Zen Buddhism: Its History, the Rinzai and Sōtō Schools, and How to Begin

The branch as a whole: where Zen came from, how its schools differ, and the practices of a Zen community

What is Zen Buddhism, and how do Rinzai and Sōtō differ?

Zen is the school of Mahāyāna Buddhism that puts seated meditation (zazen) at the centre of practice. The name is the Japanese reading of the Chinese chan, from the Sanskrit dhyāna, “meditation.” It took shape in China, spread to Korea (Seon), Vietnam (Thiền) and Japan, and is lived through a teacher, a community, ritual and daily work as well as sitting. Japan’s two main schools differ mainly in method. Rinzai, from the line of the Chinese master Linji and revived by Hakuin, trains with kōans in private meetings with a teacher (sanzen) and aims at seeing one’s own nature (kenshō). Sōtō, founded by Dōgen and Keizan, centres on shikantaza (“just sitting”) and teaches that practice and realisation are one.

Zen describes itself as a “special transmission outside the scriptures,” passed from teacher to student since Shakyamuni Buddha held up a flower and his disciple Mahākāśyapa smiled. In the tradition’s own story, the Indian monk Bodhidharma brought this transmission to China in the early sixth century and sat facing a wall for nine years; the sixth patriarch, Huineng, an illiterate rice-huller, won the succession with a verse saying that from the beginning not a single thing exists. Historians read much of this as later legend. John McRae, who translated the Platform Sūtra, calls its characters literary creations and notes that Huineng and his rival Shenxiu were never at the same monastery together — while arguing that the stories still carry what generations of Chan Buddhists cared about most. Historically, Chan emerged as a meditation movement in Tang-dynasty China, was later ordered by the tradition into the Five Houses, and spread to Korea as Seon, to Vietnam as Thiền and to Japan as Zen. In Japan, Eisai brought the Rinzai line late in the twelfth century and Dōgen brought Sōtō in the thirteenth; a third school, Ōbaku, arrived from China in 1654. Since the twentieth century Zen has also put down roots in Europe and the Americas. This page is the hub for the branch. The meditation methods have their own pages — zazen and the core practices, kōans, shikantaza, kinhin, breath counting, beginner’s mind and the Heart Sūtra — and are linked rather than taught again here. What follows are the practices of belonging to a Zen tradition: finding a community and teacher, sitting at home, sesshin, chanting, work, formal meals, and reading one foundational text.