Originally Posted by
hishiryo
Funny.. i wrote a little text for a friend that just started meditation and he is very much struggling with monkey mind, archievements and ideas during meditating...
If you want to read what i have wrote to him:
"when we sit shikantaza, we do not try to purify anything - we are already whole, theres nothing lacking, nothing stained. We might have the idea to sit for the sake of becoming awakened, to make some progress, to attain something. But this is just our deluded thinking we identify with.
rather, while sitting, we embrace everything that arises, all perceptions in this vast, open awareness. we embrace our ideas about what good and bad zazen is, we embrace our expectations arising, our boredom, fears, whatever...
this way we maintain right samadhi without manipulating our experience, without caring about our mind states or whatsoever arises.
If we long for states that feel good or for moments of no-thought, its just some thoughts of desire arising. If we want to reject the present moment, because it does not feel like right zazen, we also recognize this as some thought activity. Whats the I, the doer, else than another perception arising? By returning to the spacious awareness any time we start to deal with those thoughts, when we get caught up in thinking. We let these thoughts come and go like clouds in the sky, simply being aware of what passing by.
we awaken through this practice moment by moment from distraction and entanglement.
by not craving or being attatched to certain thoughts or states, nor by pushing away what we encounter and we exhaust this way our karma this very moment because we do not react to urges and thought patterns but let them go.
we transcend our mind poisons by simply sitting, being aware of thoughts, emotions, sensations..and encounter the truth thats beyond thoughts, beyond concepts but not seperate from it.
So there are many good instructions how to sit zazen or shikantaza, but as long we conceptualize them in some way, we are far away from real sitting. When we perceive things coming up, bring the slightest opinion, idea, like, dislike into it we go astray. its still the involvement of mind poisons. So the ordinary way how we are concious of the things is not the way of wholehearted sitting. we have to go beyond knowing, beyond the experiencer, beyond judgements, beyond the identification with inner mono- or dialoges. We do not match what is happening with the concepts of the sitting instructions, ideas or past experiences nor check our awareness in any other way. We just sit silently and let the mind play its tricks without any involvement"
So maybe thats also a kind of feedback you asked to, Karl.
Gassho and bows
Stlah,
Ben