Zen & Buddhism

Shikantaza - Just Sitting

Pure objectless meditation - sitting with no technique, no goal, fully present with what is.

Shikantaza is Dogen's teaching of 'just sitting' - the highest form of zazen in Soto Zen. There's no object of meditation, no technique, no goal. You sit with complete presence, allowing thoughts and sensations to arise and pass without grasping or pushing away. This is not a method to achieve enlightenment; it is enlightenment itself manifesting as sitting. Brain imaging studies show that experienced shikantaza practitioners have unique neural signatures - they're neither in focused attention nor mind-wandering, but in a third state of choiceless awareness that science is only beginning to understand.

Zazen is not concentration practice. It is simply the dharma gate of ease and joy. It is the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment. - Dogen Zenji

Shobogenzo

Written about in

• What Zen says about rest

  Dogen's "just sitting" has no object, no technique and no goal; in his framing it is not a method for reaching enlightenment but enlightenment appearing as sitting. That makes it the one rest that cannot be converted into productivity, because there is nothing to get better at.