Just Sitting: The Zen Practice of Shikantaza

Once or twice a day, I sit facing a wall in my home[1]. 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.

“Once you have adjusted your posture, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale, rock your body right and left and settle into a steady, immobile sitting position. Think not-thinking. How do you think not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen.”[2]

I’ve been practicing meditation off and on for about 25 years. After following the Tibetan tradition for a while, I drifted among other forms of practice, notably Theravadan insight meditation, before settling on Zen. There are many different schools of meditation, and even in Zen, there are two main currents: Rinzai and S?t?. It is this latter, S?t? Zen, founded by Eihei D?gen in the 13th century, that feels right to me. It’s the one whose main practice is just sitting.

But you don’t need to follow any school to meditate, or sit, as we say in Zen lingo. In recent years, mindfulness, or a secular form of sitting meditation, has become mainstream, notably as a tool to reduce stress. Many studies have shown that meditation of any kind is good for the brain. Even if you don’t want to follow a path of meditation, or a particular tradition, just sitting for a few minutes every day can be a wonderful way to get back in touch with reality and recharge your brain. You can use just sitting to ground yourself, to take a few minutes away from the vortex of the world around you.

You already know how to do this

You’ve certainly done this many times. Perhaps you were on a hike in the mountains, and came across an especially nice view. You sat on some rocks, and just sat. At first, you looked at the view, but then your mind went on pause as you appreciated the silence, and the simplicity of just being in the moment. Or it may have been a lazy summer day, sitting on the deck, listening to bees buzzing around you. For a few minutes, you felt apart from the worries of the world, and your mind felt clear. This happens to all of us, from time to time, but you can cultivate it, practicing regularly.

You can do this anywhere, at almost any time. Start at home; it’s easiest to start in a quiet place with no distractions. Turn off the TV, the radio, the computer, and put your cell phone away. Find a quiet place to sit: you don’t have to sit cross-legged on a meditation cushion, a chair is fine. All you should do is try and keep your back relatively straight (in other words, don’t slouch in a recliner).

Place your hands on your thighs, close your eyes, and feel your breathing. Concentrate on the fact that you are breathing. Feel your in-breaths; feel your out-breaths. You’ll probably notice that your mind starts showing you all sorts of pretty pictures, and you leap toward them like a puppy running after a new toy. Let those thoughts go. Don’t try and stop them; they’ll just get stronger. The goal is not to get rid of thoughts, to silence yourself; it’s all about just letting those thoughts be and not getting tied up in them. Just let them go.

Treat your thoughts as though they’re clouds in the sky. You may look at clouds, watch them move by, but you never forget that behind them is the clear, blue sky. Your thoughts are ephemeral: they arise, they take center stage, then they fade away. Once you realize this, you understand that all your thoughts can just fade away if you let them. Don’t try to push them away; simply let them move on on their own.

In shikantaza, we try to go even further, to non-thinking, to objectless meditation. To find that blue sky that lies behind he clouds of thought. Don’t worry about that. Just sit, let the thoughts come and go, and, when you get lost, come back to your breath, again. Don’t worry about how long you’re sitting, don’t worry about what you need to put in 15 minutes or an hour or a day. Just be with yourself, allow yourself to have that time to just sit.

When you’ve had enough, get up slowly, and don’t rush into whatever you have to do next. Try and let the relaxed feeling you experienced when sitting last a bit before you return to the world. If you can do this for a few minutes every day, you’ll start realizing that your body needs to put itself on pause every now and then.

Sitting here, sitting there

The thing about just sitting is that you can do it anywhere. I do it in trains, planes and busses; in doctors’ offices, dentists’ chairs, and I’ve even done it in MRIs. I do it outside on the patio, or on a couch. You can do it anywhere; all it takes is the intention of just sitting. Don’t worry about the noise around you; you’ll get used to letting that just fade away too.

Even if you don’t want to “meditate,” you can try just sitting as a way of unplugging your mind from the myriad distractions we face during the day. It only takes a few minutes, it doesn’t cost anything, and you really can do it anywhere. The great thing about just sitting is that you can do it no matter what your beliefs are. Whether you’re a Buddhist, Christian, Muslim or atheist, just sitting can fit in your worldview.[3] Even if you don’t want to meditate, you may find that just sitting for a few minutes every day – free of distraction – will clear your mind.[4]

This article was originally published in Issue 28 of The Loop Magazine.