Sit zazen at home: a short orientation to the two schools’ instructions

Begin a daily sitting at home, knowing where the Sōtō and Rinzai instructions agree and where they part.

Why it works

The two schools agree on the body. Both official sites give the full or half lotus (or seiza, or a chair), an upright spine with ears over shoulders and nose over navel, the hands in the cosmic mudrā, and eyes kept open and lowered, because closed eyes drift into drowsiness. They differ on what the mind does. The Rinzai and Ōbaku site recommends counting exhalations from one to ten for people meditating on their own, then letting thoughts be seen and fade and looking into the source of the mind. The Sōtōshū instruction is not to concentrate on any object or control thought, neither pursuing nor escaping what arises, and to wake up from distraction and dullness by returning to the posture moment by moment; it quotes Dōgen setting breath counting aside as a beginner’s method distinct from the ancestors’ practice. The Sōtō view, as its school page puts it, is that zazen is not a means to a goal: the posture itself is the form of awakening.

How to do it

1. Pick a quiet, clean spot and a regular time. A short sitting every day matters more than an occasional long one.
2. Learn the posture from the zazen posture instructions on the Zen practice page, or better, from a teacher who can see you sit.
3. Sit with eyes open and lowered, the breath natural, for a period you can keep every day, even a short one.
4. If you are drawn to the Rinzai approach, count exhalations from one to ten and start again when you lose count; the breath-counting page covers this in detail.
5. If you are drawn to the Sōtō approach, drop any object and simply keep returning to upright, awake sitting; the shikantaza page covers this.
6. End slowly: bow, sway gently, unfold the legs and stand without hurrying.

Evidence

Posture, eyes, breathing and the instruction for the mind are from the Sōtōshū’s How to do Zazen page, which includes Dōgen’s remarks on breathing from the Eihei kōroku, and from the Rinzai and Ōbaku council’s Sitting page, which recommends susokkan for those sitting alone and says a short daily sitting at home helps. The Sōtōshū’s school page explains that zazen is not a means to a goal. Riggs describes Menzan Zuihō’s eighteenth-century text written to help lay men and women practise meditation, which is in fact a sermon on Dōgen’s teaching rather than a manual of technique. Korean Seon has its own method, ganhwa Seon, worked with through a hwadu, which Choo compares with the Satipaṭṭhāna tradition. (anecdotal)

This is an orientation, not full instruction; the schools themselves expect posture and practice to be checked by a teacher. Meditation research has studied related modern practices, not these specific Zen instructions.

Sources

• Sōtōshū (Soto Zen Buddhism). How to do Zazen. SOTOZEN.COM.
• Sōtōshū (Soto Zen Buddhism). The Soto Zen School’s Zazen. SOTOZEN.COM.
• Joint Council for Rinzai and Ōbaku Zen. Zazen — Sitting (regulating body, breath and mind). Rinnou.net.
• Riggs, D. E. (2005). Meditation for Laymen and Laywomen: The Buddha Samādhi (Jijuyū Zanmai) of Menzan Zuihō. In S. Heine & D. S. Wright (Eds.), Zen Classics, pp. 247–274. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Choo, B. H. (2018). Tracing the Satipaṭṭhāna in the Korean Ganhwa Seon Tradition: Its Periscope Visibility in the Mindful hwadu Sisimma, ‘Sati-Sisimma’. Religions, 9(11), 341.

Common mistake

Mixing the two instructions within a single sitting — counting for a minute, then “just sitting,” then switching back — and never settling into either. Pick one approach for a stretch of weeks and take your questions to a teacher.

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