Rinzai Zen Buddhism gets a ground-level look inside a Japanese monastery, following monks through the schedule that structures their days: pre-dawn meditation, chanting, and hours of physical labor in the fields and kitchen. The film traces Zen's path from China into Japan in the 12th century and settles on Rinzai, one of the three major Japanese sects, known for pairing seated meditation with koans, the paradoxical riddles monks sit with for years in pursuit of a shift in understanding. Cameras stay close to the routine itself rather than narrating it from a distance, showing the repetition and discipline that Zen treats as the practice, not a preparation for it. The film also traces Zen's reach outside monastery walls, into the tea ceremony, flower arranging, garden and temple design, and the training behind martial arts, arguing that the same attention to impermanence and non-attachment shows up in all of them. Originally released in Japan in 1986 as 禅の世界 (In the World of Zen).