I'm very new to Zen, so what follows is an account of my personal search for what Zen is all about. I am not alone in using the term "Zen" rather loosely to refer to an aesthetic outlook and a constellation of related ideas that include " Mindfulness ". As it happens, Mindfulness itself is a rather fuzzy concept, more or less identical to Zen in some minds (such as  Siegel , see below), but used in such a wide context for so many different "therapies" and mental disciplines as to be almost meaningless.  Everybody  seems to think of themselves as "mindful", rendering discussion of the subject pointless. I, therefore, prefer to use the term "Zen", which is also fuzzy but tends to produce more interesting discussions. In passing, it should be noted that no term is fuzzier than "Christianity", but Zen followers do not go to war to defend their own definitions.  It turns out to be tricky to define Zen.  Wikipedia   gives the ...