Originally Posted by
BaltimoreBuddhist
I will just drop this in ...
The teacher from a Vietnamese tradition who wrote the first link, and the instructions in the second from the Zen Mountain Monastery (a lineage which is a mixture of Rinzai and Soto practices, but with a heavy tilt toward the former) ... and many other links on the internet and teachers talking about Zazen and countless other forms of meditation ... will tend to prescribe rather different things. (The Vietnamese teacher was actually very fair in spelling out several different ways of Zazen)
Almost all forms of meditation, if you look closely, are based on attaining some state of mind and experience by some form of "one pointed concentration" on a Koan, Mantra, image of Buddha or the like. Most talk of reaching some goal where life will suddenly seem very different, or unusual states of mind.
Many ways up and down the mountain to get where we are going.
it can be very frustrating finding a method and a teacher with so many choices. this is especially true for critically thinking seekers who are not looking for answers per se, but something that makes sense. it's good to know there are many methods, but i wish teachers were clearer about their specific method being one among many. daido lori is a prime example requiring breath work, koans, and art. he talks as if these methods are the only method. obviously not true. i have an affinity for shikantaza i'm finding. thanks jundo for these explanations and taking responsibility for the method you teach.
Our
Shikantaza way is thus rather unusual in being a total dropping of all need and lack, thought of places we must get to ... and, thus, attaining the Promised Land by being free of all need for attainments, finding all wholly here all along ... (
Well, you have heard me go on about this on many other threads, so I will not do so again ) ....
The point is just to realize that, as in choosing a cookbook, there are many styles and cooks recommending different ways to cook soup. Some are tasty, some are not ... and you have to find the tasty ones, right by you, on your own tongue. Just be careful about mixing and matching (so, Chocolate cake is good, onion soup is good ... but not necessarily chocolate cake in the onion soup. :? ).
The path described here is a very special one ... of sincerely and diligently walking forward, while ever always arriving. Dropping all thought of "something missing" and "in need for change" will, surprisingly, "fill in the missing pieces" and work a revolutionary change on "you" and the experience of life very much.
Accordingly, this Practice will change you. Dropping all thought of a goal, all mental separation and resistance, leads to the reaching of the goal of a life suddenly very different, and this most ordinary, sometimes up sometimes down, life and mind seen as the Miracle they are.
Gassho, J