Practice question about Shikantaza

[Tom A.]

Two observations that seem to bog myself and other people down because they seem like they are incompatible, and because I tend to fall into both extremes. I ask also because I tend to think Shikantaza Zazen is supposed to be 100% passive:

In Zazen there is a paradox between deliberately cultivating wise thoughts and feelings (wise thoughts and feelings like “I am whole,” “I am not waiting for anything” and cultivating thoughts that steer clear of excessive greed and aversion etc…), It’s improving the self. I’ll call it the active approach.

And just only knowing my bare thoughts and feelings (knowing what I am thinking and feeling without changing anything). Acceptance, no gain, just sitting. The self just as it is. I’ll call this the passive approach.

There seems to be a balance needed because falling into the extreme of 1. “Active” Is running the risk of turning Zazen into a self help program, never satisfied or accepting.

And falling into the extreme of 2.”passive” turning Zazen into just thinking about worries, problems and fantasies, getting irritated and grasping onto thoughts and feelings, being a passive captive to suffering, self-pity and other negative states and is probably harmful in the long run.

Is Shikantaza (to use the driving metaphor) staying in the lane and not veering to the left or right but staying between extremes of 1. Active and 2. passive.?

WHILE knowing that every single thought and feeling does not have to be changed and is floating away like clouds that don’t obstruct the blue sky? Letting it all flow? Cultivating good thoughts and feelings while knowing that nothing has to be cultivated, Improving while knowing there is nothing to improve, a smile because of feeling wholeness while also feeling pain and crying at the same time?

(Sorry to run long)

Gassho,

Tom

Sat


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[Bion]

Practice question about Shikantaza

You speak about cultivating “good” thoughts and steering away from bad ones. To me, zazen is beyond the arbitrary discriminations and the judging of things. Active cultivation of qualities is something I pursue off the cushion, where in order to function in the world I need to use that discriminatory mind that helps me figure out where everything sits on the scale of values assigned to things and how I should interact with all of what I perceive.
In zazen, that discriminatory mind can rest and I can just unobstructedly and freely BE, whatever that being is, whether it is the sounds around me, the lights, the thoughts, the emotions, the zafu, the sitting itself. I am all of it all the time, which is why after the zazen I can adjust my perspective of the “separation” we live within and function based on that understanding.

Sorry for rambling a bit too much. Also, please be mindful that this is just my approach and thinking.

[emoji1374] Sat Today

[Kokuu]

In Zazen there is a paradox between deliberately cultivating wise thoughts and feelings (wise thoughts and feelings like “I am whole,” “I am not waiting for anything” and cultivating thoughts that steer clear of excessive greed and aversion etc…), It’s improving the self. I’ll call it the active approach.

And just only knowing my bare thoughts and feelings (knowing what I am thinking and feeling without changing anything). Acceptance, no gain, just sitting. The self just as it is. I’ll call this the passive approach.

Hi Tom

Zazen is neither of those. We do not cultivate thoughts, nor are we sitting passively.

Rather, we are just letting everything be just as it is, beyond active or passive, good or bad, right or wrong, coming or going.

Just sit. There is no need for anything else.

Jundo talks about the attitude we sit Zazen with here: https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/show...A-EXPLANATIONS

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[aprapti]

Just sit. There is no need for anything else.

aah Kokuu, you're a real nailhitter ( i hope that is english )
i love your postings!!

Do you have a fanclub ?

aprapti

sat

[Jundo]

Kokuu and Bion say it well, I feel.

On the cushion, do not cultivate or grab thoughts, neither good thoughts nor bad thoughts. Simply be untangled as thoughts come and go, or happen or do not happen, without playing their game. Return to the breath, or open awareness, with a sense of the sacredness and completion of sitting for sitting's sake ... nothing more to do, no other place to be. This sitting is not passive, it is not active, but is simply a perfect doing that is perfect just by the doing. It is a balanced lute string, neither too loose nor too tight.

Now, off the cushion, we develop a sense of what are healthful thoughts (non-clutching, non-violent, charitable and kind, etc.) and what are harmful thoughts (filled with excess desire and clutching, angry or violent, selfish, jealous, etc.), and we certainly seek to nurture the healthful as best we can. Here is an example:

RECOMMENDED DAILY Nurturing Seeds PRACTICE

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?191-RECOMMENDED-DAILY-Nurturing-Seeds-PRACTICE

We also learn to accept times of sadness and times of happiness, ups and downs, with acceptance (at peace even with the fact that, sometimes, we smile and, sometimes, tears will roll down our cheeks).

But that is off the cushion and, even then, we seek not to be prisoners of tangled, excessive, wildly storming thoughts (even the good ones!)

Gassho, J

ST+lah

[Tom A.]

Gassho,

Sat

Tom


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[Suuko]

Suzuki said something like: When you sit Zazen, the precepts take care of themselves. In practice, I find this to be true. While we do sit with no gaining mindset, it does turn our lives around in a slow and gentle manner.

Gassho,
Sat,
Suuko.

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[Zenkon]

What is zazen? After wrestling with this question for quite some time, I have concluded that our Zazen is a wondrous activity, but it is not everything. Zazen will not give you the answers to next week's math test, nor will it tell you if there is life on other planets. It is simply, as Jundo has called it, Relaxed Spacious Awareness. Nothing more, nothing less. Try to make it into something which it is not, and you will run into trouble. To cultivate thoughts such as "I am whole" or questions such as "why am I feeling this way?", a different type of meditation, Single-Point Concentration, is called for. This type of meditation "looks" like zazen, but the mind activity is very different. After calming the mind, just as in zazen, the practitioner actively focuses on a specific topic/question to gain some insight. Zazen can also provide insights, but in a very indirect, intuitive manner. I find these two activities compliment each other very nicely, and each fill a specific role in my practice. This allows me to simply let zazen be what it is, and to stop trying to make it into something it is not.

Gassho

Zenkon
sat/lah

[Jundo]

Well, Zenkon.

Zazen will not give you the answers to next week's math test, nor will it tell you if there is life on other planets.

All is 1 2 3 4 5, infinity and yet, not 1 not 2. The math test is passed ...

And where is life not, and other planets are but this planet over there (while this planet is that planet right here).

Is there life here, birth and death? THAT is the question! But if life is here, then it is the mountains and most distant stars.

Nothing more, nothing less, nothing ever can be added or taken away.

Questions answered, no trouble, no something it is not.

To cultivate thoughts such as "I am whole" or questions such as "why am I feeling this way?", a different type of meditation,

No I to cultivate, radically drop all cultivation ... and One is Whole, and the Way thus Felt!

Gassho,

STLah

[Tom A.]

I got this and everything else wrong for so many years that I think it is good to drop everything I think I know but the knowing I don't know and a feeling of wholeness and faith in the Bodhidharma. Dropping what I think I know will be good for non-judgementalness, daily living and humility (with the added bonus of more wonder, better critical thinking skills, more skepticism in the scientific sense as well as diminishing the Dunning Kruger or negative knowledge bias: thinking I know what I don't know.) Not-knowing without the strong need to know, being okay with not knowing and beginner's mind is a very good thing.

Gassho,

Tom

Sat

[Jundo]

I got this and everything else wrong for so many years that I think it is good to drop everything I think I know but the knowing I don't know and a feeling of wholeness and faith in the Bodhidharma. Dropping what I think I know will be good for non-judgementalness, daily living and humility (with the added bonus of more wonder, better critical thinking skills, more skepticism in the scientific sense as well as diminishing the Dunning Kruger or negative knowledge bias: thinking I know what I don't know.) Not-knowing without the strong need to know, being okay with not knowing and beginner's mind is a very good thing.

Gassho,

Tom

Sat

Yes, not knowing is precious.

In Zen, we have a certain kind of "not knowing," however.

We may not know next week's weather, or the name of King Tut's cat, or whether life is found on a moon of Jupiter.

And yet, when Bodhidharma answered to the Emperor Wu, "Don't Know," when asked who he is, it was not some senile ignorance. It was the "knowing" that comes when there is no separate "I" to know, no separate "answer" to be known. This is True Knowing.

Gassho, J

STLah

[Zenkon]

This is a summary of Domyo Burk's comments from her Podcast "To Study Buddhism is to Study the Self"

In his essay “Genjokoan,” Dogen gives a teaching about self that many of us have found to be a precise description of the path of Zen practice in four steps:
“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off.”[3]
we need to engage in deep inquiry into the nature of self in order to be liberated from the self-concern and obsession the Buddha identified as such a problem over a thousand years earlier.
Dogen’s “self study” involves turning toward your direct experience as a living being. We become intimate with our own bodies and minds through the practices of zazen (Zen meditation) and mindfulness
Buddhism points out that your subjective experience is your only real means of insight into your nature as a human being
Another translation of the first line of Dogen’s famous Genjokoan passage is “to learn the Buddha’s truth is to learn ourselves.”[5] So it’s not just about gaining understanding about your self, it’s also about learning how to use the self like a bird learns to use its wings to fly
Buddhism is to study all things self-related – our sense that we have an enduring, inherent self-nature, our desire to find something permanent to rely on, our various views about self, the way we identify things as self and how we feel when those things change, how our belief in self leads us to act in selfish and harmful ways, the pervasive fear we don’t actually exist or that we will be annihilated upon our physical death, and the undeniable experience of being alive and aware that leads us to imagine a self-nature.

How do we do study ourselves in practice? In zazen, and in whatever stillness we can summon in the rest of our life, we pay attention to ourselves. This doesn’t mean getting caught up in the details, but observing carefully. What do we think? What do we feel? What triggers us? When do we feel small and defensive, and when do we feel relaxed and intimate? Why do we feel what we feel? What do we fear? What do we hope for? Who do we think we are? What is it like when our self-consciousness falls away for a moment? What makes that happen?

We don’t have to intellectually investigate these questions, and we don’t have to go through them systematically like a course of required study. We just cultivate awareness of what’s going on in our life. We build a habit of being familiar with our own living.

Once we become intimate with our view of self, at some point it becomes possible for us to let it go.




Through your direct experience, you know you exist – but in what way? Ultimately, this awareness of existing is what leads us to all the I-making and my-making, but that attempt to define self is just an effort to solidify ourselves in order to protect ourselves. In reality, our awareness just is, without any boundary at all

The highlighted section indicates a very direct, pointed questioning activity, which seems very different from our rather passive zazen. My only way of reconciling these two approaches is to think of them as two separate activities - our passive zazen and Burk's active questioning zazen. This seems to work for me. Am I missing something?

Gassgo

Zenkon

[Kokuu]

aah Kokuu, you're a real nailhitter ( i hope that is english )
i love your postings!!

Do you have a fanclub ?

If I did, I suspect it might only have one member!

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday-

[aprapti]

If I did, I suspect it might only have one member!

but no kidding, i really love your postings, Kokuu. Always to the point and - big asset - short

aprapti

sat

[Jundo]

Hi Zenkon,

There is something about Domyo's words that might mislead one to believe that Zazen is just some school of psychologizing and self-awareness. 'Tis much much more than that. I do not believe that is what she meant, although many modern Zen teachers have a tendency to talk small, leaving out the cosmos, all space and time.

Buddhism points out that your subjective experience is your only real means of insight into your nature as a human being
Another translation of the first line of Dogen’s famous Genjokoan passage is “to learn the Buddha’s truth is to learn ourselves.”[5] So it’s not just about gaining understanding about your self, it’s also about learning how to use the self like a bird learns to use its wings to fly ...

When the self is realized, one realizes that one's nature is every bird in the sky, and every feather on a bird's wing, and that their flying is our own. I mean that quite literally: Every flap of a pigeon's or eagle's wing from India to Illinois is you and me and all of us, and we are every starling and star in the sky. There is nothing to "use," for all is naturally flying. Perhaps our job is to fly with some grace, to soar and land with skill, avoiding the crashes and storms. Do not be an angry and selfish predator. However, there is truly nothing to do because the whole universe is doing its own flying.

Buddhism is to study all things self-related – our sense that we have an enduring, inherent self-nature, our desire to find something permanent to rely on, our various views about self, the way we identify things as self and how we feel when those things change, how our belief in self leads us to act in selfish and harmful ways, the pervasive fear we don’t actually exist or that we will be annihilated upon our physical death, and the undeniable experience of being alive and aware that leads us to imagine a self-nature.

Buddhism is to leap beyond and to the heart of permanence and impermanence, to realize that there is no death (no birth either), we have never truly existed, that there is just change ... and yet, and yet, our very self-nature is to flow and be fertile as this very change, our life is changes's fruiting, that our self will die even as it will not, that every blade of grass or baby's birth in this world is our own. All this is true even as (it is also true) that we are born and we someday die, are not the grass or the birds or the others in this world. We are thoroughly, through and through, the whole shebang, we are thoroughly each other, we are thoroughly each just who we are as our own precious jewels of our own selves, and yet we are not just that too.

Also, the following can be misleading ...

How do we do study ourselves in practice? In zazen, and in whatever stillness we can summon in the rest of our life, we pay attention to ourselves. This doesn’t mean getting caught up in the details, but observing carefully. What do we think? What do we feel? What triggers us? When do we feel small and defensive, and when do we feel relaxed and intimate? Why do we feel what we feel? What do we fear? What do we hope for? Who do we think we are? What is it like when our self-consciousness falls away for a moment? What makes that happen?

We do not try to observe during Zazen "what do we think, What do we feel? What triggers us? When do we feel small and defensive, and when do we feel relaxed and intimate? Why do we feel what we feel? What do we fear? What do we hope for?" etc. etc. Such awareness naturally arises on and off the cushion, as we grow more sensitive and aware of the tricks and theatre of the mind. But we do not try to do that on the cushion.

I am a big critic of this tendency in modern Zen to talk about Zazen as just some kind of therapy or light "mindfulness" practice to be better functioning consumers and less stressed workers in the suburbs. It sometimes can make Zen practice sound like a "10 step self-help" program in being a "more effective you," pulled from a magazine or Reddit click bate. Zazen is not that small.

Gassho, J

STLah
Sorry to run long