggests the useful thing for a beginner to learn is not “Sōtō faces the wall, Rinzai faces the room”, but that the people involved are telling you not to bother memorising it.

What sitting actually looks like

Back to the body. Both schools publish instructions; the details differ, the skeleton is much the same.

Legs. Kekkafuza is the full cross-legged posture, each foot up on the opposite thigh. Hankafuza takes only one foot up — easier. Myōshin-ji simply says “use whichever is easier for you.” Sōtō adds that the cushion (zafu) should sit under the centre of your seat, and that your upper body rests on three points: both knees and the seat.

Hands. One hand rests on the other, thumbs meeting lightly to close a small oval. This is the hokkai-jōin.

Eyes. This is where it diverges from most people’s picture of meditation. You do not close them. Sōtō: “the eyes are neither wide open nor narrowed, but naturally open, the gaze dropped in front of you.” Myōshin-ji is more specific — hangan, half-open eyes: face forward, and let only your gaze fall to the floor one or two metres ahead.

Breath. Both teach abdominal breathing. Myōshin-ji: “there is no need to fill the belly as in a deep breath. What matters is letting the out-breath go quietly, slowly, at length.”

Mind. Here the two characters show. Myōshin-ji teaches susokukan, breath counting: on each out-breath, count one, two, three, silently; at ten, return to one. Sōtō does not count. It says only: “sit without being caught by the various thoughts, settling the body and the breath.”

And Sōtō adds this, for beginners:

“Zazen is not a difficult practice reserved for priests. What matters is settling the posture, settling the breath — and then the mind settles of itself. If you can do that, it is perfectly good zazen.”

There is also an official page for chair zazen, for anyone who cannot fold their legs.

The stick is not a punishment

Many people picture Zen as being hit on the shoulder with a stick. That stick is the kyōsaku (Sōtō’s reading; Rinzai and Ōbaku say keisaku).

The name is usually explained as a contraction of keikaku sakurei — to rouse and to encourage. It is there to clear drowsiness and reset posture, not to punish.

There is even etiquette for receiving it. Per the official Sōtō instructions, the person carrying the stick taps your right shoulder lightly as a warning first. You put your palms together, lean your upper body forward and to the left, and when it is done, straighten up, put your palms together again and bow. You bow before being struck, and after.

At public sitting sessions today it is often optional. If it worries you at a first session, the fastest fix is to ask before you begin.

A day in a training monastery is not restful

This is where the “Zen equals stillness” picture is furthest off. Myōshin-ji publishes the daily schedule of its trainee monks (unsui).

Around 3:30 a.m. — wake
Morning sutra chanting in the main hall, then zazen in the meditation hall
During that sitting, monks go one by one to the teacher’s room to present their kōan answer
Rice gruel for breakfast, then cleaning. This takes them to about 8 a.m.
What follows depends on the date. Days ending 1, 3, 6, 8: alms rounds. Days ending 2, 5, 7, 10: the teacher’s lecture. Days ending 4 and 9: they shave each other’s heads in pairs
Lunch around 11. The menu is fixed: barley rice, miso soup, simmered vegetables
Afternoons are manual work — cleaning, field work, splitting firewood
Dinner is called yakuseki, “medicine stone”. Indian Buddhist communities forbade eating after noon; because Zen communities in China and Japan did physical labour, food was permitted as medicine to keep the body going. The menu is what was left from lunch
Zazen and kōan interviews again in the evening; lights out at 9 p.m.
After that, monks go out and sit wherever they like — yaza, night sitting, with no fixed end. They actually lie down around 11

Six times a year there is ōzesshin, a week of intensive sitting. The hardest is rōhatsu ōzesshin, 1–8 December, marking the Buddha’s awakening: lights out moves to midnight, and for that week no one is permitted to lie down at all.

Count only the sitting hours and it is long. But the timetable itself is mostly cleaning, labour and meals. When Sōtō writes about finding “the same value as zazen in every daily act”, that is not only a metaphor. It is also a description of this schedule.

How “ZEN” left Japan

So why did Zen become shorthand abroad for minimal and calm?

A large part of the answer is D. T. Suzuki (Suzuki Daisetz, 1870–1966), born in Kanazawa, who spent his life explaining Zen and Eastern thought to the West in English.

He published Essays in Zen Buddhism (1927) and Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture (1938), and after the war spent most of his eighties lecturing at Western universities. At Columbia his audience included the composer John Cage and the novelist J. D. Salinger — who put him into Franny and Zooey as “Dr. Suzuki”. He also knew Jack Kerouac and other Beat Generation writers.

And here is the part worth holding onto: Suzuki was not a Zen priest. He was a thinker who had trained in zazen and spent his life articulating what he drew from it — and who was, by accounts, well aware of how hard it is to convey Zen in words at all, let alone in English.

So the “ZEN” the world received did not come in through a monastery timetable. It came in through one thinker’s re-telling, in a second language, and from there into 1950s and 60s American counterculture, where it settled into ideas of freedom, emptiness and simplicity.

This is not a case of an error to be corrected. Cultures travel exactly like this. It is only worth setting the other fact down beside it: that there are people getting up at 3:30 and shaving each other’s heads. ZEN and Zen are continuous, but they are not the same thing.

Tea, and an honest note about wa-kei-sei-jaku

Zen and the tea ceremony are often said to be close, and in practical terms they are: the scroll hanging in a tea room usually carries a Zen phrase, and Zen vocabulary runs through how tea is explained.

The most quoted of those phrases is wa-kei-sei-jaku — harmony, respect, purity, stillness. Host and guest soften toward each other, hold each other in respect, and keep the room and the gathering clean. It is almost always presented as Sen no Rikyū’s teaching.

So, honestly: the Nihon Dai-hyakka Zensho (Encyclopedia Nipponica) says it is not Rikyū’s phrase.

According to that entry, “it was not in fact a phrase expressed by Rikyū.” It was formulated during the Genroku era (1688–1704), around the hundredth anniversary of his death, amid a wave of return-to-Rikyū feeling. Its first recorded appearance is 1699, in the preface written by Daishin Gitō of Daitoku-ji for Chaso-den, published in 1730.

In our article on tea bowls we noted something similar: that most scholars now regard the Nanpōroku, the text carrying Rikyū’s seven rules, as a later fabrication. A great deal of what circulates as Rikyū’s words was assembled roughly a century after his death.

Which does not make the phrase worth less. Who first said it, and what it has held up for three hundred years, are two separate questions.

For tea itself, see our beginner’s guide to the tea ceremony; for why tea rooms are built so small, the chashitsu article; and if you want to walk outside, the one on Japanese gardens.

To close

In short:

Zen is not one school. In Japan it means Rinzai, Sōtō and Ōbaku
Sōtō’s answer is shikantaza: “we do not sit as a means of achieving some other purpose” (official site)
Dōgen wrote in Fukan Zazengi that zazen is not learning meditation — not practice for anything
Rinzai’s answer is the kōan: no great doubt, no great awakening. What it aims to make clear is that your mind, as it is, is Buddha
The wall-facing distinction is called inessential by the schools themselves
In zazen you do not close your eyes. Half-open, gaze dropped one or two metres ahead
The stick is encouragement, not punishment — and you bow before receiving it
Monastery days start at 3:30 and fill up with cleaning, labour and meals
The “ZEN” that reached the world came through D. T. Suzuki, who was not a monk, writing in English
Wa-kei-sei-jaku is not Rikyū’s phrase; first recorded in 1699

One thing to try today.

Sit forward on a chair. Stack your spine upright. Leave your eyes open, and let your gaze — only your gaze — fall to the floor a metre or two ahead. Let the out-breath be the long one. Five minutes is plenty.

Your thoughts will not stop. Apparently they do not have to. As the Sōtō school puts it: settle the posture, settle the breath, and the mind settles of itself. If you can do that, it is perfectly good zazen.

Sources

Sōtō Zen official site (SOTOZEN-NET), “Sōtō Zen zazen” — shikantaza; “we do not sit as a means”; the Fukan Zazengi line and the school’s own paraphrase; daily acts as practice
https://www.sotozen-net.or.jp/propagation/zazentop
SOTOZEN-NET, “How to sit zazen” — full and half lotus; three points of support; hokkai-jōin; “neither wide open nor narrowed”; receiving the kyōsaku (warning tap on the right shoulder); the bells; posture-breath-mind; “details vary by training hall”
https://www.sotozen-net.or.jp/propagation/zazentop/saho
SOTOZEN-NET, “About Sōtō Zen” — Dōgen and Keizan; Eihei-ji and Sōji-ji
https://www.sotozen-net.or.jp/soto
SOTOZEN-NET, “Chair zazen basics”
https://www.sotozen-net.or.jp/isuzazen
Rinzai Myōshin-ji official FAQ, “On doctrine” — kanna-zen; kōan; “without great doubt there is no great awakening”; Sōtō as mokushō-zen; “no difference in fundamental doctrine”; Eisai 1141–1215, Dōgen 1200–1253; the unsui daily schedule; ōzesshin and rōhatsu ōzesshin
https://www.myoshinji.or.jp/faq/302
Myōshin-ji official, “How to sit zazen” — postures; hokkai-jōin and the closed fist; half-open eyes and the floor one to two metres ahead; abdominal breathing; breath counting; preparing to sit
https://www.myoshinji.or.jp/experience/zazen
Engaku-ji official, Abbot Yokota Nanrei, “The difference between Rinzai and Sōtō”, 6 July 2022 — the wall distinction as “not the essential difference”; Rinzai originally facing the wall, changed under Ōbaku influence in the Edo period; the kōan pointing to one’s own mind as Buddha; the panda parable; Ogawa Takashi’s “corporation and shopping street”
https://www.engakuji.or.jp/blog/35313/
Rinnou-net, joint official site of the Rinzai and Ōbaku schools — fourteen Rinzai head temples plus Ōbaku; over seven thousand temples
https://rinnou.net/
Ōbaku head temple Manpuku-ji official, “About Manpuku-ji” — Ingen’s arrival in 1654 and the founding in 1661; independence as the Ōbaku school in 1876; Ming architecture; ingen beans, watermelon, lotus root, moso bamboo, the wooden fish, fucha cuisine
https://www.obakusan.or.jp/about/
Institute for Zen Studies blog, “The Rinzai school that does not sit facing the wall” — Bodhidharma’s nine years facing a wall; the Shōsōrin Ryaku Shingi; the present facing arrangement; the Hakuin conjecture
https://www.zenbunka.or.jp/zenken/?p=672
nippon.com, “Suzuki Daisetz: the Buddhist philosopher who took ZEN to the world” — born Kanazawa 1870, died 1966; Essays in Zen Buddhism 1927 and Zen Buddhism and Its Influence on Japanese Culture 1938; Columbia, John Cage, J. D. Salinger, the Beats; that he was not a priest
https://www.nippon.com/ja/japan-topics/b07214/
Encyclopedia Nipponica, “wa-kei-sei-jaku” (via Kotobank) — “not in fact a phrase expressed by Rikyū”; the Genroku era; first appearance 1699 in Daishin Gitō’s preface to Chaso-den, published 1730
https://kotobank.jp/word/%E5%92%8C%E6%95%AC%E6%B8%85%E5%AF%82-154004

This article does not set out to explain Zen doctrine; it presents what each school publishes officially about itself. The fine points of zazen vary by temple and training hall. If you go and sit somewhere, follow the instructions given on the day.

Several things remain unsettled. (1) Attributing Rinzai’s shift from facing the wall to facing the room to Hakuin’s influence is written by the Institute for Zen Studies author as conjecture. (2) The “keikaku sakurei” etymology of “kyōsaku”, and the modern opt-in practice at public sittings, are common across explanatory sources but were not confirmed on the schools’ own official pages. (3) Kotobank’s Encyclopedia Nipponica entry calls Daishin Gitō the 23rd abbot of Daitoku-ji; other sources say the 273rd. Because the sources disagree, no generation number is given in the text. (4) On Zen and tea, we have stayed with what is verifiable — scrolls and Zen vocabulary — and have avoided slogans such as “tea and Zen, one taste” whose origins we could not confirm.