Tradition

Zen

The dhyana school. From Bodhidharma to Dogen — the tradition of just sitting and the koan, the meeting of mind and stone.

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Knowledge

A Zen teacher seated in zazen meditation posture

TraditionsZen

Zen

The meditation school that strips Mahayana to its experiential core: a special transmission outside the scriptures, not founded on words and letters; pointing directly at the human mind, seeing into one's own nature, attaining buddhahood.

FiguresZen

Bodhidharma

Sixth-century South Indian monk who crossed by sea to southern China, sat for nine years in a cave at Shaolin facing a wall, and transmitted what would become Chan in China and Zen in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. The dharma transmitted from mind to mind, outside the scriptures, begins with him.

Dogen's 1233 manuscript of the Fukan Zazengi, the founding text of shikantaza

PracticesZen

Zazen — Just Sitting

The defining practice of the Zen tradition — sitting silently in upright posture, without object, without goal. Dogen's shikantaza: 'just sitting,' nothing added.

Sengai Gibon's "Universe" — the classic Zen ink painting of a square, triangle, and circle

ConceptsZen

Buddha-Nature in Zen

The Zen reading of tathagatagarbha — that one's own nature is already buddha, that practice does not produce awakening but uncovers what was never absent. The teaching at the heart of Dogen's Shobogenzo and the foundation of the Rinzai koan tradition.

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Engaged Buddhism8 Mahayana14 Mindfulness-Based7 Newar Buddhism10 Nichiren2 Pure Land5 Theravada16 Vajrayana18