My meditation evolves to an exalted state of doing nothing

I've got some amazing news to report about how I meditate.

I toyed with the idea of issuing a press release in case the New York Times and Washington Post want to cover this breaking news (CNN also, since everything is breaking news on CNN), but I decided that readers of this blog deserved to be clued in first.

Today, before I meditated, I decided that what I'm going to do from now on -- unless I change my mind -- is... drumroll, please... a little longer drumroll to let the anticipation build... 

Absolutely nothing. 

OK, take some deep breaths. Calm down. Let your heartbeat get back to normal. I realize that this meditation news could be as exciting for you as it was for me this morning, when I first heard about it from myself.

I've been edging toward this exalted approach to meditation for many years. I must be close to full enlightenment, since I heartily enjoyed the 20 minutes I spent today embracing what Zen calls Shikantaza. 

I like that word because it sounds much more profound than my "absolutely nothing," though that's pretty much what Shikantaza meditation is all about. Doing nothing. Or rather, doing nothing special.


For 35 years, 1970 to 2005, my approach to meditation was decidedly special. In my own mind, at least, which reflected the teachings of the Indian religious group I was a member of during that time, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

RSSB taught that through meditation it was possible to raise one's consciousness beyond awareness of physical reality into a spiritual domain that could loosely be called "heaven," even though that's a Christian term. 

So the goal of my meditation was to concentrate on what lay within my mind, ignoring sights, sounds, and other manifestations of what the world had to offer. I tried to meditate in a quiet dark place to avoid distractions.

After I realized the drawbacks of the RSSB teachings, I gradually shifted to a mindfulness sort of meditation practice. Mostly I focused on my breathing in accord with a common Buddhist meditative approach. But I still had goals in mind: remain aware of my in- and out-breaths; try to relax; don't think too much.

Today, though, something shifted in my psyche. 

I didn't want to keep on dividing reality into what I paid attention to in meditation, and everything else. That isn't what I did during the rest of my day. I just was aware of whatever I was experiencing at the moment.

So this morning I simply set my iPhone timer for 20 minutes, shut my eyes, and sat in my chair. I was aware of my breathing, because I was alive. I was aware of heat being blown through air ducts, because it was cold outside. I was aware of the dryer going in the nearby utility room, because my wife was doing laundry.

It was refreshing to feel that nothing could be a distraction, since I wasn't focusing on anything I could be distracted from. I was awake and aware, just without a preference on what my awareness settled on. I couldn't go wrong in my meditation, given that there was no standard of rightness.

There really isn't a whole lot to say about this kind of open awareness meditation. However, I've said something about it and so have other people. Here's some examples of writings about Shikantaza with an excerpt from each source.

Just Sitting, Going Nowhere
The practice of “just-awareness” is the essence of Zen meditation. The Japanese word for this, shikantaza, is usually translated as “just sitting,” but Dogen, the founder of the Soto school of Zen, specifically taught that zazen is “beyond sitting or lying down.” Shikantaza is more than the mere physical posture of sitting, although it certainly includes that. Fundamentally it is the practice of just being here, being present—except that we are not rocks or stones, but aware beings—so I think “just-awareness” more fully captures the essence of the term. But awareness of what? That is the first question.

Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything 
I’ve been sitting zazen for over 20 years, but only recently have I had the guts to really do shikantaza or “just sitting,” and it feels profoundly liberating. In this kind of zazen, you utterly let go of doing anything except just sitting there. Really. I discuss why beginners are usually taught to count or follow breaths instead of do shikantaza, and why I think this is unfortunate. I also discuss the surprising results of a practice in which you don’t try to control your experience in any way.

Shikantaza: The Methodless Method of Zazen
A few years ago I came across an unusual description of shikantaza, the objectless meditation at the heart of Soto Zen Buddhism. “Shikantaza,” said Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, “is like sitting in the center of a clearing in the forest, knowing that ultimate danger is about to strike but not knowing what form it will take or from what direction it will come.”

I’d found this quote in an essay by Flora Courtois, a long-time Zen practitioner who’d studied with Yasutani Roshi at the Zen Center of Los Angeles. Her account of her spiritual unfolding was so striking that I was riveted the moment I began reading. But it wasn’t until I arrived at her analysis of Yasutani’s metaphor for shikantaza that I realized I’d found in it a teaching I didn’t even know I’d been missing. And like any good teaching, it would challenge much of what I thought I knew about zazen.

Just Sitting: The Zen Practice of Shikantaza
Once or twice a day, I sit facing a wall in my home. I just sit. I sit for twenty minutes, a half-hour, sometimes more. But I just sit. I sit and think not thinking; I do that by non-thinking.

This is the Zen practice of shikantaza, or “just sitting.” You sit, cross-legged if you can, and let your mind alone. When you stop thinking, you reach a point of non-thinking. It’s one of the typical paradoxes of Zen that makes your brain try and twist around those words, “not,” “non-” and “thinking” to figure out what they mean.

Unlike other forms of meditation, shikantaza doesn’t involve concentrating on an object, such as your breath or a mantra. It is “objectless meditation,” where you focus on everything you experience – thoughts, sounds, feelings – without attaching to any of them. When you get there, you know what it is.

Comments

[Um]

>>RSSB taught that through meditation it was possible to raise one's consciousness beyond awareness of physical reality into a spiritual domain that could loosely be called "heaven," even though that's a Christian term. <<

I wonder whether "your" activity in meditation has anything to do with "raising one's awareness" according the one that initiated you.

He stated time and again, that although one was asked to do meditation, with love and devotion, its outcome was NOT in one's hand. ... but ... in the hand of the master ... and ...... the master being the shabd.

No need to repeat the many expressions of him to stress that point.

In a nutshell the whole teaching of sant mat is in the tal of the sheep, shepherd, owner of the sheep, and the stable.

The sheep are not able nor willing to go to the stable on their own accord. They have to be brought by a shepherd with the aid of dogs. Hahahaha you certainly will remember his remarks about dogs be send after neglecting sheep to walk.... and ... that no sheep is allowed to go that far astray, that he cannot be brought back to the path .... hahahaha

Whether there is any truth to what he said again and again for years at a stretch I do not know but that he said it and that this is the very heart of the teaching that one can find in his teachings. Listening to his tapes on RSSB makes that clear.

Maybe the very idea that one can contribute in one's progress, is contra productive.
If one would do the meditation as advised in Zen for sitting, just repeat, repeating being both the means and the goal, it would be better.

"I have to do something" is maybe an hang-up of the rational western mind. If I don't do it who else would.

Again for the record....what i write has nothing to do with my personal relation with these teachers and teachings ... NOTHING at ALL ... it is just an recapitulation of an memory

[um]

"Don’t try to get somewhere, to do something. Instead, be like a little child—naturally joyous, naturally aware."'

I read in the first link on Shikantaza.

It reminds me of the one that initiated you saying how simran was to be done like a little child joyfull walking around with a little song.

In the end it is all a matter of unintentionally doing and enjoying things ... it is a capacity that is spread like all other things human capacities, according the so called a normal curve .... some don't have it, some very much and the rest in between ... it is a gift, talent

All techniques, however different they are seemingly, be it psychotherapies or spiritual techniques, involving an teacher of some sort, requires for the technique to work, that there is a [therapeutical] relation of receptivity, openness between the client / student/discipel and the one that transmits the teaching, technique.

This prerequisite, this sine qua none, is to be found in the introduction of all therapies, mystic schools etc .. they might phrase it as, openness, receptivity, devotion or whatever ...just ONE sentence in general!!! .... but nowhere is stated or elaborated how that openness, that receptivity or devotion for the teacher and teachings is to be generated, found etc.

By like a child
do simran with .... love and devotion
for transmission to be successful, there must be openness between the master and the student etc

And to speak with saul/paul if you have ....what ever you name it ... and you lack love ... you are talking like a hollow drum ... something like that he said.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian Ji
You wrote
"This is the Zen practice of shikantaza, or “just sitting.” You sit, cross-legged if you can, and let your mind alone. When you stop thinking, you reach a point of non-thinking."

That is also a journey.

[Ron Krumpos]

Most people try to hard to meditate. It is so easy. Just look straight ahead for some time until the object you are viewing fades away. There you are. Nowhere. Just 'there'

[Jen]

I think the biggest problem with following a guru or some spiritual path is that we have expectations in our meditation of seeing or hearing something and thats what we are waiting for. Instead, if we can, accept the practice of emptiness and nothingness and then hopefully it will become an awakening...

“We live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality. We are that reality. When you understand this, you see that you are nothing, and being nothing, you are everything. That is all.”
― Buddha

[Tim Rimmer]

Brian
Some thoughts re this post, which I enjoyed reading.
You say your meditation has ‘evolved’ – some could interpret this to mean that the meditation you are discussing is somehow better/more advanced. Another way to look at it is that the whole deal in regard to meditation is an evolving process which I think is the case. Another, is to recognise that how we think about what meditation is, has evolved.
These days I think I’m on a similar page to you when it comes to what meditation IS.
Meditation is a state of non-doing i.e. there is no doer so to speak and the subject/object distinction is no longer there.
Maybe there are issues with the word in that it’s generally interpreted to mean a technique/process with a result in mind. It seems to me that when we say ‘I’m’ doing ‘my’ meditation we are in a way missing the point. However, it may take us years to realise this.
I’m also tending to think that meditation is like a fourth state of consciousness (to be recognised along with and equally important as the other three). I recall Ramana Maharshi talked of turiya as the fourth state (along with waking, dreaming, deep sleep).
Ramana’s state refers to the ‘Self’ which I see as expanded ‘all inclusive consciousness’. Perhaps realising that, is part of an evolving process, or a process of evolution (it helps if we can get out of the way).
Perhaps the simplest and potentially most powerful? of all ‘meditations’ is to just be in the present moment. Being free from discursive (discourse-ive) thoughts as an I wrapped up in the past and future is the meditation state imo.
I listened/watched a good general discussion (with Sam Harris et al), the other day see: https://youtu.be/jCJdl6Vs7wg.
Best wishes to all.

[Dungeness]

@ This is the Zen practice of shikantaza, or “just sitting.” You sit, cross-legged if you can, and let your
@ mind alone. When you stop thinking, you reach a point of non-thinking."

That's been my path of mindfulness and it's freeing. A starting point on a journey
of discovery into the mind's tenacity and sneakiness.

P.S.

Ishwar Puri tells a story of a friend who gave a demo of a yoga asana alleged to
shut down thinking. Ishwar instructed him to begin when he clapped and end the
demo when he clapped again exactly one minute later.

* Some artistic liberty taken with dialogue

Ishwar: Did you ascend the higher realms, enjoy the inner bliss of non-thought
for one minute?

Friend: Yes and it was wonderful. As usual.

Ishwar: Full minute?

Friend: Yes, yes.

Ishwar: How did you know when to begin?

Friend: You told me!

Ishwar: No I mean what entered your mind when you heard me clap?

Friend: I remembered now he said it's time to begin.

Ishwar: That sounds like a thought to me.

Friend: Alright, wise guy, a second... not even a fraction of a second.
Well... it also occurred to me that i could stop thinking when the
next clap came.

Ishwar: That's another thought!

Friend: So sue me for a couple of mini-second thoughts. Um, yeah,
it reminds me though... a brief argument at home flashed into
my head at one point. Subtle though and very quick. Ouch,
never mind, I think I'm losing.

[s*]

Words are difficult..

Something different is´ understanding ´

We are all´ alone´ in the sort of ´same´ boat.

I like to scream sometimes..

but I dońt because it doesnt help.

This is just in the moment..

Everything changes all the time..

[manoj]

I guess sometimes the only way is to go through the mill to learn the ultimate truth. With the Grace of God.

So it is with, GSD and his ridiculed RS cult.

GSDs purpose was to use and abuse the dedicated disciple with the meanest intentions at heart. To manipulate as a method whilst offering meditation and seva as a heavenly gate card. Knowing all the while the disciple gets absolutely nothing in return and all for what, his own selfish satisfying needs.

Hasn't GSD got an ounce of responsibility and sympathy for his cruel evil actions towards his fellow human beings. Forget trying to step in the steps of a God like figure. It seems being human for GSD is a very long and difficult task.

The truth always finds a way out. And it has.

Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side. As with leaving this bad taste (GSD) in the mouth, well behind.