Rinzai school

Rinzai is a Japanese school of Zen Buddhism descended from the Chinese Linji lineage. Its training emphasizes koan practice, seated meditation, and direct instruction between teacher and student.

Koan: A paradoxical question, dialogue, or case used in Zen training to probe insight beyond ordinary conceptual reasoning. Koans are assigned and examined with a teacher as a central Rinzai training method.
Linji school: A Chinese school of Chan Buddhism founded in the lineage associated with Linji Yixuan. Rinzai is the Japanese name for the school transmitted from this Chinese lineage.
Hakuin Ekaku: An eighteenth-century Japanese Rinzai master whose reforms shaped the school's modern koan curriculum. His training methods and koan system became influential across later Rinzai lineages.
Samurai: Members of Japan's hereditary warrior class, prominent from the medieval period through the nineteenth century. Rinzai temples received warrior patronage, and Zen disciplines became associated with samurai culture.
Sōtō school: A Japanese Zen Buddhist school descended from the Chinese Caodong lineage and associated with Dōgen. Sōtō and Rinzai differ in lineage, institutional history, and characteristic approaches to practice.
Dokusan: A private, formal meeting between a Zen student and teacher. Students present their understanding of koans directly to a teacher during this encounter.
Linji Yixuan: A Chinese Chan master of the ninth century whose lineage became the Linji school. His teaching lineage is the historical source of Rinzai Zen.
Bankei Yōtaku: A seventeenth-century Japanese Zen master known for teaching the unborn Buddha-mind. Bankei represents a distinctive Rinzai teaching that emphasized direct recognition over formal koan curricula.
Japanese tea ceremony: A codified Japanese practice of preparing and serving powdered green tea. Zen institutions and Rinzai monks helped shape the cultural setting in which tea practice developed.
Caodong school: A Chinese Chan Buddhist school that became the source of Japan's Sōtō lineage. Caodong is a major Chinese Zen lineage distinct from the Linji ancestry of Rinzai.

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