Kinhin (経行;
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
:
kinhin or
kyōgyō,
ChineseChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
:
jingxing), in
Zen BuddhismZen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, translated from the Chinese word Chán. This word is in turn derived from the Sanskrit dhyāna, which means "meditation" ....
, is the walking
meditationMeditation is used here as a broad term for practices done by a sole practitioner without much, if any, external aide, often for the purpose of self-transformation...
that is practiced between long periods of the sitting meditation known as
zazenZazen is at the heart of Zen Buddhist practice. The aim of zazen is just sitting, "opening the hand of thought". This is done either through koans, Rinzai's primary method, or whole-hearted sitting , the Soto sect's method...
.
Practitioners walk clockwise around a room while holding their hands in
shashu (one hand closed in a fist, while the other hand grasps or covers the fist). During walking meditation each step is taken after each full breath.
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Kinhin (経行;
Japaneseis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...
:
kinhin or
kyōgyō,
ChineseChinese or the Sinitic language is a language family consisting of languages mutually unintelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the two branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
:
jingxing), in
Zen BuddhismZen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, translated from the Chinese word Chán. This word is in turn derived from the Sanskrit dhyāna, which means "meditation" ....
, is the walking
meditationMeditation is used here as a broad term for practices done by a sole practitioner without much, if any, external aide, often for the purpose of self-transformation...
that is practiced between long periods of the sitting meditation known as
zazenZazen is at the heart of Zen Buddhist practice. The aim of zazen is just sitting, "opening the hand of thought". This is done either through koans, Rinzai's primary method, or whole-hearted sitting , the Soto sect's method...
.
Practitioners walk clockwise around a room while holding their hands in
shashu (one hand closed in a fist, while the other hand grasps or covers the fist). During walking meditation each step is taken after each full breath. The beginning of kinhin is announced by ringing the bell twice (
kinhinsho). The end of kinhin is announced by ringing the bell once (
chukaisho).
In Chinese Zen, walking meditation is done with a wooden fish whose rhythm one's footsteps follows. Each strike of the wooden fish is a step.
Kinhin (経行) is formed from the character 経 (meaning classical works, or religious teachings) and 行 (meaning "walk"). Therefore 経行 if taken literally meanings "religious teachings walk" or better translated would be meditative walk, or walking meditation. It is erroneously translated by some westerners as "to go straight".