SO TO ZEN - Shasta Abbey

THE GIST OF SŌTŌ ZENa. What is Serene Rešection Meditation?The practice of Buddhist meditation and its influence onculture are unique to the East. But recently this practicehas found admirers in the West, primarily through the writingsof Dr. D. T. Suzuki. In America, Zen is currently enjoyingsomething of a boom. In the West, Buddhism is sometimeseven identified with Zen. Briefly, Zen first saw the light of dayin India, developed on Chinese soil and reached its most matureexpression in Japan. We can readily see why its outlook isso wide. Also, because Buddhist meditation has maintained aninseparable relationship with the culture of the countries inwhich it developed, its contents gradually became richer anddeeper. Although the word ÒZenÓ is of Indian origin, it hasentered the vocabularies of most foreign languages. Zen is theJapanese pronunciation of the Chinese character pronouncedchÕan in modern Chinese, which was chosen by the Chinese becauseof its phonetic approximation to the Prakrit jhn. Jhn isthe shortened form of jhna, in Sanskrit dhyna, suffering theloss of the final vowel. Dhyna means Òto think.Ó The meaningof dhyna is usually represented in Buddhist texts by the word112