za-zen \ZAH-ZEN\,
noun:
meditation in a prescribed, cross-legged posture.
They told me that before he left he had paced the floor nervously for several days; that he had been doing za zen on his mat for about nine hours a day; that he'd gotten into a quarrel over religion with a Jehovah's Witness on his shift as a night watchman.
-- Shulamith Firestone, "Airless Spaces," 1998
I stared at the glow of the cigarette as if in za-Zen, open-eyed meditation.
-- Michael Gurian, "An American Mystic," 2000
Za-zen comes from the Japanese word za meaning "seat, seated" and zen, which originally comes from the Sanskrit word meaning "thought, meditation."
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