The heart of Zen Buddhism is not a theory but a posture: sitting still, breathing, and meeting your own mind directly. This page teaches the complete practice of zazen, from how to sit to what to do with your thoughts.
Just sitting, fully awake
Zen meditation, or zazen, is the seated meditation at the centre of Zen Buddhist practice: you sit upright and still, let the breath settle into its natural rhythm, and allow thoughts to arise and pass without following them. Rather than aiming at relaxation or a special state, zazen is the direct practice of being fully present with things exactly as they are.
That simplicity is deceptive. Most meditation styles give the mind a job: repeat a mantra, scan the body, generate a feeling. Zazen strips the job away. In the beginner's form you count breaths, and in the mature form, shikantaza, you simply sit. What remains when there is nothing to do is the mind itself, and watching it settle is where all the benefits people report from Zen practice begin: steadiness under pressure, a longer gap between impulse and action, and a quiet that does not depend on circumstances.
Zazen sits within a wider tradition of practices; if you want to see how it compares with vipassana, metta and the other Buddhist forms, our guide to Buddhist meditation practices puts them side by side.
A stable base, an upright spine, a soft gaze
Everything in zazen is built on the posture, because a body that is stable and alert invites a mind that is stable and alert. Choose whichever base your body allows:
Counting the breath, and the art of returning
Once seated, give attention to the breath without controlling it. The classic beginner's method is breath counting: on the first exhale, silently count one; on the next, two; up to ten, then begin again at one. If you lose the count — and you will, hundreds of times — simply start again at one. Losing the count is not failure. Noticing that you lost it is the exact moment of awakening the practice trains, repeated over and over until it becomes your default.
Thoughts are not the enemy. Zazen treats them like traffic outside the window or clouds crossing the sky: present, sometimes loud, not something you need to board. When you find yourself halfway through a story about tomorrow's meeting, there is no need for judgement or commentary. Return to one. The instruction fits in a sentence and takes years to exhaust: sit down, count the breath, come back.
As the counting steadies over weeks and months, you can let it fall away and follow the breath without numbers, and eventually practise shikantaza — just sitting, with no object at all, resting in open awareness of whatever arises. There is no hurry to get there; the counting is not a beginner's crutch but a complete practice in itself.
Meditation that moves
In a zendo, periods of zazen are separated by kinhin, slow walking meditation: hands folded at the chest in shashu, steps of half a foot-length timed to the breath, attention resting on the soles of the feet. At home, a few minutes of kinhin between two sittings, or on its own down a hallway, keeps the meditative thread unbroken while relieving the knees. Our walking meditation guide teaches the full kinhin form along with everyday variations you can use on any street.
A plan small enough to survive real life
Difficulty is part of the design. Restlessness, boredom, sleepiness and doubt all visit every practitioner — in Zen they are met the same way as thoughts: noticed, allowed, not fed, returned from. If sitting itself is physically painful, change your base rather than enduring; pain is information, not achievement.
