Daydreaming. ..

[dharmasponge]

Hi I read somewhere somone was concerned that when using shikantaza that far from sitting 'properly' they might be merely daydreaming.

How can we be sure we're following the right path?

_/|\_

[Jishin]

Can't.

Gassho, Jishin

#SatToday

[Kokuu]

Hi Tony

Sometimes in sitting we become aware of streams of thought, sometimes of sensations in our arms and legs. Which is just sitting? Which is not just sitting? Sometimes we are lost in thought for the whole time. Have we just sat or not?

Maybe stop reading about what other people worry about? Just sit. Then sit some more. What is not complete when you are sitting? Even worries about whether you are sitting properly or not is just life 'as it is'.

Gassho
Kokuu

[RichardH]

Can't.

Gassho, Jishin

#SatToday

Daizan
Sat today

[Joyo]

I'm very experienced in the daydreaming department Yes, I daydream during zazen, but here's the difference....don't feed the thoughts during shikantaza.

Gassho,
Joyo
sitting very soon today

[Jundo]

Zazen is not daydreaming, although sometimes we may fall into daydreaming during Zazen. When catching oneself daydreaming, one opens the hand of thought and returns to the Clear Open Boundless which shines between, right through and as all thought.

Shikantaza is sat with an attitude of vitality, wholeness, as one perfect act in this instant in the whole world, the right place to be and right doing in that moment. If not, it is not right. However, good or bad, right or wrong ... Zazen is never wrong. One does not sit like a bump on a log, twiddling one's thumbs, daydreaming or zoning out. That is wrong Zazen. Wrong wrong wrong, right through and beyond all thought of "right and wrong". I often say ...

[O]ur “goalless sitting” in Zazen is –not– merely sitting on our butts, self-satisfied, feeling that we “just have to sit here and we are Buddha“. Far from it. It is, instead, to-the-marrow dropping of all need and lack. That is very different. Someone’s “just sitting around” doing nothing, going no where, complacent or resigned, giving up, killing time, is not in any way the same as “Just Sitting” practice wherein nothing need be done, with no where that we can go or need go ...

... So, if someone were to think I am saying, “All you need to do in Zazen is sit down on one’s hindquarters, and that’s enough … just twiddle your thumbs in the ‘Cosmic Mudra’ and you are Buddha” then, respectfully, I believe they do not get my point. But if they understand, “There is absolutely no place to be, where one needs to be or elsewhere where one can be, than on that Zafu in that moment, and that moment itself is all complete, all-encompassing, always at home, the total doing of All Life, Time and Space fully realized” … they are closer to the flavor.

http://www.treeleaf.org/forums/showt...l=1#post105442

I usually toss this in too ...

A VITAL REMINDER ON ZAZEN -- by Jundo (please read)

Master Dogen often spoke about Zazen as "itself body-mind dropped off". I have this little way of explaining "Zazen is in itself body-mind dropped off":

Our small self, the body-mind, is always filled with countless desires ... the desire to be somewhere else, be getting somewhere, achieving some prize, some distant goal. Our body-mind is always judging this or that as somehow inadequate to what the body-mind wants, its likes and dislikes, needs, regrets and dreams.

Thus, when there is sat an instant of Zazen as wholeness in just sitting, the only place to be and act to do in that instant, in all of reality, to fulfill life as life ... the Buddha and all the Ancestors just sitting in that instant of sitting, no other thing to attain or which ever can be attained ... no other place to go or in need of going ... all holes filled, whether full or empty or in between ... all lack and excess resolved in that one sitting, with not one thing to add or take away ... judgments dropped away, "likes and dislikes" put aside ... nothing missing from Zazen (even when we might feel that "something is missing", for one can be fully content with the feeling of lack!) ... the sitting of Zazen and all life experienced as complete and whole as just the sitting of Zazen ... the entire universe manifesting itself on the Zafu at that moment ...

... in other words, when the "little self" is thereby put out of a job by the experience of "just sitting" as whole and complete with nothing more to be desired or needed ... then the hard borders between the "little self" and the "not the self" (which is usually being judged and "bumped into" and divided into pieces) thus naturally soften, fully fade away ... only the wholeness of the dance remaining ...

... then "Zazen is in itself body-mind dropped off".

Human beings simply do not know how to act an action pierced as naturally complete just by the act of the action itself, how to live life that is whole just by the act of living life.

This is not sitting 'on one's complacent rump like a bump on a log', but is instead whole ... vibrant ... alive ... fulfilled sitting.

Then, rising up from the Zafu to our day to day lives ... we realizes that there is no place to go, even as we have so many places to go ... no holes in need of filling, even as we grab a shovel and get to work to filling holes ... nothing to fix in life, even as we try to fix what can be fixed ... no life or death or disease to cure, even as we take our medicine ... aversions and attractions dropped away, even as we lightly hold onto those aversions and attractions necessary to ordinary human life ... nothing to attain, even as we follow the Precepts to keep a healthy and balanced life, manifesting the Teachings in each moment and choice ... fully knowing that each step of life's path is a total arriving, sacred in itself, even as we seek to choose the path to a balanced and loving life (and to avoid the paths which lead off the cliff!)

It is then seen as --all-- the wholeness of the dance.

Please sit and live in such way.

Gassho, J

SatToday!

[Jamen]

"using" shikantaza? I wonder what they were using it for.

[Byokan]

How can we be sure we're following the right path?

Empty handed,
Gentle hearted,
Eyes horizontal,
Nose vertical.

Gassho
Lisa
sat today

[Rich]

I'm a daydream believer because a lot of them become reality. But when sitting I try to just sit and let them go. How can we be sure in a world that's constantly changing. We can't, so its the path of no path, which is just sitting.

Sat today

[Heisoku]

Wow Rich, David Cassidy and the Monkey's quoted in the same post!
Love treeleaf.
Gassho Heisoku
Sat today (now on my predictive text!)

[Jundo]

While the Monkees are the Monkees, may I introduce two of my favorite Japanese covers of Daydream Believer?
The late great Kiyoshiro Imawano ...



... the the kinda what they are Charan Po Ratan ...



Gassho, J

Sat Today

[Shinzan]

Wow,that was cosmic, man..........

_/\_ Shinzan
sattoday

[Rich]

Heisoku, I knew the monkees one but the other I just found out was the Young Rascals. David Cassidy probably covered it.
😊😎
Jundo, nice to see that good music is appreciated in Japan.

Sat today




Kind regards. /\

[Troy]

I think of Zazen like standing peacefully in a river and letting the water (our thoughts and emotions) flow by without trying to push the water back or grasping on to it. Sometimes the water rushes by out of control and other times it is serene, either way it is Zazen.


_|sat2day|_

[Myosha]

Hello,

We embrace what is; rejecting and judging none of it . Jundo

Every moment of the moment.

Thank you.


Gassho,
Myosha sat today

[dharmasponge]

I think of Zazen like standing peacefully in a river and letting the water (our thoughts and emotions) flow by without trying to push the water back or grasping on to it. Sometimes the water rushes by out of control and other times it is serene, either way it is Zazen.


_|sat2day|_

I like that

And thanks for the video links Jundo....brightened up an otherwise dull, damp and grey day here in the UK _/|\_

[shikantazen]

At the los angeles Zenshuji, we have the below line as part of zazen description

"To sit without seeking enlightenment and without rejecting delusion"

Gassho,
Sam sat today

[Jundo]

At the los angeles Zenshuji, we have the below line as part of zazen description

"To sit without seeking enlightenment and without rejecting delusion"

Gassho,
Sam sat today

But neither do we allow ourself to fall into and wallow in delusion, nor do we abandon enlightenment. Sitting itself is enlightenment realized.

Zen folks have a way of talking out of both sides of their no-sided mouth.

Gassho, J