On Shikantaza

Here’s an email from a Zen teacher that I deeply respect, Barry Magid (a successor of Joko Beck) and my long-winded response. We had exchanged emails about my book and some concerns about “wholeheartedness.”

I highly recommend his recent book, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide. Barry’s psychoanalytic training has given him an extremely valuable perspective and fitting language especially suited to clarifying barriers that many modern practitioners face, including our “secret practice.”

Dosho – so here’s a question for you about being “wholehearted.”

Some folks who say shikantaza is nothing in particular & can’t be identified with any “state” that can be done right or wrong, and is not to be identified with concentration or samadhi – turn around and use wholeheartedness to mean a particular state of absorption or non-separation with the activity at hand. So instead of emphasizing a particular state of mind on the cushion, they kick it upstairs to a particular state of mind during activity…..You don’t do that do you? How do you prevent your students from falling into this mistaken assumption?

Me, I just quote Woody Allen about showing up. If anxious, bow anxiously, if tired bow tired. Don’t try to be “mindful” or anything else. Be what you are; stay aware of what/who you are moment to moment; just do it with the mind/body you already have….

Do you know Carolyn Atkinson? she’s a teacher in Kobun’s lineage. She wrote a book – Quiet Mind, Open Heart – I enjoyed very much but which challenged my usual sense of the meaning of “shikantaza.” In it she talks about shitantaza as a concentration practice – explicitly cultivating a state of thought-free silence & depth – and contrasts this with vipassana – which she also teaches – which she says is a wide-focussed awareness of the arising & disappearing of thought….Her description of vipassana actually sounds more like Uchiyama’s version of (Opening the Hand of Thought) Shikantaza – her shikantaza, more like my experience of MU……..You been around alot – is “shikantaza” used both ways out there in Soto-land? And is there any basis for calling one or the other “authentic?”

Barry

Barry,

I appreciate you raising the issues but (oh my god) in my limited experience I find an enormous range of actual practices under the single term “shikantaza” from following the breath (much of SF Zen from Suzuki’s lifetime practice) to mindfulness of body (the rest of SF Zen w/ Reb) to a samadhi practice (Tangen Harada’s version) to just spacing out (often those without a teacher) to mindfulness of mind (apparently part of the White Plum – at least Daido’s version – and even Uchiyama and Shohaku’s in the sense that opening the hand of thought is about mind).

Katagiri used to say shikantaza isn’t anything in particular and that also fits for the Soto school’s lack of single view on the issue – and it is pretty “Japanese” too in that they might talk politely about shikantaza publicly and mean very different things privately which wouldn’t be discussed much ’cause it is rude to raise differences and soil the harmony.

Katagiri also called following the breath shikantaza but once I could follow the breath, told me to not attach to anything. At least several of his successors, though, just teach following the breath as shikantaza.

So a few more rambling thoughts on something that is a subject dear to me….

My understanding of history is that prior to Dogen the Caodong school did silent illumination meditation which was severely criticized for sinking into quietism – a fitting criticism because it leads to a zombie kind of practitioner, imv, that still pops up today. Dogen’s brilliant reframe on this practice and reconstruction of the tradition was based on adding “wholeheartedness” which changed silent illumination into “earnest vivid sitting” (literal trans. of shikantaza).

I’m not familiar with Carolyn Atkinson’s book and am kinda surprised because my limited acquaintance with Kobun and what he taught is not at all so clean and tidy shamata/vipassana that you describe. So even within lineage, in just a generation, the core practice moves a lot. I think this is one of the poisons/medicines in Soto.

By the way, I’m of the persuasion that American Soto would be served by consciously identifying Dogen’s work as source texts of the tradition (although I grant that there are a lot of problems with that) because at least it would give us a clearer starting point for discussion and we might also better understand when we’re adapting the tradition and when we’re not.

RE: “wholeheartedness,” what I encourage is full devotion to no particular thing. That’s a little different from seeing wholeheartedness as a state. For one thing, I emphasize the “whole” and “heart” parts of wholehearted – nothing left out, including the flowing emotions. Nothing left out includes samadhi states, dhyanic states, and insight/realization as well. But like a falling maple leaf, showing front, showing back.

Recently when a student talked about seeing his practice washing the dishes as a particular mind state (traditional mindfulness with Puritanical overtones) I told him that his approach didn’t seem very loving – excluded spacing out, resistance, etc. Since then I’ve been talking with others in this way. I see wholeheartedness as very much like love – not any particular state but including the swoons of early romantic attraction and then all the rest of the emotional array including dislike – but still we love.

It seems to me that the universe has this wholehearted quality and that when we step back, that’s what we become too, rather than holding back and posturing in some way, trying to freeze the flow of being/nonbeing. Posturing, of course, is also not the enemy.

I see sitting on the cushion as one form of “doing.”

I just looked up the characters for “wholehearted” in the Fukanzazengi, like the part when Dogen says “Although they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way of zazen.” That last phrase literally is something like “only hit seat diligently.” In other places too, “wholeheartedly” seems to be used for “only” and “diligently.”

Dogen doesn’t give a specific set of appropriate objects – like the breath – (or lack thereof) for his wholeheartedness. The only time I know that he mentions the breath is in the Extensive Record where it isn’t at all like we talk about following the breath.

Anywho, this nonspecific object leaves the door wide open in this practice, imv, to include cultural developments in awareness – which is what I think you are doing by including your “analytic training to uncover the latent gaining ideas.”

Maybe more than enough. Such a simple thing and yet so much to say.

Dosho