Zen Meditation or Zazen is a concept of seated meditation. Zen Meditation is performed when seated and this is a discipline performed to calm the body and mind and experience insight into the nature of existence. The Zen Buddhists are known as 'Meditation.Buddhists' and basically the Zazen is the study of self. Originally Zen referred to a sitting practice alone, but now it is widely used to meditate in any posture.
Zen Meditation has a long history of practice. It is thought that during his enlightenment, Buddha was in a seated meditation. The meditation practice has continued for two thousand five hundred years from generation to generation. The most important aspect of Zen Meditation is its spread from India to China, to Japan, to other parts of Asia and then finally to the West. Zen Meditation is very easy to describe and practice but needs an orderly manner to perform. The great master Dogen said about Zazen "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things."
The common practice in meditation is to see the body, breath and mind separately, but in Zen meditation they come together as one reality. The first important thing is to pay attention to the position of the body. The body has a way of communicating outwardly to the world and inwardly to oneself. Our mind and breath depends a lot on our position of the body. Since the evolution of Buddhism, the most effective posture practiced in Zazen is the pyramid structure of seated Buddha. During Zen Meditation seating on a floor is recommended because it is a very stable way. A 'Zafu' or a small pillow is used to lift the back just a little, so that the knees can touch the ground. With the bottom on the pillow and two knees touching the ground, the body takes a tripod shape that gives three hundred and sixty degree stability.
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