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From desire there arises grief, from desire there arises fear;
for one who is free from desire there is no grief, how is there fear?
The Dhammapada
AUDIO VERSION AVAILABLE HERE
Someone wrote to say that they do not get "Just Sitting," Shikantaza. It seems passive, complacent. They would prefer a meditation or some other practice that changes more directly our mental habits "from ignorance to enlightened." They would prefer a method which counters head-on our human greed, anger, clutching and fear.
I am afraid that they may not truly understand Shikantaza, the meaning of "Goalless" sitting. In fact, this "Just Sitting" is the most powerful of medicines, going right to the source of all greed, anger, clutching, fear and more.
How?
What is the source of human greed? Desire. What is excellent medicine for Desire? To sit radically as what is, allowing, nothing to desire, complete in this sitting to sit, sitting with trust that sitting is the fulfillment of sitting, nothing lacking in this moment.
What is the source of human anger? Frustration brought about by thwarted desire. What is excellent medicine for desire? To sit radically as what is, allowing, nothing to desire, complete in this sitting to sit, sitting with trust that sitting is the fulfillment of sitting, nothing lacking in this moment.
What is the source of jealousy and clutching? Desire. Desire to have what others have, desire to keep what one passionately holds. What is excellent medicine for desire? To sit radically as what is, allowing, nothing to desire, complete in this sitting to sit, sitting with trust that sitting is the fulfillment of sitting, nothing lacking in this moment.
What is the source of human fear for the future? Worry that the future will not be as desired. What is excellent medicine for desire? To sit radically as what is, allowing, nothing to desire, complete in this sitting to sit, sitting with trust that sitting is the fulfillment of sitting, nothing lacking in this moment.
It goes on like that.
Then, rising from the cushion and returning to this busy life, we face a world of choices and difficulties, temptations, sometime defeats, longings, times of sadness, loss and scary things. However, firmly in our bones, there is now a great acceptance and flowing as just what is, knowing that not all we see will be as desired. Now, in place of our demands on life, there is a subtle allowing, desiring instead just what is and what will be ... and so less greed, less anger and greater peace, less jealousy and clutching, less fear and the rest.
If one desires what is not, there is lack; if one desires just what is, there can be no lack.
What is more, to the wise, one can know such profound accepting, flowing and allowing ... even as one hand-in-hand meets squarely this world of choices and difficulties, temptations, sometime defeats, longings, times of sadness, loss and scary things. The result is a kind of Peace embracing even life's not peaceful times, an Acceptance that shines even in the hard parts of life we cannot accept, a Silence right at the heart of this world's greatest chaos and noise. Just Sitting does not make us passive! Rather, we rise up and do what must be done, face the ups and downs, meet the hard and painful corners of life, but now with a certain stillness and equanimity in heart. Just Sitting is not the end of all desire, but a key to its healthy moderation. Just Sitting is not the secret to ending all difficulties in life, all times of fear and sadness, but a means to meet them fully, with firm footing and strength.
All this from sitting radically as what is, allowing, nothing to desire, complete in this sitting to sit, sitting with trust that sitting is the fulfillment of sitting, nothing lacking in this moment.
It is body and mind which want, long, cling, fear, resist, compare. It is this "little self" which desires, feels anger, jealousy, worry for some imagined tomorrow, separation from all the "not itself" world. Thus, when one sits in radical allowing, fulfilled in the moment of Just Sitting, this "little self" with its desires etc. is "put out of a job." Body and mind are calmed, eased, drop away. The hard borders of separation and thus friction between the self and the "not one's self" other things in the world with which the self sometimes conflicts, is scared by, disappointed by ... these borders begin to soften, sometimes fully drop away. With the dropping of divisions, the frictions which are at the root of suffering must drop away. There arises the profound relief of our ultimate human "angst" for, when the emptiness of separate self-existence is realized, one realizes that we are the Wholeness of it all.
And so Master Dogen wrote in the Genjo:
It is delusion to impose yourself and your desires upon life,
demanding that the myriad things of the world be as you wish.
To let the myriad things be as they are, illuminating yourself, is enlightenment.
~ ~ ~
Gassho, J
stlah
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