Zendo

Zen-dō (禅堂) (Chinese: Chántáng) or senbutsu-jō (選仏場) is a Japanese "meditation hall". In Zen Buddhism, the zen-dō is a spiritual dōjō where zazen (sitting meditation) is practiced. A full-sized Zen Buddhist temple will typically have at least one zen-dō as well as a hon-dō ("main hall", but sometimes translated as "Buddha hall"), which is used for ceremonial purposes, plus a variety of other buildings with different functions. However, any place where people go to practice Zen can be referred to as a zen-dō.

Zen-dō mealtimes

Meals are in some temples eaten in the zendo during sesshin. Three meals a day are served. Breakfast is served in the early morning, before dawn. It normally consists of rice gruel and pickled vegetables. Two meals are taken later; at noon and late afternoon. Noon meal is the main meal. These meals usually consist of rice, vegetable soup and pickled vegetables. The afternoon meal consists of leftovers from the noon meal. The Hridaya Sūtra and the "five meditations" are recited before breakfast and lunch. During lunch monks will offer some of their meal to the pretas or hungry ghosts. The monks remain silent during mealtimes and communicate via hand and arm gestures.

Zendo (game)

Zendo is a game of inductive logic designed by Kory Heath in which one player (the "Master") creates a rule for structures ("koans") to follow, and the other players (the "Students") try to discover it by building and studying various koans which follow or break the rule. The first student to correctly state the rule wins.

The game can be played with any set of colorful playing pieces, and has been sold with a set of 60 Icehouse pieces in red, yellow, green, and blue, 60 glass stones and a small deck of cards containing simple rules for beginners. Origami pyramids are a common choice of playing piece.

The rules were published in 2001 after more than a year of playtests and changes. A boxed set of the game was released by Looney Labs at the 2003 Origins Game Fair but is now out of print. Zendo is also published in Looney Labs' Playing with Pyramids, a book of rules and strategies for a dozen popular games playable with Icehouse pieces.

Zendo can be compared to the card game Eleusis and the chess variant Penultima in which players attempt to discover inductively a secret rule thought of by one or more players (called "God" or "Nature" in Eleusis and "Spectators" in Penultima) who declare plays legal or illegal on the basis of their rules.

Zendo (disambiguation)

Zendo may refer to: