Sitting meditation is a core practice of Zen. “Zen” is a transliteration of the Chinese word for meditation (chan). Our stream of Buddhism was given this name because of its relative emphasis on sitting practice. Many people new to meditation find it challenging at first. It may seem ironic that something so seemingly simple as sitting still is so hard for many of us initially, yet this also hints at one of the reasons many of us become interested in Zen. With a bit of time, dedication, and gentleness with oneself, most people soon settle into sitting practice. Meditation ultimately teaches us to meditate.

Newcomers to Zen typically begin with a form of sitting practice that helps center and stabilize attention (usually counting one’s breath). Later one moves to shikantaza, in which we do not focus attention on anything. Though we generally use the word meditation for both forms of sitting practice, it applies most appropriately to the first. The word meditation means “moving toward the center,” as in centering our awareness.

Shikantaza is a contemplative practice. The Latin word contemplation contains the same root we find in the word temple. The Romans chose it to translate the Greek word theoria, which means to look at something. Contemplation suggests a place from which we look toward the sky, where the ancients located the gods. It connotes turning toward, opening to, and becoming one with the cosmos and seeing from that perspective. Though Zen does not concern itself with concepts of divinity, like Western contemplative spiritual traditions it is concerned with a shift in the expansiveness, depth, and clarity of our insight and experience—with looking deeply into reality and knowing our own experience and actions as manifestations of it.

Zen’s forms of sitting practice help us attend closely and sensitively to all that arises, including oneself, from the most simultaneously penetrating and expansive perspective we can. Experiences while sitting may vary widely. We often become very aware of our active mind—or Monkey Mind—as we sit. Emotions may surface or you may experience mild physical discomfort (an ache or a limb that has fallen asleep). We may experience sleepiness or boredom. We might also experience ourselves and all things intimately, as boundless wholeness, a perspective sometimes referred to as non-duality. One may discover oneself happily and securely immersed and enmeshed in, held in, by, and as, the universe. The practices and wisdom of Zen and other traditions that emphasize meditation are ancient and, although we do not encourage an instrumentalist orientation to practice, we note that the transformations they can produce are increasingly studied and validated by researchers in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and other disciplines. Whatever may arise during sitting practice—and at all other times—it is all arising in and as this vast realm of wholeness. Sitting practice is an opportunity to recognize and experience this.

Indeed, sitting is the practice of discovering that sitting (and all other action) is the expression of enlightenment, or Buddha nature. Meditation and Zen’s other practices (especially reflection on and working with the Zen Bodhisattva Precepts) can help us develop an embodied (not merely intellectual) understanding and appreciation of this vast realm of wholeness into which we are woven. This embodied knowing can help transform our thought and action to accord more completely and wisely with the reality of interconnectedness. Meditation, an activity that initially may seem to be about inactivity, is really all about activity, including our own actions.

Working with koans is another core practice—one unique to Zen. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” is a Zen koan. Most koans are brief accounts of interactions between Zen teachers and other practitioners. They have been recorded, bound into collections, and passed down to us through the ages. A koan initially may seem obscure, irreverent, or paradoxical. If so, that likely says more about how one is approaching it, and approaching life, than it says about the koan. A koan is not a paradox, just as life is not a paradox.

Koans are used in a very distinctive way as a mode of practice during student-teacher meetings. (We could say more, but one truly must experience this practice to understand and appreciate it.) Koans also often are used by Zen teachers as texts on which to base a talk.

Other core Zen practices include communal liturgy, which involves chanting and bowing; reading ancient and contemporary texts in diverse genres (sutras, poetry, and contemporary Dharma books); contemplative arts (calligraphy, tea ceremony, flower arranging, music, poetry, etc.); and service. Liturgical and stewardship roles within the sangha, peace-and-justice activities beyond it, completing a project at work, and clearing the dishes after dinner are examples of service. Zen practice encompasses the whole of our lives, encouraging us to experience our everyday relationships and activities at home, work, and elsewhere as practice and opportunities to serve.

Although Zen practice can help one realize intimacy with all that is, for many of us other practices distinct from Zen also will be part of an integrated path of growth toward wholeness. Psychotherapy can help us work through painful or traumatic experiences or help us access repressed or rejected parts of ourselves. Once these parts are recognized and integrated, they can be liberated into wholeness. While meditation fundamentally is an embodied practice, other somatic practices such as yoga, focusing, floating, Tai Chi and other martial arts can be beneficial. Zen and other practices often can help potentiate and support one another.