Zen Practice (Zazen and Beyond)

Zazen, shikantaza, koans, and beginner’s mind — mechanisms and honest evidence

What are the core practices of Zen, and what do they actually do?

Zen centers on zazen — seated meditation — in two main forms: shikantaza ("just sitting" in open awareness) and koan practice (sustained inquiry into a paradoxical question). Alongside these sits "beginner’s mind," the attitude of meeting experience without preconception. These are traditional contemplative practices; some mechanisms overlap with studied attention training, but Zen’s specific aims and claims are largely experiential rather than clinically validated.

Zen is famously sparse: less doctrine, more sitting. Its practices strip meditation down to posture, breath, and a particular quality of awareness — and then, in koan work, deliberately break the thinking mind against an unanswerable question. Below are the core practices, each with the mechanism that makes it more than sitting still, and an honest read on where evidence exists and where the tradition is speaking experientially.