Shikantaza and Zazen

Recently many people who conversed with me had breakthroughs. It is my belief that each one of us, especially those who knows and have insight, have a duty to share with others.

One of them I spoke to broke through from I AM and one mind to the anatta realization. See: Michael’s Breakthrough http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2022/09/michaels-breakthrough.html . I offered some advise and recommended him to join his nearby Zen center of John Daido Loori’s lineage (located in New Zealand). I also recommended him to read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Just-Sitting-Essential-Shikantaza-ebook/dp/B003XF1LJI/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?crid=1NMJP6T3CH3M&keywords=john+daido+loori&qid=1663042731&sprefix=john+daido+loori%2Caps%2C624&sr=8-5

An excerpt from the book:

HONGZHI, DOGEN AND THE BACKGROUND OF SHIKANTAZA

Feb 21, 2019 | Articles

Taigen Dan Leighton

Preface to the book, The Art of Just Sitting, edited by Daido Loori, Wisdom Publications, 2002

One way to categorize the meditation practice of shikan taza, or “just sitting,” is as an objectless meditation. This is a definition in terms of what it is not. One just sits, not concentrating on any particular object of awareness, unlike most traditional meditation practices, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, that involve intent focus on a particular object. Such objects traditionally have included colored disks, candle flames, various aspects of breath, incantations, ambient sound, physical sensations or postures, spiritual figures, mandalas including geometric arrangements of such figures, or of symbols representing them, teaching stories, or key phrases from such stories. Some of these concentration practices are in the background of the shikan taza practice tradition, or have been included with shikan taza in its actual lived experience by practitioners.

But objectless meditation focuses on clear, non-judgmental, panoramic attention to all of the myriad arising phenomena in the present experience. Such objectless meditation is a potential universally available to conscious beings, and has been expressed at various times in history. This just sitting is not a meditation technique or practice, or any thing at all. “Just sitting” is a verb rather than a noun, the dynamic activity of being fully present.

The specific practice experience of shikan taza was first articulated in the Soto Zen lineage (Caodong in Chinese) by the Chinese master Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157; Wanshi Shogaku in Japanese),and further elaborated by the Japanese Soto founder Eihei Dogen (1200-1253). But prior to their expressions of this experience, there are hints of this practice in some of the earlier teachers of the tradition. The founding teachers of this lineage run from Shitou Xiqian (700-790; Sekito Kisen in Japanese), two generations after the Chinese Sixth Ancestor, through three generations to Dongshan Liangjie (807-869; Tozan Ryokai in Japanese), the usually recognized founder of the Caodong, or Soto, lineage in China. I will briefly mention a couple of these early practice intimations in their Soto lineage context before discussing the expressions of Hongzhi and Dogen.

Shitou/ Sekito is most noted for his teaching poem Sandokai, “Harmony of Difference and Sameness,” still frequently chanted in Soto Zen. Sandokai presents the fundamental dialectic between the polarity of the universal ultimate and the phenomenal particulars. This dialectic, derived by Shitou from Chinese Huayan thought based on the “Flower Ornament” Avatamsaka Sutra, combined with some use of Daoist imagery, became the philosophical background of Soto, as expressed by Dongshan in the five ranks teachings, and later elucidated by various Soto thinkers. But Shitou wrote another teaching poem, Soanka, “Song of the Grass Hut,” which presents more of a practice model for how to develop the space that fosters just sitting. Therein Shitou says, “Just sitting with head covered all things are at rest. Thus this mountain monk does not understand at all.”[1]So just sitting does not involve reaching some understanding. It is the subtle activity of allowing all things to be completely at rest just as they are, not poking one’s head into the workings of the world.

Shitou also says in Soanka, “Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. . . . Let go of hundreds of years and relax completely. Open your hands and walk, innocent.” According to Shitou, the fundamental orientation of turning within, also later described by Hongzhi and Dogen, is simply in order to return to the world, and to our original quality. Letting go of conditioning while steeped in completely relaxed awareness, one is able to act effectively, innocent of grasping and attachments. So the context of this just sitting suggested by Shitou is the possibility of aware and responsive presence that is simple, open-hearted, and straightforward.

When discussing zazen, Dogen regularly quotes a saying by Shitou’s successor, Yaoshan Weiyan (745-828; Yakusan Igen in Japanese). A monk asked Yaoshan what he thought of while sitting so still and steadfastly. Yaoshan replied that he thought of not-thinking, or that he thought of that which does not think. When the monk asked how Yaoshan did that, he responded, “Beyond -thinking,” or, “Non-thinking.” This is a state of awareness that can include both cognition and the absence of thought, and is not caught up in either. Dogen calls this, “The essential art of zazen.”[2]

These early accounts would indicate that there was already a context of Caodong/ Soto practitioners “just sitting” well before Hongzhi and Dogen. The Soto lineage almost died out in China a century before Hongzhi, but was revived by Touzi Yiqing (1032-1083; Tosu Gisei in Japanese), who brought a background in Huayan studies to enliven Soto philosophy. Touzi’s successor, Furong Daokai (1043-1118; Fuyo Dokai in Japanese) was a model of integrity who solidified and developed the forms for the Soto monastic community. It remained for Hongzhi, two generations after Furong Daokai, to fully express Soto praxis. Hongzhi, easily the most prominent Soto teacher in the twelfth century, was a literary giant, a highly prolific, elegant, and evocative writer who comprehensively articulated this meditation practice for the first time.

Hongzhi does not use the actual term, “just sitting,” which Dogen quotes instead from his own Soto lineage teacher Tiantong Rujing (1163-1228; Tendo Nyojo in Japanese). But Tiantong Monastery, where Dogen studied with Rujing in 1227, was the same temple where Hongzhi had been abbot for almost thirty years up to his death in 1157. Dogen refers to Hongzhi as an “Ancient Buddha,” and frequently quotes him, especially from his poetic writings on meditative experience. Clearly the meditative awareness that Hongzhi writes about was closely related to Dogen’s meditation, although Dogen developed its dynamic orientation in his own writings about just sitting.

Hongzhi’s meditation teaching is usually referred to as “silent, or serene, illumination,” although Hongzhi actually uses this term only a few times in his voluminous writings. In his long poem, “Silent Illumination,” Hongzhi emphasizes the necessity for balance between serenity and illumination, which echoes the traditional Buddhist meditation practice of shamatha-vipashyana, or stopping and insight. This was called zhiguan in the Chinese Tiantai meditation system expounded by the great Chinese Buddhist synthesizer Zhiyi (538-597). Hongzhi emphasizes the necessity for active insight as well as calm in “Silent Illumination” when he says, “If illumination neglects serenity then aggressiveness appears. . . . If serenity neglects illumination, murkiness leads to wasted dharma.”[3]So Hongzhi’s meditation values the balancing of both stopping, or settling the mind, and its active illuminating functioning.

In his prose writings, Hongzhi frequently uses nature metaphors to express the natural simplicity of the lived experience of silent illumination or just sitting. (I am generally using these terms interchangeably, except when discussing differences in their usages by Hongzhi or Dogen.) An example of Hongzhi’s nature writing is,

A person of the Way fundamentally does not dwell anywhere. The white clouds are fascinated with the green mountain’s foundation. The bright moon cherishes being carried along with the flowing water. The clouds part and the mountains appear. The moon sets and the water is cool. Each bit of autumn contains vast interpenetration without bounds.[4]

Hongzhi here highlights the ease of this awareness and its function. Like the flow of water and clouds, the mind can move smoothly to flow in harmony with its environment. “Accord and respond without laboring and accomplish without hindrance. Everywhere turn around freely, not following conditions, not falling into classifications.”[5]

In many places, Hongzhi provides specific instructions about how to manage one’s sense perceptions so as to allow the vital presence of just sitting. “Respond unencumbered to each speck of dust without becoming its partner. The subtlety of seeing and hearing transcends mere colors and sounds.”[6] Again he suggests, “Casually mount the sounds and straddle the colors while you transcend listening and surpass watching.”[7]This does not indicate a presence that is oblivious to the surrounding sense world. But while the practitioner remains aware, sense phenomena do not become objects of attachment, or objectified at all.

Another aspect of Hongzhi’s practice is that it is objectless not only in terms of letting go of concentration objects, but also objectless in the sense of avoiding any specific, limited goals or objectives. As Hongzhi says at the end of “Silent Illumination,” “Transmit it to all directions without desiring to gain credit.”[8]This serene illumination, or just sitting, is not a technique, or a means to some resulting higher state of consciousness, or any particular state of being. Just sitting, one simply meets the immediate present. Desiring some flashy experience, or anything more or other than “this” is mere worldly vanity and craving. Again invoking empty nature, Hongzhi says, “Fully appreciate the emptiness of all dharmas. Then all minds are free and all dusts evaporate in the original brilliance shining everywhere. . . . Clear and desireless, the wind in the pines and the moon in the water are content in their elements.”[9]

This non-seeking quality of Hongzhi’s meditation eventually helped make it controversial. The leading contemporary teacher in the much more prominent Linji lineage (Japanese Rinzai) was Dahui Zonggao (1089-1163; Daie Soko in Japanese). A popular historical stereotype is that Dahui and Hongzhi were rivals, debating over silent illumination meditation as opposed to Dahui’s Koan Introspection meditation teaching. Historians have now established that Hongzhi and Dahui were actually good friends, or at least had high mutual esteem, and sent students to each other. There was no such debate, at least until future generations of their successors, although Dahui did severely critique “silent illumination” practice as being quietistic and damaging to Zen. However, Dahui clearly was not criticizing Hongzhi himself, but rather, some of his followers, and possibly Hongzhi’s Dharma brother, Changlu Qingliao (1089-1151; Choryo Seiryo in Japanese), from whom Dogen’s lineage descends.[10]

Dahui’s criticism of silent illumination was partly valid, based on the legitimate danger of practitioners misunderstanding this approach as quietistic or passive. Dahui’s critique was echoed centuries later by Japanese Rinzai critics of just sitting, such as Hakuin in the seventeenth century. Just sitting can indeed sometimes degenerate into dull attachment to inner bliss states, with no responsiveness to the suffering of the surrounding world. Hongzhi clarifies that this is not the intention of his practice, for example when he says, “In wonder return to the journey, avail yourself of the path and walk ahead. . . . With the hundred grass tips in the busy marketplace graciously share yourself.”[11]The meditation advocated by both Hongzhi and Dogen is firmly rooted in the bodhisattva path and its liberative purpose of assisting and awakening beings. Mere idle indulgence in peacefulness and bliss is not the point.

The other aspect of Dahui’s criticism related to his own advocacy of meditation focusing on koans as meditation objects, explicitly aimed at generating flashy opening experiences. Such experiences may occur in just sitting practice as well, but generally have been less valued in the Soto tradition. The purpose of Buddhist practice is universal awakening, not dramatic experiences of opening any more than passive states of serenity. But contrary to another erroneous stereotype, use of koans has been widespread in Soto teaching as well as Rinzai.

Hongzhi himself created two collections of koans with his comments, one of which was the basis for the important anthology, the Book of Serenity. Dogen also created koan collections, and (ironically, considering his reputation as champion of just sitting meditation) far more of his voluminous writing, including the essays of his masterwork Shobogenzo, “True Dharma Eye Treasury,” is devoted to commentary on koans than to discussion of meditation. Dogen was actually instrumental in introducing the koan literature to Japan, and his writings demonstrate a truly amazing mastery of the depths and breadth of the range of that literature in China. Steven Heine’s modern work, Dogen and the Koan Tradition, clearly demonstrates how Dogen actually developed koan practice in new expansive modes that differed from Dahui’s concentrated approach.[12]Although Hongzhi and Dogen, and most of the traditional Soto tradition, did not develop a formal koan meditation curriculum as did Dahui, Hakuin, and much of the Rinzai tradition, the koan stories have remained a prominent context for Soto teaching. Conversely, just sitting has often been part of Rinzai practice, such that some Soto monks in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries went to Rinzai masters for training in just sitting.

Although a great deal of Dogen’s writing focuses on commentary on koans and sutras, and on monastic practice expressions, the practice of just sitting is clearly in the background throughout his teaching career. Dogen builds on the descriptions of Hongzhi to emphasize the dynamic function of just sitting.

In one of his first essays, Bendowa, “Talk on Wholehearted Practice of the Way,” written in 1231 a few years after his return from training in China, Dogen describes this meditation as the samadhi of self-fulfillment (or enjoyment), and elaborates the inner meaning of this practice. Simply just sitting is expressed as concentration on the self in its most delightful wholeness, in total inclusive interconnection with all of phenomena. Dogen makes remarkably radical claims for this simple experience. “When one displays the buddha mudra with one’s whole body and mind, sitting upright in this samadhi for even a short time, everything in the entire dharma world becomes buddha mudra, and all space in the universe completely becomes enlightenment.”[13]Proclaiming that when one just sits all of space itself becomes enlightenment is an inconceivable statement, deeply challenging our usual sense of the nature of reality, whether we take Dogen’s words literally or metaphorically. Dogen places this activity of just sitting far beyond our usual sense of personal self or agency. He goes on to say that, “Even if only one person sits for a short time, because this zazen is one with all existence and completely permeates all times, it performs everlasting buddha guidance” throughout space and time.[14]At least in Dogen’s faith in the spiritual or “theological” implications of the activity of just sitting, this is clearly a dynamically liberating practice, not mere blissful serenity.

Through his writings, Dogen gives ample indication as to how to engage this just sitting. In another noted early writing, Genjokoan, “Actualizing the Fundamental Point,” from 1233, Dogen gives a clear description of the existential stance of just sitting, “To carry yourself forward and experience myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening.”[15]That we are conditioned to project our own conceptions onto the world as a dead object-screen is the cause of suffering. When all of phenomena (including what we usually think of as “ours”) join in mutual self-experience and expression, the awakened awareness that Hongzhi described through nature metaphors is present, doing buddha’s work, as Dogen says.

Some modern Dogen scholars have emphasized the shift in his later teaching to the importance of strict monastic practice, and supposedly away from the universal applicability of shikan taza practice. In 1243 Dogen moved his community far from the capital of Kyoto to the snowy north coast mountains, where he established his monastery, Eiheiji. His teaching thereafter, until his death in 1253, was mostly in the form of often brief talks to his monks, presented in Eihei Koroku, “Dogen’s Extensive Record.” These are certainly focused on training a core of dedicated monks to preserve his practice tradition, a mission he fulfilled with extraordinary success. But through his later work as well as the early, instructions and encouragements to just sit appear regularly.

In 1251 Dogen was still proclaiming,

The family style of all buddhas and ancestors is to engage the way in zazen. My late teacher Tiantong [Rujing] said, “Cross-legged sitting is the dharma of ancient buddhas. . . . In just sitting it is finally accomplished.” . . . We should engage the way in zazen as if extinguishing flames from our heads. Buddhas and ancestors, generation after generation, face to face transmit the primacy of zazen.[16]

In 1249 he exhorted his monks, “We should know that zazen is the decorous activity of practice after realization. Realization is simply just sitting zazen. . . . Brothers on this mountain, you should straightforwardly, single-mindedly focus on zazen.” (319) For Dogen, all of enlightenment is fully expressed in the ongoing practice of just sitting. That same year, he gave a straightforward instruction for just sitting:

Great assembly, do you want to hear the reality of just sitting, which is the Zen practice that is dropping off body and mind?

After a pause [Dogen] said: Mind cannot objectify it; thinking cannot describe it. Just step back and carry on, and avoid offending anyone you face. At the ancient dock, the wind and moon are cold and clear. At night the boat floats peacefully in the land of lapis lazuli.(337)

The concluding two sentences of this talk are quoted from a poem by Hongzhi, further revealing the continuity of their practice teachings. Dogen also frequently describes this just sitting as “dropping away body and mind,” shinjin datsuraku in Japanese, a phrase traditionally associated with Dogen’s awakening experience in China.[17]

For Dogen this “dropping off body and mind” is the true nature both of just sitting and of complete enlightenment, and is the ultimate letting go of self, directly meeting the cold, clear wind and moon. After turning within while just sitting, it is carried on in all activity, and throughout ongoing engagement with the world. Although just sitting now has been maintained for 750 years since Dogen, the teachings of Hongzhi and Dogen remain as primary guideposts to its practice.

Endnotes:

1. Shitou does not use the words for “shikan taza,” but the reference to the iconic image of Bodhidharma just sitting, or “wall-gazing” in his cold cave with quilt over his head is unquestionable. For “Soanka” see Taigen Dan Leighton, with Yi Wu, trans., Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi, revised, expanded edition (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2000), pp. 72-73.

2. In Dogen’s Fukanzazengi; see Kazuaki Tanahashi, editor, Enlightenment Unfolds: The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Dogen(Boston: Shambhala, 1999), p. 55; or the groundbreaking translation by Norman Waddell and Masao Abe later in this book.

3. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, pp. 67-68 (reprinted in this book). For more on Hongzhi and his meditation teaching, see also Morton Schlutter, “Silent Illumination, Kung-an Introspection, and the Competition for Lay Patronage in Sung Dynasty Ch’an” in Peter Gregory and Daniel Getz, editors, Buddhism in the Sung(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), pp. 109-147.

4. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, pp. 41-42.

5. Ibid., p. 31.

6. Ibid., p. 30

7. Ibid., p. 55.

8. Ibid., p. 68.

9. Ibid., p. 43.

10.Schlutter, “Silent Illumination, Kung-an Introspection” in Gregory and Getz, Buddhism in the Sung, pp. 109-110.

11. Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, p. 55.

12. Steven Heine, Dogen and the Koan Tradition: A Tale of Two Shobogenzo Texts(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).

13. Shohaku Okumura and Taigen Dan Leighton, trans. The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen’s Bendowa with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi(Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1997), p. 22.

14. Ibid., p. 23.

15. Kazuaki Tananhashi, editor, Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen(New York: North Point Press, division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1985, p. 69.

16. Eihei Koroku, Dharma Discourse 432, from Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura, trans. Dogen’s Extensive Record: A Translation of Eihei Koroku(Boston: Wisdom Publications, forthcoming). All later quotes from Eihei Koroku in this preface are from this translation, identified in the text after the quote by Dharma Discourse number.

17. See Leighton, Cultivating the Empty Field, pp. 20-23; reprinted later in this book.

 Discipline is crucial for our spiritual practice and progress in the spiritual path.

I just messaged someone who recently had some breakthrough and deludedly thinks he is already liberated and constantly undistracted all the time and has no more need to meditate or sit:

“If you think you are already liberated, i have nothing more to say, and this shall be my last message to you. I just think you are still far far away and under the sway of serious delusion if you think you are never distracted. If one day you realised your mistake, i suggest you seek a good teacher.

I will just leave you with this quote from Dogen:

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2018/12/how-silent-meditation-helped-me-with.html

Partial excerpt:

“

The way is originally perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place; what is the use of traveling around to practice? And yet, if there is a hairsbreadth deviation, it is like the gap between heaven and earth. If the least like or dislike arises, the mind is lost in confusion. Suppose you are confident in your understanding and rich in enlightenment, gaining the wisdom that knows at a glance, attaining the Way and clarifying the mind, arousing an aspiration to reach for the heavens. You are playing in the entranceway, but you are still short of the vital path of emancipation.

Consider the Buddha: although he was wise at birth, the traces of his six years of upright sitting can yet be seen. As for Bodhidharma, although he had received the mind-seal, his nine years of facing a wall is celebrated still. If even the ancient sages were like this, how can we today dispense with wholehearted practice?”

As for myself, I have no time to waste on conversations going in circles and will be doing my sitting.”

....

Tyler Jones

I think it's very different if a person has reached a point that they feel that they don't suffer anymore, so the sense of the need to practice is gone, vs the idea that they are "enlightened" so there is nothing more to do. Probably a lot of people get to some level of awakening and are content to just live their life, rather than strive toward anuttara samyak sambohi.

Reply15h

Soh Wei Yu

Tyler Jones it is also very possible that someone feels they dont suffer anymore, even at the I AM stage, and then feel they don’t need to practice any more and stop short of anuttara samyaksam bodhi

One should judge one’s progress at least by the ten fetter model, and the checklist here https://suttacentral.net/mn112/en/sujato

Then if one is a follower of mahayana or vajrayana, one should judge by the criterias of bhumis and whether one has completely eliminated all traces of cognitive obscurations on top of eliminating all traces of emotional or afflictive obscurations, http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2022/07/buddhahood-end-of-all-emotionalmental.html

Most people have a bit of breakthrough and think “thats good enough” but are far from either goal. In fact they probably haven’t even attained stream entry proper, they have not even properly realised anatman. Even if one has realised anatman it is truly just another beginning

Reply9hEdited

Soh Wei Yu

Tyler Jones

Then when one truly attains buddhahood, you will want to sit anyway. Buddha continued his daily meditation and spent months on retreat each year, even though “done is what is to be done” and so on.

When you are there, you will have mastery of both samadhi and wisdom, and your equipoise will be constant.

It is only when one has not mastered one’s practice that their minds are not inclined to silence and meditation and lack equanimity.

Reply9hEdited

Soh Wei Yu

Tyler Jones

“Don't listen to people saying (that there’s) no need for meditation. These are people with only small attainment and realisation.” - John Tan, 2007

"This is an overstatement. Meditation can only be deemed unnecessary when a practitioner has completely dissolved the illusionary view of a self. If a person is able to totally dissolve the self in his first experience of non-duality, he is either the cream of the crop among the enlightened… or he is overwhelmed and got carried away by the non-dual experience. More often than not the latter is more likely. It is a pity if a person has experienced non-duality and yet is ignorant of the strength of his karmic propensities. Just be truthful and practice with a sincere heart, it will not be difficult to discover the deeper layer of consciousness and experience the workings of karmic momentum from moment to moment.

Having said so, it is also true that there will come a time when sitting meditation is deemed redundant and that is when the self liberation aspect of our nature is fully experienced. By then one would be completely fearless, crystal clear and non-attached. The practice of the 2 doors of no-self and impermanence will prepare us for the true insight of the spontaneous and self liberating aspect of our nature to arise." - John Tan, 2007

Reply9h

Tyler Jones

🙏

Reply8h

Brian Carpenter

When each moment is the practice whether sitting, working, driving, ect then it doesn't matter what is being done. Always just this noticing.

From the platform sutra

One practice samadhi means at all times, whether walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, always practicing with a straightforward mind. The vimalakirti sutra says 'A straightforward mind is the place of enlightenment,' and 'A straightforward mind is the pure land.' Don't practice hypocrisy with your mind, while you talk about being straightforward with your mouth. If you speak about one practice samadhi with your mouth, but you don't practice with a straightforward mind, you're no disciple of the Buddha. Simply practice with a straightforward mind and don't become attached to any Dharma. This is what is meant by one practice samadhi.

Deluded people who cling to the external attributes of a Dharma get hold of one practice samadhi and just say that sitting motionless, eliminating delusions, and not thinking thoughts are one practice samadhi. But if that were true, a dharma like that would be the same as lifelessness and would constitute an obstruction of the way instead, the way has to flow freely, why block it up? The way flows freely when mind doesn't dwell on any Dharma, once it dwells on something, it becomes bound, if sitting motionless were right, Vimalakirti wouldn't have criticised Shariputra for meditating in the forest.

Good friends, I know there are people who tell others devote themselves to sitting and contemplating their minds on purity and not to move or think. Deluded people are unaware, so they turn things upside down with their attachments. There are hundreds of such people who teach the way like this. But they are, you should know, greatly mistaken.

Good friends, what are meditation and wisdom like? They're like a lamp and its light. When there's a lamp, there's light. When there's no lamp, there's no light. The lamp is the light's body, and the light is there lamp's function. They have two names but not two bodies. This teaching concerning meditation and wisdom is also like this.

Good friends, the Dharma isn't direct or indirect. It's people who are sharp or dull. For those who are deluded, there is indirect persuasion. For those who are aware, there is direct cultivation: Know your mind and see your nature. For those who are aware, there is basically no separation. For those who aren't aware, these are infinite kalpas on the wheel of rebirth.

Good friends, since ancient times, this Dharma teaching of ours, both its direct and indirect versions, has proclaimed 'no thought' as its doctrine, 'no form' as its body, and 'no attachment' as its foundation. What do we mean by a form that is 'no form'? To be free of form in the presence of forms. And 'no thought'? Not to think about thoughts. And 'no attachment,' which is everyone basic nature? Thought after thought, not to become attached. Whether it's a past thought, present thought, or future thought, let one thought follow another without interruption. Once a thought is interrupted, the dharma body becomes separated from the material body. When you go from one thought to another, don't become attached to any Dharma. Once one thought becomes attached, every thought becomes attached, which is what we call 'bondage'. But when you go from one thought to another without becoming attached to any Dharma, there's no bondage. This is why no attachment is our foundation.

Good friends, 'no form' means externally to be free of all forms. If you can just be free of forms, the body of your nature is perfectly pure. This is why we take 'no form as our body.' To be unaffected by any object is what is meant by 'no thought,' to be free of objects in our thoughts and not give rise to thoughts about Dharmas. But don't think about nothing at all. Once your thoughts stop, you die and are reborn somewhere else. Students of the way take heed, don't misunderstand the meaning of this teaching. It's one thing to be mistaken yourself, but quite another to lead others astray then to criticise the teaching of the sutras while remaining unaware that you yourself are lost. Thus the reason we proclaim 'no thought' as our doctrine is because deluded people think in terms of objects, and on the basis of these thoughts they give rise to erroneous views. This is the origin of all afflictions and delusions.

Nevertheless when this school proclaims 'no thought' as its doctrine, those people who transcend objects and who don't give rise to thoughts, even though they have no thoughts, they do not then proclaim 'no thought.' What does 'no' negate? And what thought is 'thought' about? 'No' negates dualities and afflictions. And 'thought' is thought about the original nature of reality. Reality is the body of thought, and thought is the function of reality. When your nature gives rise to thought, even though you sense something, remain free and unaffected by the world of objects. The Vimalakirti sutra says, 'externally, be skilled at distinguishing the attributes of Dharmas, and internally, remain unchanged by the ultimate truth.'

Good friends, in this school of the Dharma, when we practice Zen, we don't contemplate the mind, and we don't contemplate purity, and we don't talk about being dispassionate. If someone says to contemplate the mind, the mind is basically a delusion. And because a delusion is the same as an illusion, there is nothing to contemplate.

Reply42m

Soh Wei Yu

Brian Carpenter

That does not mean sitting meditation is unimportant. Hui neng also practices sitting meditation.… See more

Reply10m

Soh Wei Yu

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planetbyter

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6 yr. ago

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edited 6 yr. ago

山河

Sitting meditation vs meditation is still meditation. This means that sitting meditation isn't ruled out. And there is no denying that there is a pretty decent amount of emphasis on practice and cultivation of both wisdom and knowledge. Huineng says many, MANY times in this text that meditation is wisdom, and wisdom is meditation.

Everything in the Platform Sutra written by Huineng also relates to former sutras, such as the Diamond, Vimalakirti, Lotus, and Nirvana Sutras– with a Huineng flair to the teachings.

There was also a lot of speculation in the 1940's about the translations and how some of texts could be idealized to purport a sense of Buddhist Hagiography, but such posits are disproven as there are many Christian or Secular scholars today that have translated the Platform Sutra from original text to also garner its true meaning outside the biases of hagiographic translation.

And there are a Chan Buddhist masters that have taught both gradual and sudden enlightenment– and even Huineng himself doesn't discredit the gradualist approach entirely.

Dongshan, Linji, Hakuin, Zongmi, and Sheng Yun, all supported gradualism. I know you don't think Hakuin and Zongmi aren't Zen masters, but Linji and Dongshan? Really?

Huineng merely explains that the difference between gradual and sudden is in terms of the student's conceptual intuitive abilities– but he also prescribes practice– not for enlightenment, but for the cultivation of wisdom and knowledge (and eventually compassion in the Bodhisattva Ideals).

The Tso-chan-i (Principles of Zazen) is a premiere Chan Buddhist work that outlines the techniques of meditation.

These Chan meditation techniques that breed cultivation and realization were first founded according to the Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment and The Awakening of Faith sutras.

The practice taught in this text seems to be at the core of the dispute in later Chan Buddhism between "sudden" and "gradual" teachings of the "Northern and Southern schools" illustrated in the Platform Sutra.

The Sutra of Perfect Enlightenment was intended to resolve questions regarding doctrine and meditation for the earliest practitioners of the Chan schools.

Huineng advocates the “samadhi of oneness,” or concentrated attention to the present situation: “The samadhi of oneness is straightforward mind at all times, walking, staying, sitting, and lying.” This constitutes an intriguing practice of mindful, meditative action performed with attentive detachment.

Again, Huineng never challenges sitting meditation at all. He advocates for differing techniques with an emphasis on sudden enlightenment, but never does he say that sitting meditation is entirely wrong, and when he begins to hint at such a position, it is a heuristic tool for the learning– not meant to be taken literally.

Huineng and the text of the Platform Sutra thus underscore the highly ritualized nature of Chan life, a fact that several scholars have noted and which provides yet another strong contrast to popular misunderstandings of Chan. Rather than being an incitement to egocentric spontaneity, the “sudden awakening” espoused by Huineng can only occur within a ritual context in which all parties are actively engaged. Those involved are not “doing their own thing” but participating in a shared activity in which all energies are marshaled in concert. It is just for this reason that Huineng stresses the “samadhi of oneness” and Chan monastic training involves meditation training not just during periods of actual physical sitting but throughout all daily activities.

So Huineng and his monks sat and meditated, but also practiced meditation while walking, cleaning, etc. which can still be found in Soto and Rinzai monasteries today!

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Soh Wei Yu

Leperkonvict

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3 yr. ago

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edited 3 yr. ago

Huairang, famously, to Mazu:

In learning sitting meditation, do you aspire to learn sitting Zen or do you aspire to imitate the sitting Buddha? If the former, Zen doesn’t consist in sitting or lying down. If the latter you must know the Buddha has no fixed postures. The dharma goes on forever and never abides in anything. You must not therefore be attached to or abandon any particular phase of it. To sit with the purpose of becoming a Buddha is to kill the Buddha. To be attached to the sitting posture is to fail to comprehend the essential principle.

In other words Zen Masters never rejected sitting meditation, they rejected the idea that ANY practice or philosophy could ever magically bring you to some imaginary future Buddha hood outside of this moment.

Dahui:

You must in one fell swoop break through this one thought—then and only then will you comprehend birth and death. Then and only then will it be called accessing awakening… .You need only lay down, all at once, the mind full of deluded thoughts and inverted thinking, the mind of logical discrimination, the mind that loves life and hates death, the mind of knowledge and views, interpretation and comprehension, and the mind that rejoices in stillness and turns from disturbance.

...

Nowadays they sound a signal to sit and meditate. If you want a solemn scene, there you have it, but I don’t believe you can sit to the point where you attain stability. People who hear this kind of talk often think I do not teach people to sit and meditate, but this is a misperception; they do not understand expedient technique. I just want you to be in Zen meditation whether you are working or sitting, to be essentially at peace whether you are speaking, silent, active, or still.

The most common misperception in this forum is that Zen Masters rejected meditation. Which couldn't be anymore further from the Truth.

Meditation was and still is a major part of Zen Monasteries.

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royalsaltmerchant

OP

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3 yr. ago

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edited 3 yr. ago

SaltyZen

either you are daft or you can't read because your Mazu quote is a rejection of sitting meditation. Contradicting yourself.

"Zen doesn’t consist in sitting or lying down"

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Soh Wei Yu

Leperkonvict

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3 yr. ago

No dude, I can definitely read, but you are reading in a very shallow manner and you don’t understand what went on back than with meditation practices. Meditation practices were the norm back than and Zen came in with a punch! It was an approach and critique to the practice but not a rejection. The critique being cultivation or the attainment of Buddhahood via sitting. It’s Zen 101.

I know it’s hard for you to get but just keep reading and studying Zen and it will come around.

Have you read any Bielefeldt?

“Part of the problem lies with the word 'Zen (Chinese: Chan) master' itself. If we look at Tang sources such as the Xu gaoseng zhuan 續高僧傳, the term ‘Chan master’ (chanshi 禪師)—used to categorise such figures as Bodhidharma and his disciple Huike—means ‘master of meditation’. It is only in the Song period that the term evolves to mean the master of a certain lineage, namely a ‘Chan school’. Concurrent with the rise of the 'Chan school' is the appearance of anti-meditation sentiment.

Bielefedlt writes:

It is not entirely without reason that Zen Buddhism is known as the Meditation School. Visitors to the modern Zen monastery, even if they are prepared to find meditation there, cannot but be struck by the extent to which the practice dominates the routine. […] Yet there is another sense in which Zen Buddhism appears to be an “anti-meditation” school. For, whatever Zen monks may talk about in private, when they discuss their practice in public, they often seem to go out of their way to distance themselves from the ancient Buddhist exercises of samadhi and to criticize the traditional cultivation of dhyana. The two Japanese Zen schools, Rinzai and Soto, have their own characteristic ways of going about this: the former most often attacks absorption in trance as mindless quietism—what it sometimes calls the “ghost cave” (kikatsu) of the spirit—and claims to replace it with the more dynamic technique of kanna, or koan study; the latter rejects the utilitarian component of contemplative technique—the striving, as it says, to “make a Buddha” (sabutsu)--and offers in its stead what it considers the less psychologically limited, more spiritually profound practice of shikan taza, or “just sitting”.”

As you see Soto never misinterpreted the old Zen Masters(like yourself)but was in fact inspired and one could even say Shikantaza was born from the teachings and criticism of the old Zen masters, Dogen may have wanted to take credit for Shikantaza but that’s debatable.

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Leperkonvict

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3 yr. ago

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I'll speak how I want

You would get kicked out of the Monasteries back than for refusing to practice zazen. This is a fact.

No sect in zen Buddhism says that meditation is a means, once again because you can't read, they were actually against that.

No

Have fun excessively making threads about seated practice showing just how attached you are to it, come to think of it, you've made more threads than me. LMAO. That my friend is not liberation. Lol. 😂😂

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Soh Wei Yu

Meditation is not restricted to sitting, but sitting meditation is still important.

Meditation should be 24/7, for example in cleaning the toilet, in cooking dishes, and so on.

I like for example, Zen teacher Shinshu Robert's expression of total exertion in ordinary activities:

https://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2018/12/being-time-by-shinshu-roberts.html

Excerpt:

"Deep Investigation

In the United States, we often hear about mindfulness associated with Buddhism. A popular definition of mindfulness is a kind of complete attention on an activity and its object. For instance as we are washing dishes, we might be saying to ourselves, "I am washing a plate," and focusing our thoughts on the feeling of the activity itself. We might slow down, follow our breath, and put all our focus on the sensation of the task as an object of our attention.

This would not be how Dogen would approach the practice of deep investigation or exhaustive penetration. He might be describe the activity of washing dishes as washing washes washing, thereby removing the subject-object relationship. Mindfulness may be a dharma gate to intimacy, but it is not the Zen practice of exhaustively penetrating the totality of one's experience. In the true intimacy of complete engagement there is no labeling of self or other that comes from paying attention to something outside the self.

When engaging in work practice, a Soto Zen student is interacting with the totality of all the elements arising within the context of that activity. This means that one makes effort to fulfill the task in such a way that one is respectful of the tools used, the context of the work, the instructions of the work leader, the time allotted for the task, and working in unison with others. The purpose of our effort is to complete the job through our total exertion and practice with the task itself. It is not to be mindful of the activity as an object of our attention. When we are able to engage in work this way, we drop our own agenda and fully engage with the complete activity of cleaning and community.

Included in this intimate total immersion in the being-time of a particular moment is the simultaneous arising of all being-time. This nondualism is not separate from the relative or everyday. Washing dishes is not special. By entering the world of washing dishes, we enter the whole world, which is our world, by jumping in with wholehearted effort.

Dharmas Are Real Form

Nishijima and Cross translate Waddell and Abe's "penetrating exhaustively" as "perfectly realizing" and associate it with a phrase from the Lotus Sutra: "buddhas alone, together with buddhas, can perfectly realize that all dharmas are real form." Dogen unpacks the meaning of real form in "Shoho Jisso" (All Dharmas Are Real Form):

"Real form is all dharmas. All dharmas are forms as they are, natures as they are, body as it is, the mind as it is, the world as it is, clouds and rain as they are, waking, standing, sitting, and lying down, as they are; sorrow and joy, movement and stillness, as they are; a staff and a whisk, as they are; a twirling flower and a smiling face, as they are; succession of the Dharma and affirmation, as they are; learning in practice and pursuing the truth, as they are; the constancy of pines and the integrity of bamboos, as they are."

This perfect realization is all dharmas totally expressing their true nature. We are "buddhas alone, together with buddhas." We remember the true state of ourselves and all being(s).

The integrated self is therefore not separate from all being-time. For this reason, Dogen writes earlier in "Uji," "to set the self out in array is to make the world," which is the singular expression of "entirely worldling the entire world with the whole world.""

Being-Time by Shinshu Roberts

AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM

Being-Time by Shinshu Roberts

Being-Time by Shinshu Roberts

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Soh Wei Yu

Actually if you understood what Shinshu Roberts mentioned above, you will also see why it is not so much of "noticing". More on anatta and total exertion as explained in http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/2009/03/on-anatta-emptiness-and-spontaneous.html

On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection

AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM

On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection

On Anatta (No-Self), Emptiness, Maha and Ordinariness, and Spontaneous Perfection

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Buddha's teaching on the importance of practicing tranquility and insight together for liberation of mental afflictions.

https://suttacentral.net/an4.170/en/thanissaro?reference=none&highlight=false

On one occasion Ven. Ananda was staying in Kosambi, at Ghosita’s monastery. There he addressed the monks, “Friends!”

“Yes, friend,” the monks responded.

Ven. Ananda said: “Friends, whoever—monk or nun—declares the attainment of arahantship in my presence, they all do it by means of one or another of four paths. Which four?

“There is the case where a monk has developed insight preceded by tranquillity. As he develops insight preceded by tranquillity, the path is born. He follows that path, develops it, pursues it. As he follows the path, developing it & pursuing it—his fetters are abandoned, his obsessions destroyed.

“Then there is the case where a monk has developed tranquillity preceded by insight. As he develops tranquillity preceded by insight, the path is born. He follows that path, develops it, pursues it. As he follows the path, developing it & pursuing it—his fetters are abandoned, his obsessions destroyed.

“Then there is the case where a monk has developed tranquillity in tandem with insight. As he develops tranquillity in tandem with insight, the path is born. He follows that path, develops it, pursues it. As he follows the path, developing it & pursuing it—his fetters are abandoned, his obsessions destroyed.

“Then there is the case where a monk’s mind has its restlessness concerning the Dhamma [Comm: the corruptions of insight] well under control. There comes a time when his mind grows steady inwardly, settles down, and becomes unified & concentrated. In him the path is born. He follows that path, develops it, pursues it. As he follows the path, developing it & pursuing it—his fetters are abandoned, his obsessions destroyed.

“Whoever—monk or nun—declares the attainment of arahantship in my presence, they all do it by means of one or another of these four paths.”

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