Tran describes it as a place for practising Zen meditation and resting the mind. It also operates a retreat, located in a remote part of Lantau Island, and is open to all, regardless of age, religion or nationality.

“The school’s purpose is to make this practice of Zen Buddhism available to an ever-growing number of students throughout the world,” Tran says.

The term “Zen”, however, has outgrown its origins as a sect of Buddhism, becoming an ubiquitous descriptor for design, lifestyle and even fashion, leaked from the East to the West and now prefixing a plethora of commodities, from “zen grey” paint to beauty products, such as Lancôme’s Hydra Zen collection.

Zen, it seems, sells.

The demand for pared-back lifestyle products doesn’t stop in Muji’s native Japan. China is home to about 300 Muji outlets and, despite Covid-19 restrictions, the appeal of its products is strong. The retailer plans to double the number of stores it has in the mainland.

These global retailers capitalise on basic, everyday designs, which at their heart are Zen-focused. Dairo Murata, a retail analyst at JPMorgan in Tokyo, told the Financial Times in October 2020, “Both Uniqlo and Muji benefit from an increase in stay-at-home demand since they focus more on basic lifestyle wear and goods.”

The simplicity of Zen and its stripped-back design aesthetic may be most closely associated with Japan, but Zen as a religion traces its roots back to India. It is widely taught that the monk Bodhidharma, known in Japan as Daruma, travelled to China from India in the sixth century, preaching what became known as Chan Buddhism.

The word Zen is derived from Chan, itself a transliteration of the Sanskrit word dhyana – a core teaching of Buddhism that means meditation.

This branch of Buddhism went through many subsequent phases and styles of teaching, gaining a widespread following in the seventh century, when Empress Wu Zetian (624-705) came to power during the Tang dynasty (618-907).

Wu brought Zen teachings and practitioners to her court. Following her death, competing Chan sects began popping up, each claiming to be more legitimate and pious than the next.

This so-called golden age of Chan ended with the suppression of Buddhism, along with other foreign religions in China, such as Nestorian Christianity, in the mid-ninth century.

Zen monks would paint quick, monochromatic ink images of enlightened individuals, later moving on to more secular subjects such as bamboo swaying in the breeze or birds in flight, the images produced tied to natural symbolism.

The subject matter may have changed but the central element of simplicity remained; the emphasis being on nature and crafting an aesthetic that was nurtured by Japanese culture.

Today, Zen Buddhism’s continued focus on simplicity and the importance of the natural world has generated an unmistakable style.

“Zen is a school of Buddhism that focuses on meditation and physical experience, rather than studying philosophically profound or complicated scriptures,” explains Mihoyo Fuji, who runs the website Zero = Abundance, where she translates articles about Zen design and lifestyle from Japanese into English.

“Their art often appeared abstract and profound, and this became known as Zen aesthetics.”

This distinctive style places importance on contemplating space and emotional states, such as loneliness and melancholy. The term wabi-sabi expresses this, espousing the idea that rough, asymmetric or plain objects or art are as valuable as their decorative counterparts. Creating art is in itself a Zen endeavour.

“What’s unique about Zen as a school of Buddhism is that it attempts to access the truth through your body and mind. So if you want, you can ‘practise’ Zen in your daily life to appreciate the beauty of ‘less is more’,” Fuji says. “I am not really talking about meditation, I am talking about what we do every day: eating meals, cleaning.”

This individualistic aspect of Zen is an integral part of its 20th century development – a time of “the emergence of spiritual or philosophical, rather than monastic and lay, relationships with ‘Buddhism’”, says Gregory Levine, professor of Buddhist visual cultures and eco art history at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States.

“These were reflections of a broader process of Buddhist modernism in Japan, which included efforts to distinguish Japanese Buddhism and Zen from other religions or denominations.”

It wasn’t until the 1920s and ’30s that Zen became a widely digestible idea. Japanese scholar Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki (1870-1966) is credited with introducing Zen to the West, spurring today’s interest in spirituality and helping bring Zen into the global consciousness.

Hailing from a family that belonged to the Rinzai sect of Zen Buddhism, Suzuki wrote, “It was natural that I should look to Zen for some of the answers to my problems.”

The scholar spent much of his career as a teacher and interpreter of Zen Buddhism in the US, lecturing at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Columbia universities.

He was celebrated among the New York intelligentsia, attending social events and giving interviews, while also travelling to Europe, connecting with theosophists and thinkers of the day wherever he went.

During his time teaching at Columbia, Suzuki encountered artists and musicians as well as Beat writers, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

His influence on this new generation of American creatives is evident in their work, from the silences employed by composer John Cage to the spontaneous cut-up technique used in the direct poetics of William Burroughs and Gary Snyder.

They fostered the relevance of Zen Buddhism and helped mould it for contemporary Western society. But it wasn’t just the in US.

“Japanese artists and designers, landscape architects, and architects were part of this modern moment in which premodern Japanese and East Asian arts and aesthetics, entangled with European art, history and philosophy, were elevated and also altered into modern Japanese aesthetics, in some cases associated with Zen Buddhism,” says Levine.

Japan was regarded as something of an intriguing newcomer to the world, having opened up to trade in 1854. But it was the Japan exhibit held at the 1867 Paris Exposition that sparked the arguably ongoing craze of Japonisme.

By the early Showa era (1926-1989), the stage was set for a creative and intellectual love affair with Japan; it was then that European and North American artists and creatives who had heard of or read books by Suzuki, among others, made their way to Japan.

“They were inspired by what they saw through the modern ‘Zen lens’ and swallowed it whole as unique to Japanese Zen and eternal, rather than a modern response or formulation, one that has linkages to the ‘national aesthetics’ of Imperial Japan,” Levine says.

However, in the post-war period it wasn’t necessarily art and creativity that flourished most as a consequence of the co-opting of Zen ideals – it was capitalism itself. It was at this point that “we find the rather quick commercialisation of Zen and Japanese aesthetics”, says Levine.

“Capitalism, to put it one way, becomes one of the major adopters and adaptors of Zen aesthetics, first in the West and later in Asia as well.”

Since this commercialisation, even the word Zen has become far removed from its roots, according to Fuji.

“As a matter of fact, Japanese don’t use the word Zen as much as non-Japanese because there are other words in Japanese that describe what is meant by Zen,” she says. “The word Zen has become a catch-all to describe all those mysterious elements that intrigue or inspire Western people. So I use it a lot on my website.”

As commercialisation of Zen continued post-war, the word lost almost all meaning, becoming an umbrella term.

“If an artwork or design displayed one of the traits of Zen style it was, in turn, usually identified as ‘Zen’,” says Levine, “Perhaps one might turn it into a formula: modern Zen + modern Japanese and Zen aesthetics, processed through transnational exchange (religious, philosophical, artistic, political, economic, etc) = ‘Zen style’, for better or worse.”

And there is a paradox: acquiring more objects is at odds with the philosophy of Zen. The act of buying newly made Zen-inspired products – needless rather than needful things – from wealthy, globalised retailers feels most un-Zen-like.

Muji employs a yojijukugo (a four-character idiom) as its full name: Mujirushi Ryohin, often translated as “No-Brand Quality Goods”.

The word mu – meaning no, not or non – is key in Zen Buddhism and appears in numerous terms such as mugyo (formlessness), mujo (impermanence) and muga (non-self). The Muji brand message in particular leans strongly on emptiness, a crucial tenet of Zen Buddhism.

In doing so, the brand focuses not on objects in a decorative sense but in a practical sense; there is no pretence to their use and, thanks to the plain design (the company is “non-brand”, after all), consumers are free to use them as they wish.

Even though Muji draws on the idea of Zen philosophy, and appears to be “Zen”, that does not mean that it is. The same goes for Uniqlo, whose simple clothing for everyday wear allows customers to tailor outfits for their individualistic needs.

Both are, of course, multibillion-dollar companies with thousands of outlets and all the environmental impact that comes with such a business model. It’s a far cry from any form of Zen Buddhism.

“Consumer culture Zen and its styling is not Zen Buddhism or even Zen spirituality,” says Levine. “Global corporations […] typically strip away histories, some of them violent, to sell in the global market, often appropriate cultures in grossly disrespectful ways for profit, and, by their nature, promote ‘fast culture’ that causes huge environmental harm and injustice.”

That said, capitalising on religion has long been part and parcel of visiting Buddhist temples in Japan.

For centuries, in temple towns and streets leading to temple gates, merchants have peddled their wares to pilgrims and tourists; some of the products intended to aid religious practice, others less so. But this small-scale consumerism is worlds away from the chain retailers selling Zen.

Whatever the global impact, the attraction to Muji and lifestyle brands like it is evident. They sell plain, everyday goods that appeal to customers looking to simplify their home environments.

“These establishments tap into our desire and need for the simpler, slower, calmer life. If what they sell supports this need, then that’s wonderful,” says Tran. “Many of us who practise Zen love white and grey basics from these establishments.”

Overused and overstretched, Zen remains an contradictory enigma. It is as easily recognisable as it is difficult to explain – even in Japan. “I don’t know how many Japanese know exactly what Zen is, or what Buddhism is about,” Fuji says. Perhaps, like Zen itself, our relationship to it is best kept simple.

“In today’s overstimulated and complex world, we’re all happy to connect with something simpler and more grounded,” says Tran. “Something that emotes gentleness and kindness, something that reminds us to slow down and enjoy even just the breath.”