Through Samsara
Zen in the City That Never Sleeps Immersive Exhibition
Zen in the City
That Never Sleeps
Immersive Exhibition Experience
Timeline: Sep - Dec 2025
Location: New York City
Type: Thesis Exhibition
Through Samsara
Entrance
At the entrance, visitors encounter three doors, HOME, WORK, and COMMUTE. Each one poses a simple but grounding question: “What is stressing you right now?” This moment invites visitors to pause and recognize the tensions that shape their everyday lives.
Consumable Zen
Introduction
What is Zen
Inquiry
Understanding
This section begins by asking visitors a simple but open question: “What is Zen?” Responses typed into the kiosk are printed in real time on a large-format roll printer, unfolding as an ever-growing stream of collective thoughts.
Nothing Stays
Begin Here
Authentic Zen begins with practice, not products. Through sitting, breathing, and daily discipline, its ideas impermanence, emptiness, non-attachment are understood through experience. It appears in small, ordinary moments: making tea, quiet meditation, or mindful awareness throughout the day. It doesn’t promise instant calm, but cultivates clarity and presence. It is lived, not consumed.
Nothing Holds
Understanding
Nothing Stands
In this section, multiple singing bowls move and vibrate, producing ever-changing sounds and waves with each subtle shift. No tone returns once it fades, and every rhythm that forms dissolves into another, never repeating in the same way again. This continuous transformation quietly embodies the Zen teaching of impermanence. Nothing lingers, and no resonance remains fixed — inviting visitors to understand impermanence through sound itself.
This section explores the Zen teaching that nothing holds a fixed essence. The display presents stones in different forms—sand, gravel, pebbles, and rock. They appear distinct, yet each form is simply the same stone shaped by context, pressure, and time. Their identity shifts, but their nature remains open and unfixed.
Practice
Three Essence of Zen
Moongate
Understanding
Consumable Zen is the packaged, aesthetic version of Zen—candles, diffusers, stones, and calming words. It offers quick relief and a “Zenlike” feeling, but stays on the surface. It soothes for a moment without leading to real practice or change. It is the look of peace, not the work of peace.
Step inside the core of Zen.
What follows is not a lesson, but a practice—experienced through the body and the senses.
In this section, visitors write their attachments on pieces of water-soluble paper. As the paper sinks into the water, the words begin to blur, dissolve, and eventually disappear entirely. Watching the form fade shows that attachment does not dissolve by holding on, but only in the moment of letting go.
Visitors see illustrations of people meditating across everyday New York scenes—parks, offices, homes— reminding us that Zen isn’t tied to temples or retreats. It can emerge anywhere breath meets awareness. By placing practice inside ordinary city life, the installation reframes Zen as a quiet stillness within movement and noise, inviting visitors to view their own surroundings as places of practice. To extend this idea, local Zen centers offer brief guided sittings, giving visitors a chance to experience authentic meditation within the space.
Peace in Your Hands
Practice
The tea experience marks a shift from reflection to integration.
Preparing and drinking tea becomes a quiet ritual that brings attention back to the body and the present moment.
Graphics
Authentic Zen
Introduction