Zen

The designation of this school of the Buddha-Way as Zen, which means sitting meditation is derived from a transliteration of the Chinese word Chan. Because the Chinese term is in turn a transliteration of the Sanskrit term dhyana, however, Zen owes its historical origin to early Indian Buddhism, where a deepened state of meditation, called samadhi, was singled out as one of the three components of study a Buddhist was required to master, the other two being an observation of ethical precepts and an embodiment of nondiscriminatory wisdom. The reason that meditation was singled out for the designation of this school is based on the fact that the historical Buddha achieved enlightenment (nirvana) through the practice of meditation. In the context of Zen Buddhism, perfection of nondiscriminatory wisdom designates practical, experiential knowledge, and secondarily and only derivatively theoretical, intellectual knowledge. Zen explains, because theoretical knowledge is a form of “language game”, discrimination through the use of language, as it is built in part on distinction-making. Zen believes that it ultimately carries no existential meaning for emancipating a human being from his or her predicaments, for it maintains that discriminatory knowledge of any kind is illusory in nature. To this effect it holds that it is through a practical transformation of the psycho-physiological constitution of one's being that one prepares for embodying nondiscriminatory wisdom. This preparation involves the training of the whole person and is called “self-cultivation”. It is a practical method of correcting the modality of one's mind by correcting the modality of one's body, in which practice is given precedence over theory.