Fun With Etymology
Zen is short for the Japanese zenna, meaning "meditation". You can trace this word's geneaology backward in time and space: zenna is derived from the Mandarin chánnà, which in older Chinese would have been zyan-na. This word was very probably a Sinification of the Pali word jhāna, which comes from the Sanskrit dhyāna, which in the context of Buddhist and Hindu traditions means roughly "seeing with the mind's eye". This in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European root dhey- (or sometimes dhya-), which meant simply "to see".
Now let's follow the PIE root back upward along a different branch: the dh sound in PIE becomes th to the Greeks, giving rise to the Greek theā, meaning roughly "a view" or "a thing seen". Derived from this is the Greek theoria, meaning literally "things looked at or seen" and by the same metaphor as dhyāna "contemplation". Also theorein, meaning "to consider, speculate, examine". This of course is where the English word "theory" and its family of derivatives comes from, via the Romans who stole it. Theorizing is, of course, the soul of science.
Science and Zen turn out not only to serve complementary functions, but to be distant cousins after all.
Now let's follow the PIE root back upward along a different branch: the dh sound in PIE becomes th to the Greeks, giving rise to the Greek theā, meaning roughly "a view" or "a thing seen". Derived from this is the Greek theoria, meaning literally "things looked at or seen" and by the same metaphor as dhyāna "contemplation". Also theorein, meaning "to consider, speculate, examine". This of course is where the English word "theory" and its family of derivatives comes from, via the Romans who stole it. Theorizing is, of course, the soul of science.
Science and Zen turn out not only to serve complementary functions, but to be distant cousins after all.