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)

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