Sokuzan on Why Practice Shikantaza

I have - on and off since my youth - practiced zazen. But the sort of zazen that I was introduced to as a young man in the Isshin-Ryu dojo of my formative years was (as I have said before elsewhere on this blog) decidedly of a Soto-style nature. Specifically, it was what is known in Zen as shikantaza, often translated as just sitting. But "just sitting" can be a lot harder than it sounds.

The following is from Japanese-American monk-priest Sokuzan, in a new book of his entitled "108 Meditation Instructions." I admit to knowing very little about Sokuzan, despite typically being familiar with the American-Buddhist "scene", but what he has to say here has a depth to it that you don't typically encounter in American Zen.

Enjoy!

Kodo Sawaki sitting in Zazen

Why do this kind of meditation (shikantaza) rather than shine or thaktong or samatha and vipassana? Why not do creation/completion practices or deity yoga visualizations? Or mantras? Why not do walking meditations in the forest? Or follow the breath? These kind of practices try to stabilize the mind. If you endeavor to calm the mind, you are calming what you think is the mind, not the actual mind. It will just look like it is calm because you have done something artificial to it.

Shikantaza is not about training your mind to be more calmful - though that may occur. If you are looking for peace, then this kind of meditation is not going to help you. Shikantaza is much more rough, rugged, and realistic than that and will take you right into the labyrinth of your karma. For that ambitious undertaking, it seems necessary to have a solid discipline that summons you to sit down, hold still, and watch what happens in the mind stream without agreeing or objecting. Shikantaza is a practice because you may have to watch yourself shut down, disagree, or ignore what arises in your mind over and over. But you don't have to fix anything. You don't have to correct anything. You don't have to get better. It's pretty good news - you don't have to be somebody else. You get to be exactly who you are.*

*From "108 Meditation Instructions and 6 Dharma Talks: A Foundational Guide to Zen Buddhist Meditation" by Sokuzan (from the book's introduction)

Comments

Overtraining

Some Thoughts on Understanding and Avoiding Overtraining When it comes to the state commonly referred to as “overtraining,” opinions vary. They run quite the gamut, too. Some lifters are so bold as to declare “no such thing as overtraining exists.” On the polar opposite, flip side of that you have the typical “hardgainer” advice that more than just two workouts—hell, maybe more than just one hard session—per week will lead to “OVERTRAINING.” For some reason, the latter group typically capitalizes “overtraining.” I guess that’s to show the rest of us overtrainers just how scary of a subject it can be. The truth, of course, and you may have already surmised this, lies somewhere in between those two extremes. There are three areas , I believe, in which overtraining occurs. They overlap but are still particular enough that they each deserve their own mention. You can overtrain your movemen...

The High-Protein, High-Set Program

A.K.A. - How to Gain 40 Pounds of Bulk in 8 Weeks John McCallum’s High-Frequency, High-Volume Routine for Rapid Mass Gains In the 1960s, John McCallum wrote arguably the greatest monthly column the bodybuilding world has ever known. It was called “The Keys to Progress” and appeared in what was probably also the greatest muscle magazine of all time, Strength and Health . His column is still fantastic to this day. To be honest, it’s probably better today because of all the nonsense that you see, hear, or read about in the ultra-saturated world we all know and love called the internet. I wonder what the hell McCallum would think about training and nutrition information these days? I have a feeling he wouldn’t think highly of it at all. I thought about McCallum this morning when I was “thumbing” through my new digital copy of “The Complete Keys to Progress.” I have an older, slightly tatt...

The Top 10 Posts of 2024!

Now that 2024 is behind us, I thought I would do a "Top 10" post for the start of 2025. Many of you may be knee-deep at the moment in trying to achieve some of your New Year's resolutions - assuming you haven't quit already😏. Well, if getting big and/or strong is at the top of your list of resolutions, perhaps some of the following essays and articles from last year might help. The following were the top 10 most read posts from 2024: The Look of Power Size AND Strength: The Best Way to Train for Both Easy Muscle Classic Bodybuilding: How to Gain 50 Pounds of Muscle, Part One (and if you find Part One interesting, make sure you check out Parts Two and Three ) Long, Hard, or Frequent Training The High-Frequency Training Manifesto Old-School, Full-Body Mass Building Power Bodybuilding The Full-Body Big Barbell 5 Program And the #1 most read post... Marvin Eder's Mass-Building Methods

C.S. Sloan's Integral Strength

Search This Blog