Zazen Jap., (Chin., tso-ch’an), lit. za, “sitting” and zen, “absorption”; meditative practice taught in Zen as the most direct way to enlightenment (also satori, kenshō). Zazen is not meditation in the usual sense, since meditation includes, at least initially, the focusing of the mind on a “meditation object” (for example, a mandala or a graphic representation of a bodhisattva) or contemplating abstract properties (for instance, impermanence or compassion). Zazen, however, is intended to free the mind from bondage to any thought-form, vision, thing, or representation, however sublime or holy it might be.
Even such aids to zazen practice as kōans are not meditation objects in the usual sense; the essential nature of a kōan is paradox, that which is beyond conception.
In its purest form zazen is dwelling in a state of thought-free, alertly wakeful attention, which, however, is not directed toward any object and clings to no content (shikantaza). If practiced over a long period of time with persistance and devotion, zazen brings the mind of the sitter to a state of totally contentless wakefulness, from which, in a sudden breakthrough of enlightenment, he can realize his own true nature or buddha-nature (busshō), which is identical with the nature of the entire universe.
As is already clear from the presence of the word zen, i.e., “absorption,” in its name, zazen, “sitting in absorption,” is the alpha and omega of Zen. Without zazen, no Zen. kōans like that in which a great Ch’an master tells his student “through sitting [zazen] one can’t become a buddha” (on this, Nan-yueh Huai-jang) are occasionally completely misunderstood to mean that these masters considered zazen ultimately unnecessary, since one is already a buddha. Now the affirmation that all beings are, from the beginning, buddhas is indeed a central affirmation of Buddhism and of Zen; however, Zen stresses that it makes a great -in fact a decisive- difference whether one merely gullibly takes this affirmation to be true or whether one experiences this truth in its deepest sense directly and immediately oneself. Such an experience is the “awakening” to which the practice of zazen is in tended to lead.
As the first patriarch of Ch’an (Zen) in China (Bodhidharma) already demonstrated through his nine years of sitting in absorption facing the wall (menpeki) at the Shao-lin Monastery, zazen is the central practice of Zen and is prized by all Zen masters as the “gateway to complete liberation,” as Dōgen Zenji said. In his Zazen-wasan (“Song in Praise of Zazen”), the great Zen master Hakuin Zenji sings:
Zazen as taught in the Mahāyāna:
No praise can exhaust its merit.
The six pāramitās, like giving of alms, observing the precepts and other good deeds, differently enumerated,
They all come from zazen.
Whoever even gains the merit of practicing zazen once,
Eliminates immeasurable guilt accumulated in the past.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion: Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Zen. Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Books on Zazen
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