Origin

The character combines a religious or spiritual element on the left (the altar or shrine radical, showing this relates to worship or meditation) with a sound hint on the right that tells you roughly how to pronounce it. The left part gives the semantic field—this is about spiritual practice—while the right part sounds similar to the character's pronunciation. Over time, 禅 came to represent the Buddhist practice of quiet, focused meditation known as Zen.

AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Phono-semantic (meaning + sound hint).