Zen
[zen]
- Chinese Ch'an. Buddhism. a Mahayana movement, introduced into China in the 6th century a.d. and into Japan in the 12th century, that emphasizes enlightenment for the student by the most direct possible means, accepting formal studies and observances only when they form part of such means.Compare koan, mondo1.
- the discipline and practice of this sect.
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Origin of Zen
< Japanese < Middle Chinese, equivalent to Chinese chán, transliteration of Pali jhāna < Sanskrit dhyāna
Also called Zen Buddhism.
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Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for zen
Contemporary Examples
The King returns to Cleveland, a battered Kobe battles in the West, and the Zen Master is christened the savior of New York.
2014 NBA Preview: Skinny LeBron and the Racist Ghost of Donald SterlingRobert Silverman
October 27, 2014
Those words were said by Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who ordained Leonard Cohen as a Zen monk in 1996.
When he emerged from the Zen monastery on Mount Baldy, his enlightenment was followed with an all too worldly disaster.
She is a local hippie, the most Zen out of all of us in the apartment.
After several delays the zen wonderland is now penciled in for an opening at the end of the summer.
Historical Examples
Keep this in mind, by the way: I barely knew the language, and the Zen could barely remember it.
ZenJerome Bixby
So the Zen before me was, by our standards, about twenty-five years old.
ZenJerome Bixby
But the Zen's question, even my rationalization of my reaction to it, had given me a chill.
ZenJerome Bixby
If the human body is a furnace, then the Zen body is a feeder pile.
ZenJerome Bixby
Six months later, when we returned, there were twelve hundred Zen on Vesta!
ZenJerome Bixby
Zen
- a Japanese school, of 12th-century Chinese origin, teaching that contemplation of one's essential nature to the exclusion of all else is the only way of achieving pure enlightenment
- (modifier) of or relating to this schoolZen Buddhism
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Word Origin
from Japanese, from Chinese ch'an religious meditation, from Pali jhāna, from Sanskrit dhyāna
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for zen
Zen
school of Mahayana Buddhism, 1727, from Japanese, from Chinese ch'an, ultimately from Sanskrit dhyana "thought, meditation," from PIE root *dhya "to see, contemplate."
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper
Zen
An approach to religion, arising from Buddhism, that seeks religious enlightenment by meditation in which there is no consciousness of self.
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Note
Deliberately irrational statements are sometimes used in Zen to jar persons into realizing the limits of the common uses of the intellect. One well-known example is, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.