Zen

Zen (ch'an in Mandarin, 禪) Buddhism is a fusion of Mahayana Buddhist beliefs with Taoism. Zen especially emphasizes the practice of meditation. It developed when teachers from India, the original homeland of Buddhism, founded schools in China, where it was known as ch'an. Ch'an is the Mandarin transliteration of the Sanskrit word channa or dhyana. The canonical exemplar of these teachers is Bodhidharma, the Indian monk who traditionally founded Zen Buddhism at the Shaolin Temple in the fifth century CE. Later, Japanese monks studying in China learned of Zen and brought it back to Japan, where several divergent schools of thought emerged.

Influenced by Taoism, Zen de-emphasizes study and worldly deeds, and concentrates instead on meditation and a non-rational awareness of the world and the way the mind reacts to it.

Zen tradition holds that the highest form of spiritual practice is zazen meditation. Zazen translates approximately to just sitting. During zazen, practitioners assume the lotus position and sit facing a wall. Awareness is directed towards complete cognizance of one's posture and breathing. In this way, practictioners seek to transcend thought and be directly aware of the universe.

Later schools (especially Rinzai) developed the famous koans, paradoxical "riddles" or "puzzles" designed to shock the mind out of its rationalistic rut and into a non-discriminatory awareness.

The following Zen traditions still exist in Japan: Soto Zen, Rinzai Zen and Obaku. Founder of the Soto Zen school was the famous Zen master Dogen Zenji (1200-1253). Eizai founded Rinzai Zen and Obaku founded the Obaku school.

Many modern students have made the mistake of thinking that since much of Zen sounds like nonsense, then any clever nonsense is also Zen. This is not the case, but see Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius for modern semiserious religions influenced by this idea.