Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything

• Just sitting (shikantaza) is physically enacting nonduality and no-self.
• Don’t do anything but sit there.
  • When thoughts arise, just leave them alone.
    • Don’t push or pull them. Just let them come and go.
    • No reaction, no judgment, no opposition. No effort.
  • Be instead of do.
    • Behind every thought is a push to do: to fix, to improve, to protect, to seek, to grasp.
  • Let time pass, without any ulterior motive or thoughts about the experience. Like you did when you were a kid.
  • Let go of trying to control experience.
    • Notice that everything is okay, everything happens anyway.
    • Notice that reality is perfectly fine on its own, without our thinking to hold it together.
    • Non-action: action occurs without an actor.
• It’s difficult. It doesn’t seem to make sense. We don’t trust that things will be okay.
• We need some kind of effort to keep us engaged.
  • Direct, wilful, effort doesn’t work.
  • Let go more and more, of more and more.

Let Myself Just Sit? Are You Crazy?

We’re afraid that if we give up trying to control our minds, they’ll do nothing but wander all over the place and waste our time.

If we just sit there, we’ll never improve or attain anything. Nothing will happen.

In our doubt, we cling to overt or subtle meditative techniques to minimize the amount of time we spend caught up thoughts while sitting zazen. Our natural preferences morph into judgments, even if parts of us resist those judgments.

Why is it so hard for us to wholeheartedly dedicate ourselves to just sitting? Because it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s scary because we don’t trust ourselves.

Shikantaza challenges you to physically enact nonduality and no-self. When you let go of the struggle to control your experience and find out everything flows along perfectly fine anyway, this brings the Buddhist teachings home in the most profound and transformative way possible.

Return to the Right Posture Moment by Moment

When various thoughts arise in your mind, do not become caught up by them or struggle with them; neither pursue nor try to escape from them. Just leave thoughts alone, allowing them to come up and go away freely.

The Actual Results of Not Trying to Control Our Zazen

our very non-resistance to wily fox mind (or anything else that happens) is the perfect enactment of zazen. In the exact moment of recognizing wily fox mind we just sit – no reaction, no judgment, no opposition to wily fox mind, no concern about ourselves or our meditative experience, no effort to “return to the present.”

The irony is, this ludicrous-sounding method of no method can be a direct gateway into exactly what it is we’re looking for.

[Zazen] “is simply the dharma gate of joyful ease, the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. It is the koan realized, traps and snares can never reach it.

Why Zazen Works – It’s a Physical Practice

Any explanation of why this is risks us complicating the matter and making “just sitting” into a method we use for particular results …

Even if you’re reliving last night’s TV show or worrying about all the stuff you need to get done, as long as you’re not actually doing anything but sitting there, at some level you are doing zazen. Most of us find this reassurance cold comfort when what we really want is to be concentrated and aware of our meditative experience, but that’s because we’re overly identified with our consciousness.

Buddhism and modern science point out repeatedly, our conscious experience is only the tip of the iceberg of our whole being.

at least hold the intention to let yourself be instead of do.

Why Zazen Works – Thinking Is Doing

when we really pay attention, we realize thinking is doing.

How can we spend more time awake to what’s going on in our life instead of being pushed around by thoughts? This is a sincere and important question.

one of the things you don’t do is conceive of your wandering mind as separate from yourself. When you’re caught up in thought on the meditation seat, it’s because you got pulled into the habit of doing.

Behind every thought is an obvious or subtle compulsion to do something – to fix, improve, protect, seek, grasp, etc.

return to the practice with a minimum of fuss, letting go of doing anything.

chill out like you naturally did when you were a kid: Letting time pass on a mellow summer afternoon, noticing the bees buzzing around – without any ulterior motive or any thoughts about how mindful you were being.

Why Zazen Works – There Is a Place for Effort

It’s important that there be room for effort in zazen because that’s the way we operate as human beings. Passivity makes us dull, sleepy, and disengaged.

This is the kind of stillness we aim for in zazen – not moving, not doing, but only because we’re vibrating at such a high frequency (maintaining a vital sense of purpose, energy, and movement), not because we’re slack.

In brief, the effort in zazen is to let go of doing more and more and more.

Direct, willful effort isn’t going to work, but you need to put a lot of effort into paying attention, being sensitive and aware, letting go of what isn’t helping, and trusting the process.

Gradually, zazen teaches us we don’t have to hold reality together with our minds. In fact, we realize reality is perfectly fine on its own, and the world we’ve constructed in our minds is only a pale reflection of it.

I believe zazen is an elegantly simple and direct practice that very cleverly asks you to leave behind the “executive I” from the outset, so you don’t have to struggle to shed it later after it’s appeared to lead you to all kinds of great spiritual rewards.

Reference: Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything - The Zen Studies Podcast

Added 2024-05-24.