How to Start Zazen: Zen Meditation for Beginners

Of all the things called meditation, zazen — “seated Zen” — is the plainest. There is no guided journey, no visualisation, no goal to chase. You sit down. You breathe. You are where you are. That’s the whole instruction, and it is harder and kinder than it sounds.

Here is how to begin — without a cushion, a teacher, or an hour to spare.

Find a seat, find your spine

Forget the full lotus. A chair is fine. Sit toward the front edge so your back doesn’t slump against the rest, feet flat on the floor. If you prefer the ground, sit on a folded blanket or a firm pillow, hips a little higher than knees.

What matters is the spine: upright, but not rigid — imagine the crown of your head lifted by a thread. Hands rest in your lap. Eyes can close, or stay half-open with a soft gaze at the floor a metre ahead, which is the traditional way and keeps you from drifting into daydream.

Breathe, and count if it helps

Breathe through your nose, low into the belly, and let the breath find its own pace. Now give the mind one simple job: count each exhale, one through ten, then begin again. Lose count — and you will — start back at one. There is no prize for reaching ten. The counting isn’t the practice; the returning is.

In time you can drop the numbers and simply follow the breath, and later still you may meet shikantaza — “just sitting” — Dōgen’s radical teaching that the sitting itself, with no technique at all, is already the whole thing. But counting the breath is an honest place to live for a long time.

“To study the self is to forget the self.”

About your wandering mind

Within thirty seconds you will be somewhere else — rehearsing an email, replaying a conversation, planning lunch. This is not failure. This is the practice arriving. The moment you notice you’ve wandered is the most important moment in zazen: notice, without the lecture you’d normally give yourself, and come back to the breath.

You will do this hundreds of times. Each return is one repetition of the only skill zazen teaches — and the same skill you’ll use at midnight when the mind starts replaying the day. As Shunryu Suzuki put it, in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. Being a beginner here is not a phase to get past. It is the practice.

How long, how often

Start with five minutes a day. Truly — five. A short sit you actually do beats the heroic half-hour you keep postponing. Same place and time helps: after waking, before the phone, while the kettle is on. When five minutes starts to feel short rather than long, try ten.

And let it be unimpressive. Some sits feel deep and quiet; many feel like sitting in traffic inside your own head. Both count. The old teachers were clear that zazen isn’t a performance to perfect but a place to keep returning to — which is why Mushin pairs each morning’s teaching with one small practice, and nothing to streak, score, or win. Presence, five minutes at a time.