



SHIKANTAZA

JUST SITTING





"Shikan" means nothing but, "Ta" means to hit, "Za" means to sit.

SHIKANTAZA





Presented by:

the Wanderling









KHANIKA SAMADHI



KHANIKA SAMADHI is called momentary concentration (sequential momentary deep concentration) because it occurs only at the moment of noting and, in the case of Vipassana, not on a fixed object as Samatha-Jhana meditation but on changing objects or phenomena that occur in the mind and body. But when the Vipassana meditator develops strength and skill in noting, his Khanika concentration occurs uninterruptedly in a series without a break. This concentration, when it occurs from moment to moment without a break, becomes so powerful that it can overcome The Five Hindrances , thus bringing about purification of mind (citta visuddhi) which can enable a meditator to attain all the insight knowledges up to the level of Arahat .





VI The very foundation of Shikantaza is based on an unshakeable faith that:



Sitting as the Buddha sat, with the mind void of all conceptions, of all beliefs and points of view, is the actualization or unfoldment of the inherently Enlightened Bodhimind with which all are endowed.

At the same time this sitting is entered into in the faith that it will one day culminate in the sudden and direct perception of the true nature of this Mind-- in other words, Enlightenment.



Therefore to strive self-consciously for Satori or any other gain from Zazen is as unnecessary as it is undesirable.



The conscious thought "I must get Enlightened" can be as much of an impediment as any other which hangs in the mind. (see)



In authentic Shikantaza neither of these two elements of faith can be dispensed with. To exclude Satori from Shikantaza would necessarily involve stigmatizing as meaningless and even masochistic the Buddha's strenuous efforts toward Enlightenment, and impugning the patriarchs' and Dogen's own painful struggles to that end. This relation of Satori to Shikantaza is of the utmost importance. Unfortunately it has often been misunderstood, especially by those to whom Dogen's complete writings are inaccessible. It thus not infrequently happens that Western students will come to a Soto temple or monastery utilizing Koans in its teaching and remonstrate with the roshi over his assignment of a Koan, on the ground that Koans have as their aim Enlightenment; since all are intrinsically Enlightened, they argue, there is no point in seeking Satori. So what they ask to practice is Shikan-taza, which they believe does not involve the experience of Enlightenment.



Such an attitude reveals not only a lack of faith in the judgment of one's teacher but a fundamental misconception of both the nature and the difficulty of Shikantaza, not to mention the teaching methods employed in Soto temples and monasteries. A careful reading of the encounters of Yasutani Hakuun Roshi with ten Westerners, for example, will make it clear why genuine Shikantaza cannot be successfully undertaken by the rank novice, who has yet to learn how to sit with stability and equanimity, or whose ardor needs to be regularly boosted by communal sitting or by the encouragement of a teacher, or who, above all, lacks strong faith in his own Bodhimind coupled with a dedicated resolve to experience its reality in his daily life.



Because today, Zen masters claim, devotees are on the whole much less zealous for truth, and because the obstacles to practice posed by the complexities of modern life are more numerous, capable Soto masters seldom assign Shikantaza to a beginner. They prefer to have him first unify his mind through concentration on counting the breaths; or where a burning desire for Enlightenment does exist, to exhaust the discursive intellect through the imposition of a special type of Zen problem called a Koan and thus prepare the way for Kensho.



By no means, then, is the Koan system confined to the Rinzai sect as many believe. Yasutani Hakuun Roshi is only one of a number of Soto masters who use Koans in their teaching. Genshu Watanaberoshi, the former abbot of Soji-ji, one of the two head temples of the Soto sect in Japan, regularly employed Koans, and at the Soto monastery of Hosshinji, of which the illustrious Harada-roshi was abbot during his lifetime, Koans are also widely used.



Even Dogen Zenji himself, as we have seen, disciplined himself in Koan Zen for eight years before going to China and practicing Shikantaza. And though upon his return to Japan Dogen wrote at length about Shikantaza and recommended it for his inner band of disciples, it must not be forgotten that these disciples were dedicated truth-seekers for whom Koans were an unnecessary encouragement to sustained practice. Notwithstanding this emphasis on Shikantaza, Dogen made a compilation of three hundred well- known Koans, to each of which he added his own commentary. From this and the fact that his foremost work, the Shobogenzo (A Treasury of the Eye of the True Dharma), contains a number of Koans, we may fairly conclude that he did utilize Koans in his teaching.







MEDITATION APPS









The past several years has seen a proliferation of smartphone meditation apps come on the market, all designed in such a way to ease, assist, familiarize, and put into use meditation techniques for almost anybody interested in learning and implementing the various ins-and-outs of meditation, at least as the manufacturers of the apps view meditation.

Beyond the manufacturers advertisement and promotions, for every page that shows up on the internet or elsewhere in support of using the apps, there is an equal number of pages knocking their use. What the knocking their use people are selling varies, but the in support folk seem to be in line with the app builders and promoters because if nothing else, the apps sell --- and sell big time, especially so the two top brands, Headspace and Calm.

People use all kinds of things to enhance or increase their ability to accomplish things. They wear glasses to improve the clarity of their physical vision. Some use dental implants and dentures to chew, eat, or look better. The same for the use of prosthetics, crutches, canes, or wheelchairs. They help people get things done and walk or move about who otherwise might not be able to. But, if glasses to read or see aren't needed, or implants or dentures, or canes, crutches, or wheelchairs, why use them? Initially, with meditation, other than a coming to know what meditation is and what it can do if you do it, nothing much than the desire to do so and then doing it is required Painting legs on a snake doesn't make it walk any better. Electronically painting photon-pushing meditation legs to swath your synapses with trompe l'oeil may be for some, better than nothing. However, and this is one of the biggest however's ever, it is that better than nothing that makes it not, not nothing, the goal of meditation.









Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where

we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience

and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.











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