Zen, A Quiet Art

Considered by some to be "An 'endangered' arcane practice," Zen is a peculiar field of anomalous magic. It has a long history involving many stories, and now is utilized as a lever against Extraplanar forces by its practitioners.
Despite its relative obscurity, Zen manages to possess a certain type of beauty.
I believe its obscurity is due, at least in part, to the decentralization of information;
The goal of this paper is to help alleviate this issue.

Zen has a long history full of varied stories and accounts weaving a beautiful, if woefully incomplete, picture. Much of what was once known is lost.
Its origin, though some theories exist, is lost. No solid history remains detailing where it began; However, one thing that's agreed upon is that it is incredibly old, predating the Cataclysm by several hundred years. Conjecture by some says at least a thousand, but is generally disputed.
This is known thanks to accounts detailing landforms—mountains, valleys, etc—that no longer exist now, but are known to have existed in the past thanks to modern technology.

In the modern day it is primarily used as a tool against extraplanar forces of any sort by those few who are truly proficient in it, enabling them to handle threats they, otherwise, would be unable to. When Zen techniques clash against Extraplanar magic elemental disparities, on either side of the conflict, are amplified. For example:
In the case of a Zen water mage fighting Extraplanar fire magic, the effect of the elemental disparity between them will be stronger than a 'normal' water mage fighting against normal fire magic;
However, that same Zen user will also be far more vulnerable to Extraplanar lightning magic. Normal magic interacting with Zen techniques has no special effect, and elemental disparities behave as would be expected.

There are far better works explaining how Zen functions, and I encourage interested readers to investigate such works for a more in-depth understanding; However, I will still detail the basics here.
Realizing Zen techniques requires understanding an 'aspect' of nature (the ocean, the forest, a volcano, etc,) "becoming" in a way that is difficult to describe. This understanding can take years, even decades, to begin to develop. The chosen 'aspect' then goes on to be the core of the practitioners techniques.

A collection of excerpts from Logan Hawthornes paper, "Zen: A Quiet Art"

Zen: A Summary

Zen, explained simply, is a method of magic whose purpose is to ward off, contain, or otherwise deal with Extraplanar entities or affinities of any flavor, exacerbating elemental disparities in the process, by "embodying" an aspect of Nature. Though some consider it to be an art either dead or dying, and it is somewhat rare to encounter in the modern day, it may be worth knowing about to some degree for those it's designed to "deal with". A paper written by one Logan Hawthorne (INSERT LINK HERE) may prove informative.