zazen context

Shikantaza in the style of Uchiyama Roshi

The study of the meaning of zazen in the context of Buddha's teachings

There's a common thread that runs from the teachings of Shakyamuni through the Mahayana tradition, the teachings of Dogen Zenji, Sawaki and Uchiyama Roshis, down to Okumura Roshi and the practice of shikantaza at Sanshin today.

Okumura Roshi has written: "There are many different traditions in Buddhism --the Theravada tradition in Thailand, Burma, and Sri Lanka, the Mahayana schools in China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam, and the Vajrayana tradition in Tibet. Each school has its own approach to meditation, and what it means to practice meditation. In Buddhism, skillful means are important. Those different paths are considered to be skillful means to encourage people not to stop practice. Teachers and teachings show a kind of a goal that encourages practice, and when a student reaches that stage, the teacher shows the next goal. That’s the way a student practices with encouragement. That’s the meaning of stages in Buddhist practice, but Dogen Zenji says our practice [of shikantaza] is very unique. He doesn’t use this kind of skillful means."

Soto Zen is situated within the Buddhist tradition, which began twenty five centuries ago in India and traveled along the Silk Road to China and Japan before coming to the West. Yet Dogen Zenji's shikantaza (just sitting) itself is a transparent practice that does not require a Buddhist container; thus it can be colored by any number of influences and contexts, Buddhist and not. We do only four things in shikantaza: take the posture, keep our eyes open, breathe deeply and let go of thought. Anyone from any faith tradition or none can do this and is welcome to join us in our zazen practice, so it's helpful for us to understand the basis of this transparent practice within the Sanshin style and spirit.

Okumura Roshi goes on to write: "Our zazen is based on the essential philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism -- that is, emptiness. Emptiness means no self and no other. Everything is connected as one thing. All beings are connected to each other. All beings interpenetrate each other. There’s no separation between subject and object, particularly in our zazen. The subject is this person, and the object is also this person."

When Shakyamuni realized awakening under the bodhi tree, he knew directly that clinging is the cause of suffering. He saw that we try to gratify sense desires by grasping at things we deem desirable, and that danger lies in that clinging because the loss of that desirable object is inevitable. The escape from this cycle of greed and fear is in taking up the Eightfold Path.

One of the things to which we cling most readily is the five skandhas or aggregates that make up the concept we call "me." Somehow we need to understand how five skandhas can be released from clinging to five skandhas. The Buddha taught that all conditioned things are empty of a fixed and permanent self nature because of both interdependence and impermanence. Everything arises because of causes and conditions; nothing comes into being by itself, so nothing can be separate from everything else around it (interdependence). Because these causes and conditions are changing all the time, the things that arise from them must also be changing (impermanence). If everything is connected to everything else and changing all the time, there's nothing we can identify as a permanent self-nature or essence -- and Buddha's teaching about emptiness must include this group of five skandhas called "me." This is also the teaching of the Prajna Paramita literature in the Mahayana tradition. The Heart Sutra says, "Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajna paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering."

The five skandhas being free from clinging to five skandhas on the basis of emptiness is the equivalent of Dogen Zenji’s shinjin datsuraku (dropping off body and mind), Sawaki Roshi’s “zazen is good for nothing,” Uchiyama Roshi’s “opening the hand of thought” and Okumura Roshi’s “1=0=∞ (infinity).“ This is what we actualize in shikantaza, which has been handed down to us directly from generation to generation.

Life began to change in the Meiji era

Balancing peace and progress, or understanding the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life

Understanding the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life is about finding the middle way between progress and peace of mind.  This is not an abstract or theoretical problem. It arises directly from Uchiyama Roshi's life experience as a Japanese who was born at the beginning of the Taisho era (1912) and still has relevance for us today.

In the Tokugawa era (1600-1868), Japan was closed to outside influences, social classes were fixed, a centralized government held power, the size of the population was stable and there was little change. Fixed social classes meant that there was no competition or freedom of choice. A stable population required no advances in agriculture to feed a growing number of people. Without competition, there was peace of mind. Instead of going toward development and progress, energy went into refining the culture, increasing sophistication and elevating its aesthetics.

During the Meiji era (1868-1912), Japan began to be influenced by Western ideas about organization and government as well as science and technology. It had to study and adopt these Western forms of progress so that it wouldn’t be left behind or swallowed up as a Western colony, but peace of mind was lost as a result.

Uchiyama Roshi witnessed the effects of this change, and this experience prompted his question: how do we find a balance between progress and peace of mind? He considered how Japan was to integrate its serene traditional culture with more driven Western development. He studied Western philosophy and Christianity as well as Buddhism in an effort to come to an understanding, and he concluded that the bodhisattva path and working hard for all beings rather than oneself was the answer. The exploration of this question of balance is the topic of his well-known book Opening the Hand of Thought.  Okumura Roshi has given more than 200 dharma talks on this book and has said that he considers it his manual of practice.

Progress can encourage competition, and the result of competition is a few winners and many losers. Winners have power and money and sit at the top of the pyramid. However, Uchiyama Roshi says that there are no real winners because achieving power and money leads to suffering: fear of loss and no peace of mind. If we turn our efforts to working for all beings’ benefit and development rather than competing for our own gain, we harness the energy of our discovery, innovation and building for the creation of wholesomeness and liberation from suffering.

We live with a day-to-day tension between chasing after or escaping from things and avoiding taking any action at all in order to remain calm.  Uchiyama Roshi points out that this same tension exists in our practice of zazen. While we're aiming for nonthinking, we are usually wobbling between sleeping and thinking or, as Dogen puts it in the Fukanzazengi, dullness and distraction. Shikantaza gives us the opportunity to put ourselves into the intersection of peace and progress and see what's there.

Understanding the significance of zazen and study in modern daily life isn't about applying practice as a remedy for the stress of today's busy schedule or modernizing an ancient Asian tradition to make it relevant in the modern West. It's about seeing how, in the midst of the unfolding of our own karma and the working of the causes and conditions of this moment, we can manifest the equanimity that already exists in emptiness.