← Back to the manual
● CONTROLS · OPERATING MANUAL

Method library

The concrete practices handed down in the Chan (Zen) lineage, sorted into four kinds.
Each one carries its source, how it is done, who it suits, and how much modern research has actually established.

A word about the evidence first

Every method on this page carries an evidence-strength label, so here is what those labels mean.

Evidence-based medicine has studied almost nothing except the mindfulness branch. Huatou practice, Mozhao and the rest of the East Asian Chan repertoire have no adequate randomised controlled trials behind them. The spread in the ratings below reports the state of the literature. It is not favouritism on my part.

  • strong supported by meta-analyses or good RCTs
  • moderate studied, but of uneven quality, or covered only as part of a whole course
  • weak essentially no controlled research
One thing worth saying: weak evidence does not mean useless. It means modern medicine has not got round to studying it. These methods were used for a thousand years and were tested another way, by teacher and student checking each other over and over. This column reports the literature. It is not a judgement of value.

What you are training: the five faculties and five powers

Every method below trains the same set of things. Early Buddhism grouped them into five. While they are weak they are called the five faculties (roots that can grow); once they are strong enough that circumstances no longer shake them, they are called the five powers. Same five, two names.

ONE

Faithsaddhā

Trust in the teaching and in this road going somewhere. It supplies the drive, and it is what gets you to sit down at all.

TWO

Energyviriya

The force that keeps you at it. In practice it looks like "did not feel like sitting today, sat anyway".

THREE

Mindfulnesssati

Keeping the object in mind and not losing it. The staying power of awareness: how quickly you notice after drifting, and how long you can hold presence.

Every method on this page trains this one most directly.

FOUR

Concentrationsamādhi

One-pointedness. Attention can rest in one place instead of scattering.

FIVE

Wisdompaññā

Knowing things as they are. Seeing how something actually works, rather than the version you layered on top of it.

The five have to be kept in balance. The traditional account is quite specific. Faith is paired against wisdom: heavy on faith and you follow blindly, heavy on wisdom and you doubt everything. Energy is paired against concentration: heavy on energy and you get restless, heavy on concentration and you go dull.

Mindfulness sits in the middle and needs no counterweight. It is the one item of the five you can never have too much of, which is why nearly every method starts by training it.

Sources: the Visuddhimagga on balancing the five faculties; the five faculties and five powers appear in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, Indriya-saṃyutta and elsewhere
01

Breath: where everyone starts

If you only ever practise one thing, practise this. Every tradition opens here because breathing is the one process that is automatic and also available to manual control. Ease has nothing to do with it. It is the only door between the voluntary and the involuntary.

Counting the breathfirst of the six wondrous gates

Source: the Eastern Han Anban Shouyi Jing (Sutra on Mindfulness of Breathing) already carries the six-item system of counting, following, stilling, observing, turning back and purity; Zhiyi systematised it in The Six Wondrous Gates in the Sui. Worth noting: Zhiyi organised the material rather than inventing it.
HOW
Breathe normally, no control. On the out-breath (or the in-breath, pick one and stay with it) count one silently, then two on the next, up to ten, then start again at one. If you lose count or run past ten, go back to one. Losing count is not the failure. Catching yourself having lost count is what this exercise produces.
WHY
The number gives the mind just enough to hold on to. Give it less and the mind floats off, give it more and the mind tires. It doubles as an objective drift detector: you never have to judge whether you wandered. The number went wrong, so you did.
WHO FOR
The first method for almost anyone, and especially for people whose head detonates the moment they sit down.
EVIDENCE
moderate Breath-counting accuracy has been developed into a behavioural measure of mindfulness (Levinson, Stoll, Kindy, Merry & Davidson, Frontiers in Psychology 2014); in general adult samples it correlates with self-reported mindfulness and distinguishes long-term meditators. A 2025 Psychophysiology study failed to reproduce that association in a sample of high-ruminating adolescents.

Following the breathsecond of the six wondrous gates

Source: as above. The Six Wondrous Gates: "to cultivate following is to set aside the previous counting". The Pali Ānāpānasati Sutta (MN 118) is the same root in a different shape. Note that MN 118 contains no counting at all; counting was added as a beginner aid by the commentarial tradition, the Visuddhimagga among others.
HOW
Drop the numbers. Just travel with the breath. Know this one is coming in, know it has finished coming in, know this one is going out. No commentary, no adjusting the length.
WHY
The number is an add-on. At a certain point it turns into noise. Following takes the handle away and leaves awareness on its own.
WHO FOR
Switch to it once counting holds steady for a dozen or so rounds. Skipping counting and starting here is a bad idea: most people simply drift off.
EVIDENCE
moderate Covered heavily as a core component of mindfulness training; controlled studies isolating it on its own are rare.

Slow breathing / resonance breathingthe modern physiology route

Source: this comes out of modern HRV biofeedback research rather than Buddhism. It sits here because it stacks with the two above, and because its physiological effect is the best evidenced of the four breath methods.
HOW
Slow the breath to roughly 6 breaths a minute (about 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out), with the out-breath a little longer than the in. No breath-holding, no forcing.
WHY
That rate is close to the resonance frequency of the cardiovascular system, and it raises heart rate variability and parasympathetic activity substantially. In plain terms it dials the body back out of fight mode.
WHO FOR
For when you are anxious right now, heart going, unable to sit still. Of everything here it is the closest thing to first aid.
EVIDENCE
strong Medium to large effects on HRV and parasympathetic measures (Shao, Man & Lee, Mindfulness 2024, 31 studies, n=1133). In the same meta-analysis, though, the effect on reducing negative emotion was only marginal (p=0.06); this works mostly at the physiological level. Also, "6 a minute" is a group average. Individual resonance frequencies run between 4.5 and 7 a minute.

Fixing attention at the nostrils / contemplating the tip of the nosean entry-level device for stilling

Source: Zhiyi, Essentials of Sitting Meditation (the Lesser Zhiguan), under "stilling by tying the mind to an object": "tie the mind at the nostrils, at the navel and so on, so that the mind does not scatter". Also the Śūraṅgama Sutra, scroll five, the Sundarananda passage: "the World-Honoured One taught me and Kauṣṭhila to contemplate the white at the nose-tip".
HOW
Hold attention on the small patch of skin below the nostrils and above the upper lip, and feel only the touch of air passing: cooler coming in, warmer going out. Attention goes on the sensation, not on anything visual. Let the gaze drop naturally, do not actually look at your nose, and closed eyes are fine too.

"Contemplating the white at the nose-tip" in the Śūraṅgama Sutra is the same road. Sundarananda had a mind that "scattered constantly", so the Buddha had him concentrate at the nostrils; in time he saw the breath coming and going like smoke, and body and mind grew clear. The "white" describes how things look once the mind has settled. It is not an instruction to stare at a white dot.
WHY
The nostrils are the first point of contact where breath meets body: a tiny patch of sensation in a fixed place, and therefore a finer object than the rise and fall of the belly. The finer the object, the faster concentration builds on it, and the more obvious it is the moment you drift off.

Zhiyi files it under "stilling by tying the mind to an object", the most basic of his three kinds of stilling: one fixed object to tether a scattered mind. Its place in the scheme is clear. It is the first stake in the ground, there to bring the mind to a halt, and it is not the final teaching.
WHO FOR
People whose body sense is on the dull side and who cannot get counting to land. A more concrete and much smaller object often works immediately.

If you have rhinitis or a blocked nose, or your head feels full the moment you focus there, leave it alone. Zhiyi wrote "the nostrils, the navel and so on", so this was always a menu of places to tie the mind to. The chest or the belly works just as well.
EVIDENCE
weak As one variant of a breath object it has no controlled research of its own. Zhiyi himself ranked it lowest of the three (stilling in the real is the final one).
02

Huatou: halting the explanation machine

This is not a beginner method. It is listed because it is the most famous branch of Chan and you will hear about it sooner or later. Actually practising it takes a foundation and a teacher with open eyes.

Huatou practicethe spine of the Linji school

Source: Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163), Southern Song Linji school, student of Yuanwu Keqin. The signature huatou is Zhaozhou's "wu". Note: "who is reciting the Buddha's name" is not Dahui's. It came out of the merging of Chan and Pure Land, appeared around the Yuan and Ming transition, spread in the late Ming (Yunqi Zhuhong, Hanshan Deqing), and was pushed into its modern popularity by Xuyun.
HOW
Take one huatou ("wu", or "who is dragging this corpse around"), and instead of working out what it means, keep hold of the sense of not understanding itself. Chan calls that the doubt. Producing an answer is already off track; when an answer shows up, put it down and go on asking.
WHY
The aim is to make the problem-solving machine halt, not to solve the problem. Mind consciousness can always hand you a formulation, so the huatou hands it something it cannot formulate, and forces the gap open.
WHO FOR
This is not a beginner method. The tradition asks for a solid base of concentration first, and for a teacher with open eyes watching. Forcing it alone at home most often ends in tightness, headaches and insomnia.
EVIDENCE
essentially none Only one relevant study has turned up so far (Luo et al., EXPLORE 2021, 70 participants, 3 days of intensive huatou practice, no active control, outcomes almost entirely self-report), which cannot support any claim of efficacy. Anyone telling you that huatou practice is scientifically proven has nothing to stand on at present.
03

Mozhao: doing nothing, staying awake

It sounds like the easiest one on the list and it is the hardest. Your default is either to find something to do or to switch off, and Mozhao asks for neither.

Mozhao, silent illuminationthe spine of the Caodong school

Source: Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157), Southern Song Caodong school, best known for the Inscription on Silent Illumination. His "dispute" with Dahui Zonggao usually gets written up as the two men tearing into each other. Scholarship (Morten Schlütter) reads it mainly as institutional competition between Song Caodong and Linji for the patronage of the literati, not as personal attack.
HOW
"Silent" means not chasing thoughts and passing no comment. "Illumination" means keeping awareness bright and clear. Both at once. One without the other is wrong. Silence without illumination becomes blankness or dullness; illumination without silence becomes the strain of watching yourself.
WHY
No object, no goal, just staying awake inside doing nothing. Which is exactly the hard part, because the human default is either to find something to do or to switch off.
WHO FOR
People with some grounding who can already sit. For an outright beginner, Mozhao turns into dozing or daydreaming nine times out of ten.
EVIDENCE
essentially none No RCTs exist. There are a few small, uncontrolled EEG studies.

Shikantazajust sitting · Japanese Sōtō

Source: Dōgen (1200–1253) received it from his teacher Tiantong Rujing (1162–1228), so it descends directly from Mozhao rather than being an independent invention. Dōgen simplified it radically at the level of theory ("practice and realisation are one").
HOW
Sit down, hold the posture, do nothing, and pursue no state at all. The sitting is the realisation. It is not a means to one.
WHY
Dōgen's judgement was that the moment you treat sitting as a tool for reaching some goal, you have already pushed the present away. So he removed the goal entirely.
WHO FOR
People who can live with practising for months and getting no progress bar. It is deeply unappetising to anyone driven by achievement, which is precisely where it does its work.
EVIDENCE
essentially none As above.
04

Daily life: the ones with no cushion

This category is badly underrated. Sitting is the training ground. Daily life is the match. Whatever you build on the mat counts for nothing if it cannot come with you to your desk and onto the train.

Walking meditationthe counterpart to sitting

Source: the Pali Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.29 lists five benefits of walking meditation (fit for travel, fit for exertion, less illness, food digests well, concentration lasts longer); the Chinese Vinaya and the Ekottarika Āgama give parallels, and monasteries built dedicated walking paths as a matter of institutional routine. Modern insight traditions (the Mahasi line) alternate sitting and walking strictly, which is a systematisation of the same thing.
HOW
Walk back and forth along a straight line about ten paces long, slower than usual. Attention on the soles of the feet: lifting, moving, placing. Pause at the end, turn, walk back.
WHY
It solves two old problems with sitting: dead legs and dullness. It is also the bridge between the sitting methods and the daily-life ones. What you build while walking travels into ordinary life more easily.
WHO FOR
Everyone. Particularly good for people who cannot sit still, or who fall asleep the moment they do.
EVIDENCE
moderate Widely studied as a fixed component of mainstream insight courses, but rarely isolated for controlled comparison.

Watching the mindfrom thinking to watching the thinking

Source: the mind foundation among the four foundations of mindfulness; a large body of Chan records turns on "watch where the thought rises from". The eighth of Zhiyi's The Six Wondrous Gates is called precisely the six gates of watching the mind.
HOW
Leave the breath alone and look at thoughts directly. When one arrives, do one thing only: label it. Planning. Replaying. Worrying. Then do not follow it. No need to drive it off.
WHY
This step switches you from "I am thinking" to "I am watching myself think". In the instant the switch lands, a gap opens between you and the thought, and the automatic tagging done by manas is interrupted once.
WHO FOR
The next step after the breath methods are solid. People who start here tend to fall into the pit of wrestling with their thoughts.
EVIDENCE
strong This is the core component of mainstream mindfulness training (MBSR/MBCT) and it overlaps with the research on affect labelling, which makes it one of the best-evidenced pieces of the whole field.

Mettā, loving-kindness practicemettā · an antidote method

Source: one of the five contemplations for settling the mind (the contemplation of loving-kindness), the Pali Mettā Sutta, and one of the forty meditation objects in Buddhaghosa's Visuddhimagga.
HOW
Silently repeat a few wishes (may you be safe, may you be well, may you be at ease) towards four kinds of person in turn: yourself first, then someone close, then someone you have no feelings about, and finally the person you cannot stand. That last step is the whole point of the exercise.
WHY
This is an antidote method. It was prescribed for people heavy on aversion and self-criticism, and it is not a general-purpose practice. It runs directly against the tagging machinery of manas, which sorts everything by good for me or bad for me.
WHO FOR
People who are chronically clenched, and hard on themselves and on others.
EVIDENCE
moderate to weak Meta-analysis shows a medium effect on positive emotion (Zeng et al. 2015), though study quality is uneven and active controls are scarce. One caution: the most cited group in this area, Fredrickson's, has serious credibility problems (the "positivity ratio of 2.9013" was shown to be a mathematical error and retracted, and the vagal "upward spiral" finding did not survive reanalysis), so their 2008 study should not be treated as settled.
05

A route that actually works

Do not take it all on at once. Go in this order, and let each step settle before starting the next.

STEP 1

Counting the breath, ten minutes a day, one month straightweeks 1–4

Do not chase calm. The only goal this month is building the habit, and getting used to the event called "drifted off again". A hundred lapses is a hundred repetitions of the exercise.

If you cannot sit that long, start at five minutes. Short and daily beats long and sporadic by a mile.

STEP 2

Add walking meditation; keep slow breathing for emergenciesmonths 2–3

Once sitting is steady, add ten minutes of walking meditation. Keep slow breathing (about 6 breaths a minute) separate and use it in the moment anxiety hits, since its physiological effect is the fastest of the four.

STEP 3

Move from counting to following, then add watching the mindmonths 3–6

When counting holds for a dozen or so rounds without slipping, take the numbers away. Then add watching the mind. This is the watershed between steadying and seeing clearly.

If your main trouble is aversion and self-attack, insert mettā practice at this stage.

STEP 4

Only now consider huatou or Mozhao, and find a teacherafter six months

Neither one can be picked up by reading articles. At this point what you need is a person, and more material will not do it.

The criteria for choosing one are unglamorous. Can what they say be questioned? Are they steering you towards depending on them? Is money or control over your life anywhere in it? Where something is off, walk away.

06

Risk notice

Read this section before you decide whether to sign up for an intensive retreat.

Adverse reactions to meditation are far more common than the popular image allows, and there is serious research on them. The series of studies from Britton's group finds that some form of negative experience occurs in something like a third to a half of practitioners (32%–58%, depending on how it is counted), and that lasting impairment of functioning occurs in roughly 6% to 14%.

Risk is markedly higher with multi-day intensive retreats (in Lindahl et al. 2017, 72% of difficulties began during or after a retreat), with very long unsupervised daily sessions, and for anyone with a trauma history, a psychiatric history, or significant psychological distress right now.

The message here is not that meditation is dangerous. Britton's group concluded that the rate of adverse effects is comparable to that of other psychotherapies, and that people who had them were no less satisfied with meditation afterwards.

The right posture is being informed. Short daily practice of 10 to 20 minutes, guided, built up gradually, carries very low risk. If any of the above describes you, talk to a professional before booking a multi-day intensive.

07

Try it now

You have read this far. Do one round. Three minutes.

TRY IT NOW 01

Manual mode · three minutes

Mindfulness of breathing. No lotus posture, no closed eyes. Sitting is enough.
Breathe with the circle; when you drift, come back.

READY
03:00
TRY IT NOW 02

AFK detector

No need to chase thoughts off, and no need to blame yourself for drifting.
When you catch yourself on autopilot, press the button.

0
DETECTED
Press once to begin.