Zen or Zen Buddhism is a form of the Buddhist religion that concentrates on meditation rather than on studying religious writings. a kind of Buddhism from Japan that emphasizes meditation. Important school of Buddhism that claims to transmit the experience of enlightenment achieved by the Buddha Gautama. Arising as Chan in China in the 6th century (introduced by Bodhidharma), it divided into two schools, the Southern school, which believed in sudden enlightenment, and the Northern school, which believed in gradual enlightenment. By the 8th century only the Northern school survived. Zen developed fully in Japan by the 12th century and had a significant following in the West by the later 20th century. Zen teaches that the potential to achieve enlightenment is inherent in everyone but lies dormant because of ignorance. It is best awakened not by the study of scripture, the practice of good deeds, rites and ceremonies, or worship of images, but by breaking through the boundaries of mundane logical thought. Methods employed vary among different schools and may emphasize the practice of zazen (in the Soto school), the use of koans (in the Rinzai school), or the continual invocation of Amida (in the Obaku school; see Amitabha)
a Buddhist doctrine that enlightenment can be attained through direct intuitive insight school of Mahayana Buddhism asserting that enlightenment can come through meditation and intuition rather than faith; China and Japan
A school or division of Buddhism characterized by techniques designed to produce enlightenment In particular, Zen emphasizes various sorts of meditative practices which are supposed to lead the practitioner to a direct insight into the fundamental character of reality See Ku and Mokuso
The discipline of enlightenment related to the Buddhist doctrine that emphasizes meditation, discipline, and the direct transmision of teachings from master to student
A major school of Mahayana Buddhism, with several branches One of its most popular techniques is meditation on koans, which leads to the generation of the Great Doubt According to this method
Meditation Derived from the Sanskrit 'dhyana' A school of Mahayana Buddhism that developed in China and Japan
vt To figure out something by meditation or by a sudden flash of enlightenment Originally applied to bugs, but occasionally applied to problems of life in general "How'd you figure out the buffer allocation problem?" "Oh, I zenned it " Contrast {grok}, which connotes a time-extended version of zenning a system Compare {hack mode} See also {guru}
It is possible for a person to attain enlightenment in this life through the practice of meditation and development of mental and spiritual discipline Zen means "meditation" and is the Japanese equivalent of the original Sanskrit term dhyana Japanese art of acupressure to ease tension and balance the body
Japanese; Ch'an (Chinese); a branch of Mahayana Buddhism which developed in China during the sixth and seventh centuries after Bodhidharma arrived; it later divided into the Soto and Rinzai schools; Zen stresses the importance of the enlightenment experience and the futility of rational thought, intellectual study and religious ritual in attaining this; a central element of Zen is zazen, a meditative practice which seeks to free the mind of all thought and conceptualization
A Japanese school of Buddhism which has become popular in North America It is similar to the Chinese school of Buddhism known as Chan
This is one school of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism It developed in China (where it was known as Chan Buddhism), and spread into Japan and Korea It has incorporated several ideas from Taoism
(from Japanese,'zenna' or 'zenno' - from Chinese ch'an-na, or ch'an, - from *dhyana) A coalition of related ways for attaining realization, even beyond enlightenment, of the true nature underlying all appearances, including one's own-and above all, that there is no duality within appearances, but only the one buddha-nature Ch'an/Zen is summarized in the four lines attributed to *Boddhidharma, the key figure who, according to tradition, transmitted the *dharma from India to China (see the Dictionary for the full entry)