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Beautiful article about Shikantaza
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I came across this and thought it was worth passing on… if you do shikantaza, this might show you a few new tricks. If you don’t do shikantaza, this might convince you to give it a try.
https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/wisdom-of-shikantaza/
However, the surprising twist of shikantaza, or “just sitting,” is that one sits feeling radically satisfied just by the act of sitting, putting down all measures of some “lack” and desiring nothing but sitting. The root of disappointment, anger, comparisons, despair, fear, frustration, and other desires drops away, and thus dukkha drops away. The goal of sitting is sitting, which is satisfied by sitting.
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The degree that we simply stop manipulating our habituated responses to phenomena, turns out to be the same degree to which we are no longer indulging in suffering's causes.
Here, in a nanosecond of experience, what some might sometimes call being radically satisfied, is little more than a taste of suffering's absence.
Don't just sit there.
…or sit elsewhere.
… eh wait … gone wrong again …
Sit, walk, be
ZAZEN IS GOOD FOR NOTHING
Perhaps worthwhile for @littleleaf?
And after you have practiced shikantaza for a while...You flow through the day like this
Abandoning my self to breathing out
and letting breathing in naturally still me
All that is left under the vast sky
an empty cushion...the weight of a flame
Or this slightly different version
Abandoning myself to breathing out
and letting breathing in naturally still me.
All that is left is an empty cushion
under the vast sky,
the weight of a flame.
~Master Keizan Jokin~
I’ve noticed giving everything to God and sitting shikantaza is similar, in that when I give things over to God, there is the space ( is this what you call Buddha nature?) which accepts it.
Blessings/ Metta.
As I understand it, Buddha nature is a little different, and has to do with the capacity for making an internal shift from seeing a narrow individual point of view, to seeing and acting from a more inclusive, holistic viewpoint.
A little joke…
Two older women were sitting in a cafe, talking about their adult children. “I hear your youngest son is living at home again,” said one to the other. “Yes”, said the other, “he spends all day meditating.” “Whats that,” says the first. “I don’t know,” says the other, “but it beats doing nothing.”
The intersection between giving things over to God an sitting shikantaza reminds me of a video I saw on Quakers and their practice.
I’m not that familiar with the practice of ‘giving everything to God’ but it does sound similar to just sitting. In both cases you relinquish everything, but in just sitting you have something to focus on.