One Time, One Meeting

Jundo Cohen, an American Zen priest who lives in Japan, often refers to the “tool kit” of meditative practices. Within the Japanese Zen tradition alone those practices include susokkan (counting out-breaths), kinhin (walking meditation), samu (work practice), oryoki (formal meals), contemplation of koans, and shikantaza (“just sitting” ). And that is to say nothing of the multitude of other methods, such as meditation on a text or repetition of a mantra, employed by the world’s contemplative traditions.

Jundo himself practices shikantaza, which is also known as “objectless meditation”. In most modes of meditation, the practitioner is instructed to focus on an object, tangible or intangible. In Zen practice that object is usually the flow of the breath, at least at the beginning of a sitting, but it can also be a koan, such as “Who hears the sound?” or “What was your original face before your parents were born?” In either case, we are enjoined to focus our attention, exclusively and singlemindedly, on a chosen object. By so doing, we enter the state of one-pointed concentration known as samadhi.

In practicing shikantaza, we dispense with all such methods. Insofar as we can, we do nothing but sit in awareness, noticing whatever comes along, including the sensations in our bodies, the coming and going of the breath, and the urge to be doing something—anything—but just sitting. Should we begin to slouch, we correct our posture, but apart from such corrections, we focus on nothing in particular. Instead, we cultivate a panoramic attention, opening our minds to all that is occurring, within and without. If thoughts cross our minds, we note them but do not pursue them. Nor do we attempt to analyze our thoughts or discern their emotional subtexts. We just sit.

Shikantaza is a composite word, made up of three discrete elements. Shikan is usually translated as “just” or “nothing but,” and it connotes wholehearted attention. Ta is an intensifier, literally meaning “hit.” Za means “to sit,” or more broadly, “to sit together.” Together these elements describe a practice of sitting in precise, continuous awareness.

Eido Shimano Roshi, a contemporary Zen master, explains the practice of shikantaza in this way:

This is zazen in which one neither seeks enlightenment nor rejects delusion. The purest zazen, it uses no devices as such; strictly speaking, there is no goal or method. Shikan taza practice is a manifestation of original enlightenment, and is at the same time a way toward its realization . . . . Zazen is both something one does and something one essentially is.*

To sit without goals or methods is not so easy as it sounds. In a culture as competitive as ours, where doing rather than being is widely prized, such a practice presents an extraordinary challenge. But for all its rejection of goals, “just sitting” affords the diligent practitioneer uncommon rewards. In contrast to object-centered meditation, it trains us to include whatever we experience—and to let the things of this world reveal themselves, just as they are.