What Happens if We Don’t Sit for 1 Month

[Noidea]

I was wondering, what happens if an experienced shikantaza practitioner stops sitting for 1 month?

[Jundo]

I was wondering, what happens if an experienced shikantaza practitioner stops sitting for 1 month?

Hello Noidea.

Welcome again. Would you mind to sign a first name to your posts, and to put a human face picture ... because it helps to keep things a bit more human around here? Thank you.

Well, nothing happens ... for there is nothing to attain from Zazen, no score-card, no goal to reach.

One probably remains the same kind of person that one was before, someone perhaps confused about life, running after ever moving goals and keeping score, perhaps worried about falling behind or getting ahead, and wondering at the way the time in life slips away. One will grow old, sick and die just like someone who sits. Perhaps one does not sit because feeling that there are better, more productive things to do.

Thus we sit, beyond all goals to attain, and score to keep, products to produce, beyond birth and death, sickness and health, any time to measure. Sitting, not sitting, absolutely nothing happens.

Gassho, J

stlah

[Jundo]

Of course, I had to go ahead and pour more words on it ...

What Happens When We Stop Sitting Zazen?

https://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showthread.php?20801-What-Happens-When-We-Stop-Sitting-Zazen

Gassho, J

stlah

[Seishin]

Sat

[Noidea]

Hello Jundo.

Thank you. I will add a photo when i am on pc.

Thanks for your advice. Let me answer from the new thread you started.

Kerem

[Soka]

I wouldn't class myself as an experienced shikantaza practitioner but I have occasionally fallen out of a sitting routine. I don't think I appreciate the benefits of zazen until I've gone a couple of weeks without it.

In the past when I've gone a while without sitting, I found that I could be more easily frustrated by things and my ability to concentrate fells off a little. I ended up feeling busier and a little more wrapped up in my own stuff. Sitting helps me be calmer and more compassionate and I quite like having those qualities, so I have always returned to Zazen. I feel like this change was more pronounced when I was newer to Buddhism, and a little slower and smoother now, but that might also be age catching up with me, I'm generally slower these days

Gassho,
Sōka
sat

[Shonin Risa Bear]

I was born in 1949. What was, say, 1947 like for me? If I die in 2022, what will 2023 be like for me?

gassho
ds sat, some lah too

[Guest]

For me, zazen keeps me connected to this moment, the place where life is happening. It is not that if we do not sit, life does not happen, it is just that we might miss it or not be intimate with it in the way we do when we are sitting. In my experience zazen helps me live life as the only moment that matters. There is a quote that Henry David Thoreau that has always helped me understand one of the core reasons why I do this practice.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived~Henry David Thoreau

Gassho,

Bill (Daiman)

Sat Today. LAH

[Rich]

To not sit for a month would be very difficult for me

Sat/lah


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