It is tempting to file zazen alongside the meditation app on your phone, as one more way to calm down. The Zen priest we spoke with describes something else. This guide explains what zazen is, how it differs from meditation and mindfulness, how a sitting is practiced in a Japanese temple, how Zen came to occupy the place it holds in Japan today, and how to tell a real practice from a performance when you look for a session in Tokyo. It draws on our conversation with the head priest of a Rinzai Zen temple in Asakusa, and it is written for travelers who want to understand what they are sitting down to before they sit.
Temple lodging, meditation and shrine ritual, explained for the traveler.
Zazen means seated Zen: za, to sit, and zen. The second word has a long road behind it. The official site of Japan's Rinzai and Obaku Zen schools explains that "Zen" is the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word "chan", which in turn comes from the Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit dhyana, meaning meditation. Rev. Taijun Namiki, head priest of Kinryuji, a Rinzai temple in Asakusa, put the same lineage in his own words when we spoke with him: "I have heard that the origin of the word Zen is dhyāna, from an ancient Indian language."
What follows that sentence matters more than the etymology. "What matters, I think, is not to seek something outside, but to turn inward, and to stop seeking toward the outside," he said. Calm, focus and rest may come with sitting. The point he put first is different: stop seeking outside.
The word itself is said in two short syllables, za-zen. Two of Japan's Zen schools, Rinzai and Soto, both practice it, and the difference between them is worth knowing before you choose a temple; we come back to it below.
Rev. Namiki draws the difference between zazen and meditation from the people who come to his sessions, among whom are many familiar with meditation and mindfulness. "One difference I feel when talking with them is that, in meditation and mindfulness, it often seems that one places the self as something certain and then practices in order to protect it from stress and from slander," he said. "But in Zen and in Buddhism, what matters is muga."
Muga can sound, in English, like erasing yourself. He described it differently: "releasing the grip of 'I,' not erasing the self but loosening its hold. Setting aside, for a while, the so-called firm thing of 'it is I,' and concentrating on what is in front of you." The difference is one of direction. A technique for protecting the self keeps the self at the center; zazen tries to loosen the center.
He traced the grip back to a habit of seeing. "Normally we see things by dividing them in two. This is good, this is bad; clean, dirty; superior, inferior," he said. Society needs that way of seeing, he added, "but before one knows it, it connects to the mind that compares itself with others." Knowing this is not the same as being free of it, which is why Zen insists on practice: "Understanding it in the head is easy, but those habits are stuck fast, so monastic practice—training, in other words—becomes necessary after all."
Rinzai Zen adds its own emphasis. "In the Rinzai school I think 'each person their own' is a very important point of view," Rev. Namiki said. Shakyamuni's awakening is Shakyamuni's own, he went on, and there are stories of the ancestral teachers too, but "in the end one is asked: what is your awakening?" The Zen dialogue called mondō serves that question. Myoshinji, the head temple of his branch, makes a related point on its English site: enlightenment does not come from outside but is realized by turning one's light inward.
Is zazen, then, a kind of meditation or something else? One can answer both ways. Seen from outside, it is a form of seated meditation, and its name says so. Seen from inside a Rinzai temple, the purpose turns away from the one Rev. Namiki says he often senses in conversations about mindfulness: protecting the self. You can hold either view; it helps to know which one the priest in front of you holds.
When we asked what meaning there is in not moving, Rev. Namiki turned the difficulty into the lesson. "When you move, awareness inevitably turns there. Your foot hurts, or itches, and you become more and more caught by such things," he said. "But in fact, once it is over, that pain or itch often vanishes at once." What he finds interesting is what that reveals: "rather than the pain or discomfort itself, it is one's own mind that keeps making it larger." Stillness is not a test of endurance. It is the condition under which you can watch the mind do this.
In a Rinzai temple, the sitting is introduced in three steps. "In the Rinzai school we introduce zazen by those three—body, breath, mind (shin, soku, shin). First settling the body, then settling the breath, then settling the mind," Rev. Namiki said. The order is the instruction. "Trying to do something directly with the mind alone does not go well. So one first settles the body and settles the breath. As a result of that, the mind too, I think, gradually grows calm."
The body comes first. The Rinzai and Obaku schools' guide to sitting allows the full lotus, the half lotus, or seiza with a cushion between the legs, and asks for open eyes with the gaze lowered, warning against closing them. At Kinryuji the explanation comes before the sitting, so you do not need to arrive having mastered any of it.
Then the breath: the same guide asks for a long, relaxed exhalation. Then the mind, which by this point has been given less to do. That is the logic of the order: the mind is approached last, and indirectly.
Rev. Namiki added the setting. "I think it is good to do zazen as much as possible in natural sunlight," he said. "At the training monastery too it is done with the windows thrown open, and becoming one while feeling the wind and the air is, I think, one way."
In a monastery, sitting is only one part of the day. He described three pillars of life at the training monastery: labor, zazen and takuhatsu, the alms round. "What was often said was, 'become wholly the action you are doing now.' If you are cutting wood, cutting wood; if you are brushing your teeth, brushing your teeth; if you are eating, concentrate only on eating. So if you drop your chopsticks, you are scolded severely." A visitor's sitting is a small window onto a practice meant to fill the whole day.
Japan's Rinzai and Soto schools both sit, but they frame the sitting differently. The Soto school's constitution names its doctrine as the realization of shikantaza, "just sitting," according to its glossary of basic terms, and its etiquette page for the meditation hall tells you to sit down on your cushion, turn around to the right, and sit facing the wall. Rinzai practice works with kōan and Zen dialogue, the "what is your awakening?" that Rev. Namiki described. The Rinzai and Obaku sitting guide we consulted does not say which way to face, so ask the temple beforehand rather than assume.
The Rinzai school itself is not one body. "The Rinzai school is at present divided into fourteen branches, and our Myōshinji branch is a large one among them," Rev. Namiki said, and the Rinzai and Obaku schools' site likewise lists fourteen Rinzai branches, each led by a head temple. For a traveler, the practical point is simple: the school of the temple shapes the session you will sit in.
Zen took root in Japan as monasteries that won powerful patrons, and it has changed hands several times since. Rev. Namiki dates its arrival to "about 800 years ago." The Rinzai and Obaku schools' history page marks one founding moment, in 1191, when the monk Eisai returned to Japan bringing the Rinzai teachings and also the practice of drinking tea, and records that Zen masters soon won the support of Japan's leaders, who built great monasteries for them in Kyoto and Kamakura. The first change, then, was one of carriers: a teaching brought by monks became an institution held up by those in power.
The second change came from the state. During the Tokugawa period, a paper in the International Journal for Peace Studies explains, every household was required to be affiliated with a particular Buddhist temple, under a system aimed largely at detecting and persecuting Christians. The law behind it was rescinded in 1871, but the bond outlived it: many families still have the priest of their registered temple conduct funerals. The same paper notes that Meiji leaders took steps to weaken Buddhism's position while elevating State Shinto. At Kinryuji today, Rev. Namiki conducts memorial services and funerals for the temple's affiliated households, the danka, alongside zazen sessions for visitors.
Some of what Kinryuji held was lost outright. Most of the things at the temple are around sixty years old, Rev. Namiki told us, because the older ones "burned in the Great Kantō Earthquake and in the air raids." Kinryuji does not show you the centuries; it shows you what was kept.
The last change came from abroad. Jon Kabat-Zinn, MIT News reports, began studying Zen Buddhism and practicing meditation as a graduate student at MIT, and in 1979 founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic at UMass Medical School. In Rev. Namiki's zazen sessions, the two now meet. "Among those who come to the zazen sessions, there are also many people familiar with meditation and mindfulness," he said, and his contrast between protecting the self and loosening it comes from talking with them.
Rev. Namiki's own path runs through several of these layers. He was born into Kinryuji, where his grandfather and father were head priests, and studied law at university with a legal career in view. "I was not very good at comparing myself with others and competing," he said, and parishioners who ran a soba shop and a tofu shop told him that training, like their crafts, is better acquired while young. He trained for three years at the Heirinji training monastery in Saitama, served for about six years at Zenshōan in Taitō Ward, where he learned how to conduct zazen sessions, served in Kamakura, and has been head priest of Kinryuji since 2021.
The turning point came after training. At twenty-six he developed bronchial asthma and, during one attack, could not draw in air. "I strongly thought that there is a part where, with my own mind, I am constructing this world on my own," he said of that moment. On tradition, he distrusts fine-sounding words: "Not fine-sounding words, but after all, fact, the actual, is what matters." What he sees now is thinning. Traditional culture and religious observances, he said, "are, lately, increasingly simplified or omitted." By his parents' generation, osechi, the New Year dishes, had come to be chosen and bought from catalogs; his family still makes them together, because the point is everyone "going through one hardship and building up one thing." That is where a head priest stands today: observances thinning out around him, and visitors from abroad arriving to sit. The full account is in a conversation with a Rinzai head priest in Asakusa.
A zazen session in a temple is easy to describe as a schedule: so many minutes of talk, so many of sitting, tea at the end. The schedule is accurate and leaves out most of what happens. At Kinryuji the parts connect, and they are worth reading as one experience.
Rev. Namiki described the flow. "First, we give a talk on Buddhism and an explanation of zazen for about thirty minutes. After that, at our temple we do zazen of ten minutes about three times. When it is over, we serve matcha and a confection, take any questions, and close with talk about Zen." When we sat, the lighting was lowered toward natural light, and the sitting was introduced in the order of body, breath and mind.
The room is part of the teaching. "First, I would like people to notice that, despite being in Asakusa, this temple has a wooden main hall," he said. "It has a distinctive atmosphere, and it is different from doing it in a concrete room." The neighborhood is not shut out. "Around midday the smell of the town's restaurants sometimes drifts in, but I hope people will experience that as well, including such things." For a practice about not dividing the world into the welcome and the unwelcome, that is a consistent choice.
The ending connects zazen to tea. "Basically we serve fresh wagashi—seasonal Japanese confections—and matcha," he said. "Sometimes we choose seasonal things, and sometimes we prepare Asakusa sweets. Since matcha has a strong bitterness, the sweetness against it is, after all, indispensable." By the history page's account, Eisai brought the Rinzai teachings and the practice of drinking tea home on the same return, and the bowl at the end of the sitting is a small reminder of that. If you want the background, our guide to the purpose of the Japanese tea ceremony explains what the tea ceremony is for.
We know of no official grade for zazen sessions offered to visitors, so here are the questions we would ask, drawn from how Rev. Namiki designs his sessions. They are our criteria, not a rule any temple publishes.
First, who leads it? A priest who has trained in a monastery can explain why the posture matters, not only what it is. Rev. Namiki spent three years at a training monastery and then about six years at a temple where, as he put it, he was taught how to conduct zazen sessions. Second, is there teaching before the sitting? A session that shows you how to cross your legs and then rings a bell has taught you a position. One that spends half an hour on Buddhism and on zazen itself has given you a reason to sit.
Third, is it a living temple? A temple that holds funerals and memorial services for its households is a working religious institution, not a set. Fourth, how is the sitting paced? In our view, a few short sittings, like Kinryuji's three or so ten-minute sittings, suit beginners better than one long endurance test. Fifth, where does the ending lead? Tea and questions that turn back into talk about Zen close the circle; tea served as a souvenir does not. Tokyo has other temples worth knowing as well; our account of zazen at Gotokuji in Setagaya describes another.
A Zen temple's objects are worth knowing before you sit. "In the Rinzai school, what a senior master—a rōshi—has written is called bokuseki," Rev. Namiki said, and "it is treasured. Not a photograph, but from the movement of the brush itself, and from the content of the written words, one remembers that person and feels a longing for them." Some objects carry names too. "Buddhist implements are expensive, and not something to replace each time, so using them with care is what matters most of all," he said, and some bear the names of the parishioners who donated them, whose grandchildren now serve as temple officers. If you want to practice looking at brushwork before you go, our guide to learning to look at sumi-e is a place to start.
Zazen in Japan is reached at three levels. The first is public. What each temple opens to anyone, and when, is a question for the temple itself.
The second is arranged: sessions set up for visitors from abroad, like the ones Rev. Namiki leads at Kinryuji. The criteria above are meant for choosing among them.
In the way we work, a third level opens only through an introduction: time with a head priest that is not on any schedule, a conversation that continues after the sitting ends. For the wider city around such a visit, see a quiet trip to Tokyo through art and architecture.
In the Rinzai temple we visited, zazen is presented not as a technique for building a calmer, stronger self but as a practice for loosening the grip of the self that keeps comparing. It is approached through the body and the breath, in a wooden hall where the street is allowed in. You do not need to master it to sit. What you take away may be smaller and longer-lasting than calm: a moment, somewhere later in the trip, of noticing how much of the world your own mind is making.