Glossary
Every Zen and Buddhist word used on this site, in plain English. Each entry gives the word as it is usually written in English, the original script, what it means literally, and what it refers to in practice.
35 terms
A
A teacher in the line of transmission counted back to the Buddha. Older English works, such as Soothill and Hodous’s dictionary (1937), render it “patriarch”.
Jp. so · also “patriarch” in older English
B
The Indian monk tradition names as the first ancestor of Chan in China. See his entry under Ancestors.
Jp. Daruma
In Mahāyāna Buddhism, one who practises for the awakening of all beings rather than their own alone. Zen practitioners take bodhisattva vows.
Skt. bodhisattva · Jp. bosatsu
The capacity for awakening that Mahāyāna teaching holds every being has. The subject of the first case of the Gateless Gate.
Ch. foxing · Skt. buddhatā
D
The Buddha’s teaching, and also universal law or truth, and also any phenomenon. Which sense is meant depends on context.
Skt. dharma · Jp. hō
A teacher’s formal recognition of a student as an heir to their line. It is what a line on a lineage chart means. What it requires, and what it entitles the heir to, differs by school.
Jp. shihō · Ch. sifa
A private meeting between a student and their teacher about the student’s practice. In koan training, where the student presents their understanding of a koan.
also sanzen 参禅
G
Palms together in front of the face: a greeting and a sign of respect.
H
The lower abdomen, where attention is placed in zazen.
I
A teacher’s certification that a student has received the dharma and awakened. In Rinzai it is given only to the few who finish the whole koan curriculum, and makes them the teacher’s dharma heir. Sanbō Zen joins it to the Sōtō rite of dharma transmission.
Jp. inka shōmei 印可証明
J
The ceremony of receiving the Buddhist precepts, a formal entry into Buddhism. In Western Zen centres it is the ceremony for lay practitioners; the same word also names the ordination of monks and nuns.
K
The Linji school’s method, from the Song dynasty, of concentrating on the key phrase of a koan.
Ch. kanhua Chan · Jp. kanna Zen
A direct insight into one’s own nature.
Ch. jianxing
Walking meditation, done between periods of zazen.
Ch. jingxing
A short record of an exchange between a teacher and a student, or a teacher’s saying, given to a student as an object of meditation. The student presents their understanding to the teacher in private meetings.
Ch. gong’an · Kr. kongan
L
The chain of dharma transmission from teacher to student, counted back through the ancestors. Lineage charts are the tradition’s own record of itself. Its line back through the twenty-eight Indian ancestors to the Buddha is a matter of tradition; the Sōtō school’s own glossary calls it the mythology of the Zen lineage.
Jp. hōkei
M
Visions, sensations or states that arise in meditation and are to be let pass rather than valued.
The name Hongzhi Zhengjue 宏智正覺, of the Song-dynasty Caodong school, gave to his way of sitting, in his Mozhao ming 默照銘. His Linji contemporary Dahui Zonggao 大慧宗杲 attacked it as “the heretical Chan of silent illumination”. The Rinzai–Ōbaku council’s glossary uses the Japanese form, mokushō Zen, for the Sōtō style of shikantaza.
Ch. mozhao · Jp. mokushō
Zhaozhou’s answer in the first case of the Gateless Gate.
Ch. wu
O
A Buddhist monk or priest. In Indian Buddhism, a monk senior enough to sponsor the ordination of others. In present-day Sōtō, the title of any monk or nun who has received dharma transmission; daioshō, of one who has led a training retreat at their own temple.
Ch. heshang · Skt. upādhyāya
P
The ethical commitments a Buddhist takes on. Many Western Zen centres give lay people sixteen bodhisattva precepts at jukai: the three refuges, the three pure precepts and the ten grave precepts.
Skt. śīla · Jp. kai
R
A small cloth garment worn around the neck, representing the Buddhist robe. Usually sewn by the recipient and given at jukai.
A title of respect for a senior Zen teacher. What it requires differs from one school and organisation to the next: in Rinzai it is the honorific for a shike; some Western centres give it to teachers who have received dharma transmission.
Ch. laoshi
S
The community of practitioners. Originally the monastic order; in Western Zen, any practising group.
Skt. saṅgha
Awakening. In modern usage often interchangeable with kenshō.
Teacher. In some Western Zen organisations a formal rank below rōshi; in Japan, a general term of address for teachers of anything.
A retreat of several days given mostly to zazen, held in silence on a fixed schedule.
also written 摂心, 攝心
Zazen practised to the exclusion of other practices, such as offering incense, prostrations or reading sutras, and not as a means to an end. Dōgen records the phrase as the teaching of his own teacher, Tiantong Rujing, and made it the name of the practice he taught; the Sōtō school’s constitution sets realizing it as the school’s doctrine.
Ch. zhiguan dazuo
In Japanese Rinzai, a teacher who has received the dharma from their own teacher and is charged with guiding students in koan practice. A formal rank, not an honorific.
The attitude of openness of someone starting out. The phrase was made familiar in English by Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
A scripture presented as the words of the Buddha. Zen monasteries chant sutras in a morning service every day, and the Heart Sutra is one of the sutras in their liturgy.
Skt. sūtra · Ch. jing
T
A formal talk by a Zen teacher that takes up a passage from the ancestors’ recorded sayings or a koan. Ding Fubao’s dictionary and the Toronto Zen Centre’s glossary set it apart from a lecture: it presents the teaching rather than explaining it. The Rinzai–Ōbaku council’s glossary treats it as the technical word for kōza, a teacher’s lecture on such texts.
Z
Seated meditation; the central practice of every Zen school.
Ch. zuochan · Kr. jwaseon
The school of Buddhism that grew up in China and spread to Japan; tradition dates its start to Bodhidharma’s arrival in the sixth century. Its name is the Japanese reading of the Chinese word for the Sanskrit dhyāna, “meditation”.
Ch. Chan · Kr. Seon · Vi. Thiền · Skt. dhyāna
The hall where zazen is practised.