Menpeki also Mempeki, Jap., lit. “facing the wall”; a Zen expression referring to the menpeki-kunen, the nine year’s of sitting absorbed in meditation at Shao-lin Monastery of Bodhidharma, the fir st patriarch of Ch’an (Zen) China. Menpeki became practically a synonym for zazen.
In the Sōtō school it is customary to practice zazen facing the wall, whereas monks in a monastery of the Rinzai school sit facing the center of the zendō. In many Zen paintings of Bodhidharma, the patriarch is shown sitting facing the wall of a cliff.
The expression menpeki should, however, not be understood as describing the outer circumstances of zazen practice alone in a deeper sense it designates the state of mind of the practitioner. On the one hand, the practitioner wants to make progress on the path of Zen and experience enlightenment. On the other hand, in the practice of Zen, all props and stays, all conceptions of a path and a goal, are taken away from him. Thus he finds himself in a situation where he is unable to make a single “step forward,” as though he were standing in front of a massive wall. This situation and the despair arising from it can bring the practition er to the point where finally he lets go of all thoughts, wishes, conceptions, and goals and in a sudden intuitive leap breaks through the wall, i.e, realizes that such a wall never existed.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
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