How to Sit Zazen: A Beginner's Guide to Zen Meditation
Zazen (座禅) means simply “seated meditation,” and it is the heart of the whole Zen tradition — the thing every kōan, sutra, and teisho circles back to. Dōgen called it “the dharma gate of ease and joy.” Here is how to begin, in plain terms.
Find your seat
Sit on the front third of a firm cushion on the floor, or on a chair. On a cushion, cross your legs so both knees touch the ground — full lotus and half lotus are traditional, but a simple cross-legged (Burmese) position or kneeling astride the cushion work just as well. On a chair, keep both feet flat and sit away from the backrest. The goal in every case is the same: a stable triangle of support, so the spine can rise without effort.
Arrange the body
- Spine: upright and natural — imagine the crown of the head lifting gently toward the ceiling. Neither slumped nor rigid.
- Hands: rest them in your lap in the “cosmic mudra”: left hand on right palm, thumb-tips lightly touching, forming an oval.
- Eyes: half open, gaze soft, resting on the floor about a meter ahead. Closed eyes invite drowsiness and daydream; zazen is wakeful.
- Mouth: lips closed, tongue resting against the roof of the mouth. Breathe through the nose.
Breathe, and count
Let the breath settle low into the belly. Do not control it; watch it. Beginners are traditionally given breath counting: count each exhale silently — one, two, three — up to ten, then begin again at one. When you notice you have wandered to twenty-three, or lost the count entirely in a story about tomorrow, simply return to one. That return — noticed, unforced, without commentary — is not a failure of the practice. It is the practice.
What about all the thoughts?
Thoughts are not the enemy, and a “blank mind” is not the goal. The old image: thoughts are clouds; you are the sky. Let them come, let them go, and keep returning to the breath and the body. In the words attributed to the Faith-Mind Inscription, the trouble is never that thoughts arise — only that we pick them up and argue with them.
How long, and how kept
Begin with ten or fifteen minutes a day; consistency matters far more than duration. In a zendo, sitting periods are kept by bells — one sound to begin, one to end — so no one watches a clock. Practicing at home, a timer with a bell serves the same purpose: set it, then forget time entirely. Some sitters add a soft interval bell midway as a gentle return from wandering. (The MyRoshi zazen room keeps the bells for you — session length and interval are both tunable.)
Common early mistakes
- Chasing a special state. Zazen is not a technique for producing bliss; it is sitting down inside your actual life.
- Grading each sitting. “Good” sits and “bad” sits look identical from the outside — and mean less than you think from the inside.
- Sitting rarely but long. Fifteen minutes daily outworks two hours on Sunday.
- Practicing only alone forever. A teacher — to sit with, question, and be questioned by — changes everything. That is the role of teisho and dokusan in the tradition.
Practice, not just reading: MyRoshi is a daily zendo — zazen with bells, then a teisho on the classics from a teacher who adapts to how you understand. Begin with 7 free days.