Kinhin: Walking Between Periods of Zazen

Kinhin is walking practice within Zen training, often placed between two periods of zazen. In a meditation hall, it involves more than choosing a quiet route. Participants rise, join the movement of the group, follow signals, and return to their places for sitting.

Learn the local form as a complete sequence. The bell that ends one activity, the way people turn, and the signal for returning all help the group practice together. A first orientation is easier to follow when you know which transitions to watch.

Rising belongs to the practice

Keizan’s Zazen Yojinki includes instructions for getting up from sitting as well as sitting itself. A study translation available from Kokyo Henkel describes gradually increasing side-to-side movement, placing the hands on the floor, and rising lightly before walking. The transition receives deliberate attention. The text also introduces walking among its responses to dullness during sitting and describes a half step with each breath. This is one historical Zen treatment of the relationship between stillness and movement. It does not reduce the entire sitting session to maintaining one unmoving posture.

For a first visit, watch the instructor demonstrate getting up as carefully as the seated position. Ask where your cushion remains and which way to turn. These details are difficult to reconstruct while everyone is already moving around you.

Hear the signals in their sequence

San Francisco Zen Center’s Online Zendo Forms distinguishes the transition out of sitting from the start of walking. Two bells announce the change from zazen to kinhin. A strike of the wooden clappers, called kaishaku, starts the walking; another ends it. Three bells mark the next sitting period.

The same sheet separately describes an interval during which participants may remain seated, adjust, or stand. Hearing a bell is therefore not enough information by itself: its place in the sequence matters. This particular document is for the online zendo, so use it as a concrete example rather than a universal signal chart.

Before an unfamiliar session, ask the host to name the beginning and ending signals. If you miss one, look to the designated leader and settle into the activity already underway. There is little value in hurriedly performing a transition that everyone else has finished.

Hands and steps need a demonstration

Zen in Mississippi’s kinhin instructions describe a left fist enclosing the thumb, covered by the right hand and held near the solar plexus, with forearms horizontal. Its slow walking coordinates a short forward step with inhalation. The page also cautions people to rise carefully after sitting, particularly when feet are numb or standing brings light-headedness.

This is a useful example of why “clasp your hands somewhere” can be too vague for a formal session. Ask the instructor to show the height and orientation. Keep a physical support you need; a hand form should be discussed and adapted rather than treated as a reason to abandon stable movement. Rehearse the route beforehand, including a turn and any space needed for a walking aid.

A faster form can also be kinhin

In a 2021 article from Engakuji, Yokota Nanrei describes the brisk kinhin familiar in Rinzai training, sometimes approaching a run, alongside the slow Soto form of a small step with each breath. He then discusses a different walking practice learned from Enpukuji’s teacher, with close attention to each movement.

His account is useful because it contains variation within the discussion of Zen itself. It also questions treating walking only as a way to loosen the legs between sittings. Walking can receive sustained attention as practice in its own right.

Follow the host’s instruction rather than importing a speed learned elsewhere. Ask how the group coordinates breathing and movement. A description of Rinzai or Soto offers context, but the person leading the session can show the actual form being used.

Keep your place in the group

Tassajara’s 2024 practice-period standards tell residents to walk in their seating order, match the group’s pace, and keep even spacing. They also give a specific procedure for leaving to use the toilet: return to the zendo walkway for kinhin, then re-enter after the three bells signaling zazen. Those are instructions for that residential setting.

Before taking your place, identify the route and how to rejoin. Raise any difficulty with the arrangement before the period begins.

The care given to movement has a parallel in other shared Zen forms, including oryoki meals. In each, a small action affects the people immediately around it. Maintaining space is part of making the practice workable for the whole room.

Return with enough time to sit

At the ending signal, follow the demonstrated route back. Zen in Mississippi, for example, instructs walkers to continue forward toward their cushions and then make the closing bows. Avoid guessing that the shortest line across the room is the intended path.

Once at your place, take time to establish the seat again. A cushion may need adjusting; a chair or foot support may need to be repositioned. The next period begins with the body you have now, rather than a demand to reproduce the exact posture of the previous sitting. As the sequence becomes familiar, let the details serve attention. The point of learning where to turn and when to return is that these actions can become part of practice, with less scrambling to work out what the room is doing.