Shikantaza

The Soto side of our practice hones the skill of shikantaza, or ‘just sitting’ – which is very demanding. It is the act of paying complete attention to just whatever is arising – whether that is peace, calm, anger, pain, sleepiness, irritability, greed, lust, joy – without forming views that favour or reject anything at all.

And of gradually seeing how much we are the seated awareness of an unending flow of thoughts and states, rather than a substantial entity. Gradually relaxing from defending our increasingly transparent, insubstantial ‘selves’, we begin to encounter mind in its natural clear state and what is real, instead of our thoughts and opinions about it - possibly for the first time.

Mature shikantaza develops powers of quiet focussed concentration, a peaceful heart and genuine tolerance that are invaluable in our lives. Longtime practitioners of ‘just sitting’ can seem like the rounded stones at the bottom of the creek – strong, stable, fewer sharp edges, in fundamental, resolved agreement with the nature of things, comfortable and at home in their own skins.

But be aware that this requires building a very strong, alive and persistent spirit of questioning – ‘Is it so? ‘Is it really so?’ – and ability to withhold foreclosure upon ‘knowing something’, for real shikantaza is not, not even remotely, a practice of inert, soothing quietude. Gradually, we get to see clearly and intimately how much of the suffering and unease that tends to wall us out of the actual moments of this precious life is caused not by other people and ‘outside’ events, but by our own reiterated views about them, and about how good or bad we believe that may turn out to be for us.

Wisdom, kindness and effective action in the world finds its source right here, in this mature, practiced, wise unknowing - sometimes called beginner’s mind.

The Zen Koan

The Rinzai side of our practice offers the koan as a powerful tool for shifting consciousness more and more deeply in the direction of a freed and unshakeable heart- mind. A koan may be a question, phrase, or brief record of encounter between masters, or master and student. Traditionally they are primarily drawn from the record of Chan (Chinese Zen) masters of the Tang and Sung dynastic periods, but koans turn up all over the place when you begin to see with a ‘koan eye’. But any question, phrase or encounter that strongly stirs the mind while radically defeating its usual means of sorting and managing reality may be taken up – or may take you up! – as a koan.