Zen

Zen-influenced ideals of egoless action; the influence varies by school

The school the practice defines and is defined by.

The hands rest in the cosmic seal through zazen, the thumbs meeting so lightly that a slack thumb or a pressed one is read back as a slack or a straining mind.

Meditative concentration names this school, whose name descends through Chinese and Japanese from the Sanskrit word for the fifth perfection, and its practice is presented as the whole of the path rather than one part of it.

The sutra this scroll carries is the text the Chan and Zen tradition placed at its centre, and the scroll itself is the oldest dated printed book that survives.

The Japanese form of the robe is worn over the koromo, and the small rakusu hung at the chest is given to lay practitioners at the precept ceremony.

Noh took its shape inside a Buddhist account of the world and its ghosts are released rather than defeated, but it is theatre performed for patrons and not a rite of any school.

Roshi, old master, is the honorific for a senior Zen teacher, and what matters is the acknowledgement of a teacher already acknowledged rather than an examination passed.

Sensei is the ordinary word for teacher, and in Zen it addresses a teacher below the standing that roshi implies.

Blowing meditation belonged to the Fuke komuso rather than to the monastic schools, and the Fuke line was abolished by the state in 1871.

Chan tradition places Bodhidharma at the monastery, and the Japanese and Korean schools of the tradition trace their lineage back through him to it.

The school the practice defines and is defined by.

Chanted in Sino-Japanese sound rather than in Sanskrit, so what a Zen hall says is a Japanese reading of Chinese characters transcribing an Indian formula, and it is not treated as a mantra to be worked with but as the end of a sutra to be recited.

The Chan side left its own record of the debate, recovered among the Dunhuang manuscripts, and it reports the outcome the other way. Which party prevailed at Samye is a question the two traditions answer differently from their own documents.

The perfections are held in Zen.

Anatta, that there is no permanent unchanging self, is affirmed across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Zen keeps December the eighth as Rohatsu and precedes it with the year's most demanding retreat, a week of sesshin culminating in a night of sitting through to dawn in imitation of the Buddha's vow not to rise until awakened.

Buddha-nature as already present and to be directly seen, not gradually built, is central to this tradition's teaching.

Dependent origination, that phenomena arise in dependence on conditions, is the central explanatory principle shared across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The formal transmission of a student's realization from teacher to teacher, outside reliance on doctrinal texts alone, is this tradition's institutional and doctrinal center.

The Diamond Sutra is especially influential in this tradition, where a Chinese printed copy of it is the earliest surviving dated printed book.

Dukkha, the unsatisfactoriness of conditioned existence and the first Noble Truth, is affirmed across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The Heart Sutra is chanted daily across this tradition and is its most recited scripture.

Seon is the Korean line of the same Chan and Zen family, and Jinul is its decisive medieval reformer.

Karma, action and its consequence, is affirmed as the mechanism of rebirth across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Kinhin is walking meditation, practised in the Zen tradition as a bridge between periods of seated meditation.

Kyudo's spiritual register also draws on Zen-inflected ideals of egoless action.

Zen sits facing a wall in Soto and facing into the room in Rinzai, upright with eyes lowered and half open, and treats the sitting itself as the expression of awakening rather than as a technique leading toward it.

Zen sits zazen, upright and still with eyes lowered and half open; Soto practises shikantaza, just sitting in open awareness, while Rinzai gives the sitter a koan to hold against the reasoning mind.

Zen carries the same attention into work, walking, eating and cleaning rather than confining it to the cushion, and its monastic forms treat every ordinary act as the practice, which is where the tradition's spare aesthetic comes from.

Nirvana, the cessation of craving and the end of rebirth, is the shared goal named across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Written by a lay Zen student under a named Zen teacher, and read in the standard scholarship as enacting Zen themes of impermanence and non attachment through the practice of travel, not a passing reference to the tradition.

Clergy or specialist role within Zen.

Roshi, the venerable teacher, is the senior teaching title of Japanese Zen specifically.

Samsara, the beginningless round of rebirth from which the Buddhist path seeks release, is affirmed across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Satori and kensho, breakthrough insight into one's own nature, name this tradition's goal of practice.

Zen bokuseki, the ink traces of monk calligraphers

Zen inherits the Chinese sudden teaching from the Southern school of Chan, though the sudden and gradual houses of that dispute are now read as a polemical construction of the eighth century rather than as two real lineages.

Emptiness, inherited from Madhyamaka and Prajnaparamita literature, underlies this tradition's approach to direct experience.

The Four Noble Truths, the Buddha's foundational diagnosis of suffering and its cure, are affirmed as the basis of the path across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The Noble Eightfold Path, the fourth Noble Truth's prescribed practice, structures the path across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Going for refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is the formula of Buddhist identity across schools, including this tradition.

The three marks, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self, are held as characteristics of all conditioned things across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Zazen is Zen's whole practice rather than a preparation for it. Soto teaches shikantaza, just sitting in open awareness with nothing to attain, and treats the sitting as itself the expression of awakening; Rinzai has the sitter hold a koan.

Clergy or specialist role within Zen.

Zen does not accept that the present age puts awakening out of reach. The Zen founders in Japan worked in the same period as the Pure Land and Nichiren founders and drew the opposite conclusion from the same premise, holding that practice remains effective and that awakening is available now.

Non-injury is held in Zen and is the first of the precepts taken at lay and monastic ordination alike.

The three poisons are held in Zen.

Impermanence is held in Zen.

The bodhisattva motivation is held in Zen, and the four great vows are chanted in the daily liturgy of Zen monasteries.

Buddhahood is held in Zen, and the school's characteristic claim is that it is realised rather than produced.

Giving is held in Zen as the first of the perfections, and the alms round and the meal ritual are its daily form in a Zen monastery.

Zen holds the dharma and holds with it that the dharma is not finally captured in doctrinal formulation. The school's self-description as a transmission outside the scriptures is itself a claim about what the dharma is and how it passes, not a refusal to make claims.

Original enlightenment is held in Zen, inherited from the Tendai teaching within which the Japanese Zen founders were trained, and the question it raises, why practise at all if awakening is already the ground, is the question Zen practice is offered as the answer to.

Collected absorption is held in Zen, and the school takes its name from the word.

The five aggregates are held in Zen, and the Heart Sutra's declaration that all five are empty is the text recited most often in Zen halls.

The four immeasurables are held in Zen.

The six realms are held in Zen.

The six sense bases are held in Zen.

The three realms of desire, form and the formless are held in Zen.