What is Zen?

Evershift (The sum of zero) - Exuviae

What is Zen?
(Tr. Sp.-Eng. from a review in Shvoong)

  What is Zen? Zen is a school of Buddhism that developed in China and later in Japan as a result of a merger between the Mahayana form of Buddhism from India and the Chinese philosophy of Taoism. Zen and Chan are, respectively, Japanese and Chinese ways of pronouncing the Sanskrit word dhyana, which means a state of mind more or less equivalent to contemplation or meditation, but without the static and passive sense that these words entail at times. Dhyana denotes specifically the state of consciousness of Buddha, one who is free from the belief that oneself''s distinct individuality and others' is real. 

  Zen has its origin in the Buddha Shakyamuni's experience 2500 years ago, who, sitting in the posture of zazen, made true the awakening. This zazen practice contains the essence of his teaching, whose message is universal: zazen is just the coming back to the normal condition of body and spirit. 

  Buddha's teaching does not depend on philosophy and much less on metaphysics, but arises from lived experience. You could compare it to a medicine that offers healing to the sick human nature. Buddha did not intend to create a new religion but to help the human being to understand the cause of his suffering and release him. This release is called Buddha's awakening, supreme wisdom and true liberty, made real through zazen. 

 All schools of Buddhism hold that separate things exist only in relation to others. This relativity of individuals is called vacuity (sunyata in Sanskrit), which does not mean that the world is nothing in reality, but that nature cannot be understood by any fixed definition or classification system. Reality is the sameness of nature, or the world as it is, independent of any specific thought we have about it.