We're All In This Together (17) - Don't Trade Away Shikantaza
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Please, especially in these hard and scary times, let us not trade away the power of Goalless Shikantaza Zazen. Especially in these times when there are pervasive fears of unemployment, sickness, nearby death and despair in the hearts of so many, we must teach people to sit at the calm center, in radical equanimity and acceptance. They must learn to drop contrasts and preferences from mind, such as their thirsts for the joy of economic success vs. the pain of failure, beloved health vs. dreaded illness, precious life vs, despised death. How sad if we turn Zazen into just another technique to breathe and relax a bit, letting a little stress and tension go. That does not get to the root of the problem, human suffering, the Dukkha which is Buddhism's core concern. Mind you, sitting upright, following the breath, letting the thoughts go and the body relax ... all that is not wrong, but if left as nothing more, lacks the true fire of Zazen sitting as all things JUST AS THEY ARE.
We do a disservice if we teach primarily but that, forgetting to include the message that to sit is sacred, to sit is the "nothing lacking" center of life which we may call "Buddha," letting unemploy be unemploy, sickness to dance as sickness, life and death embraced as the shining jewels of life and death. Death is not run from, nor is life something clung to. Even despair and fear are witnessed as nothing more than passing weather of the mind. One must sit, running from none of it, running towards none of it. Sun is just sun, rain is thoroughly rain, calm is a momentary state of calm, fear is perfectly fear ... and so for all of it. One must sit with a conviction deep in the bones that there is not one more thing to add or take away from life just as we encounter it now. Let life do its worst! One sits, dropping sun and rain, calm and fear, thus discovering the ever present source of all.
Some say that people new to Zen cannot handle this message, that it is too hard, so it must be presented first as some simple stress reduction and calming technique. l must strongly disagree. The wisdom and ways of Just Sitting, sitting in which the goal and fruition of sitting is sitting itself, can be made clear to folks, and is the medicine that people need now for the dis-ease ... not of body ... but of mind and heart. ln this world in which we run and chase, measure win and lose, hunger to get more and more, so many people this week are feeling lost when the running stops and, suddenly, they are forced to rest at home. They are feeling like economic victims, they are worried for their future, they are worried for their very lives. For that reason, the Shikantaza message of "no place to go, nothing more to attain, all is complete as it is" will bring them peace and wisdom. They can be taught how to drop from mind the contrasts, judgments and measuring of "win vs. lose" and even "sickness vs. health," "birth and death, you vs. me." They will get it when it is explained that the opposites and measures clutter our minds and we can sometimes put all that down.
Perhaps it will lead to a world in which people learn to see past their hungers and fears. They can handle the message, they will feel the wisdom in Goalless sitting and radical acceptance right from the start.
Let us teach and practice the real power and beauty of goalless Shikantaza. Please sit a bit with nothing lacking, not one other place to be, not one more thing to add or take away, all realized in the completion and wholeness of sitting.
Gassho, J
STLah
