The ensō is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free.
What is Zen?
Many new practitioners have misunderstandings about Zen and about Buddhism more broadly.
Zen is a set of teachings and practices aimed at helping students minimize suffering in their lives and awaken to reality "just as it is." As a school of Buddhism, Zen is often considered a religion, but it is important to note that Zen is not concerned with whether or not God exists, how the universe came to be, or what happens to us after we die. It is not that those questions are not interesting or important, they are simply not the purview of Zen Buddhism. Zen is more concerned with experiencing awakening to each present moment, and the cultivation of wisdom and compassion.
Buddhism originated in India in the 5th or 4th century BCE. The historical Buddha (or "awakened one") was a man named Siddhartha Gautama who taught a "Middle Way" between extreme hedonism and extreme asceticism. While some schools of Buddhism worship Gautama Buddha as a deity, most do not. In Zen, Gautama is considered a great teacher only - a person who experienced enlightenment, a state of realization available to everyone.
Zen focuses strongly on meditation practice and direct, personal understanding of the nature of reality rather than emphasizing the study of traditional Buddhist scriptures (sutras) or doctrine.
A famous print of Bodhidharma sitting zazen by Yoshitoshi, 1887.
Zazen Practice
Much more than philosophy, rituals, or sutras, the core of Zen Buddhism is meditation practice. Our particular type of practice is called zazen ("sitting meditation") or shikantaza ("just sitting").
You may be familiar with some forms of meditation that involve music, visualizations, or chanting. Zen does not rely on any of these tools, opting instead for simple techniques like counting breaths as a way to stay present. Of course thoughts arise during zazen, but when we focus on our breath, thoughts flow over us like a gentle breeze and we do not become attached to them.
The goal of zazen is not to tune the world out or to achieve some otherworldly state of enlightenment. In fact, it might be more properly said that zazen has no goal at all. When sitting zazen, we practice being mentally present in this very moment, just as it is. Sometimes you have an itch or some pain in your back. Sometimes there are loud noises outside the window. These things are not obstacles: they are exactly the world as it is.
Credit: From the Anchorage Zen Center website.