TREELEAF ZENDO PODCAST

Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part 7)

It is important to understand from the very outset of beginning practice that Shikantaza (“Just Sitting”) Zazen is a radical, to-the-marrow, dropping of all need to attain, all “running after.” And we work very very diligently to attain this “non-attaining!“ Last time, I compared it to a foot race in which we keep on pushing forward for our whole lives, but knowing that each step-by-step of the race itself is perfectly “just running.“ No destination to “get to”… the trip itself is the destination.
Why is this philosophy of Shikantaza so unique and vital to understand?
Because in our lives, we are morning-to-night chasing after things, rarely still … whether it is dreams and goals, food on the table, fame and fortune, praise, possessions, whatever we think will “finally” make us happy and content in life, complete (once we get there, if we get there). Like a dog chasing its tail.
How rarely are we truly still, at rest and at peace, right here.
It may be the same in our spiritual practice, if we are always searching for something, someone, or some truth distant or just out of reach. It may be “Enlightenment”, “the Buddha” or some other Power or “secret to life” that seems so far away.
The Practice of Shikantaza may be unique in being, unlike most other ways of seeking, a radical stopping of the search, a true union with life “just-as-it-is,” dropping all need for looking “beyond” so to make life complete here and now.
Yet, far from being mere resignation, a half-satisfied complacency or lazy “giving up,” Shikantaza is, instead, finding what we are longing for by allowing all just to be. Life is complete when one allows life to be complete. All things are perfectly just what they are if we see them as such. The hard borders and friction between our self and the world fall away.
By stopping the search, something precious is truly found!
We discover stillness and peace, not by running after stillness and peace, but by being truly still and at rest. To do this, we sit on our Zafu cushion, dropping from mind all judgments of the world, all resistance… all thought that life “should be” or “had better be” some other way than just as we find it all. In this way, we find the sitting of Zazen (and all of Practice) to be a perfect act, the one place to be and the one thing to do in the universe at that moment. When we are sitting, we do not think that we “should be” someplace else, or that there is a better way to spend our time. Instead, we find each moment of sitting complete, with not one thing to add or take away from the moment.
We discover stillness even amid the activity of life, peace without regard to whether all around is chaos! Even though we are still, we keep living and moving forward!
Thus, we find that what we have been searching for here all along.
(Now that I have explained a bit about the philosophy of diligently sitting to attain “non-attaining” and to achieve “nothing to achieve”, I will talk in our next episode about about what should be going on “inside the head” and with one’s thoughts during Shikantaza Zazen.)
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Sit-a-Long with Taigu: Zazen for Beginners (Part 6)

Rev. Taigu offers a few more perspectives on the “sitting” of “just sitting.” He says:
Sitting on a cushion is what we normally do. The actual flexibility of this cushion called a zafu makes it possible to position it at an angle which makes sitting much more comfortable. A zafu is a very personal item and one should search around to find the right thickness for the cushion. When putting hands together to form the zazen mudra, we usually put the left hand on top of the right, palms up and thumbs very lightly touching. If you are not using a koromo, which is a black robe with huge sleeves, then you may use a towel and put it on your lap to support the mudra.
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Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part 5)

Continuing our “How to” series on Zazen…
Shikantaza “Just Sitting” is an unusual way of meditation, and might be compared to running a long distance foot race in a most unusual way. In most ordinary races, people run to win something, seeking to cross the finish line at the end of the course, far down the road and over the distant hills. So the runners keep on pushing ahead, striving with all their might to get to that goal, the crossing of which will finally make them victors. In Zen, that distant goal is sometimes called “Enlightenment.”
And in Shikantaza too, we do not give up. We keep pushing ahead diligently with our practice, step by step and inch by inch, seeking the goal. However, the “goal” turns out not to be where we thought it was, and the way of its crossing not as first imagined.
For, in Shikantaza we must come to realize that the “goal” is not the crossing of some far off line. Instead, each step-by-step of the race itself IS the destination fully attained, the finish line is ever underfoot and constantly crossed with each inch. Each step is instantaneously a perfect arriving at the winner’s tape!
To know that there is no finish line to cross even as we run the race, no target to hit, is to perpetually arrive at the finish line with each stride, ever hitting the target, always arriving home. But despite the fact that the “trophy” was ours all along, we do not give up, do not sit down at the starting line, do not quit and jump out early from the race (of our practice, our life). We do not turn back or waste time. For that reason, some call our Practice a great, constant striving for the “Goalless goal.”
In Shikantaza, we find the sitting of Zazen (and all of Practice) to be a perfect act, the one place to be and the one thing to do in the universe at that moment. When we are sitting, we do not think that we “should be” someplace else, or that there is a better way to spend our time. Instead, we find each moment of sitting complete, with not one thing to add or take away from the moment. In other words, we keep on running running running, knowing that we belong in this race, and there is no grander place to be!
As I have mentioned before, in sitting, we drop from mind all judgments of the world, all resistance… all thought that life “should be” or “had better be” some other way than just as we find it all. No matter how it is going, or the direction it takes, we drop –to the marrow – all thought that the race should be turning out some other way. In other words, we learn to go totally with the race’s flow.
And thus, the goal is constantly crossed underfoot even as we keep on running forward… yet we persist in running until we cross the line of thoroughly realizing that fact of the line’s true location in each step, then keep on running more steps after steps because all of life turns out to be “Practice.” The very act of running brings the race — and the Buddha’s teachings — to life. So, we keep on running despite no need to”get.”
Radically dropping, to the marrow, all need to attain, add or remove, or change circumstances in order to make life right and complete IS A WONDROUS ATTAINMENT, ADDITION, and CHANGE TO LIFE! Dropping all need to “get somewhere” is truly finally GETTING SOMEWHERE!
Attaining non-attaining is the Prize!
It is a marvelous way to practice, and wonderful way to live all of life : constantly moving forward with energy and effort, living vigorously, yet knowing that there is no place to “get to,” and we are constantly already home.
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Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part 4)

There was a devastating earthquake in the news yesterday — great human suffering. So much sadness in this world… war and violence, poverty, hunger, disease.
Yet, in our Shikantaza Zazen, we are to instructed to sit with life without thinking “good” or “bad,” dropping all resistance and judgments about how things are, not wishing that our self or the world ’should be’ or ‘had better be’ some other way than just as we find them.
We drop all thoughts of “good” and “bad,” “right” vs. “wrong,” “just” and “unjust,” “happy” and “sad,” we experience a world that just is-what-it-is. It goes-the-way-it-goes, even if that way is not the way we personally might desire. And we go with its flow, abandoning resistance to the direction taken. Letting aside both “cruel” and “gentle,“ “ugly” and “kind,”we no longer resist, do not judge, and embrace it all … even the most terrible.
In doing so, the hard borders between our self and this life-world soften or fully tumble away… and there is just oneness-beyond-one with all conditions.
But need we stop there? In that wholeness and tranquility, are we not left uncaring, blind, emotionless, apathetic, cold-hearted, passive to the pain of others?
NOT AT ALL!
For ours can be a path of acceptance without acceptance, inner stillness and outward action combined, allowing and tolerant yet resisting what needs to be resisted, judging what must be judged in life (while also dropping all judgments) – all at once, as if precisely blending views of life seen from different angles. It is much the same in the case of a man or woman who, facing an illness, perhaps some cancer, accepts the condition fully — yet fights the good fight for a cure. We need not feel anger within at the natural state which is the disease, we can accept within that all life is impermanent and that death and sickness are just the reality… but still we might search for the healing medicine, struggling without for health and life. We can know that within and without are not two.
Our Zen practice teaches us that we can live by seemingly contradictory viewpoints at once, uniting all, without conflict. We might say that this world, our life, is much like living in an imperfect house, in need of work, with perhaps a leaky roof, dust and spiders, and broken windows. In “Just Sitting,” we simply sit to drop all resistance to the house we have been living in all along, to realize that there is nowhere to “go” in life, to cease all efforts to add to or take away from the structure, to let go of the ego’s insisting on how things “should be” in order for the house to be “good” … we ARE that house, at Peace in our True Home! Then we find, in dropping that resistance, that the house we have always been in is “perfectly what it is,” and we can be joyful right where we are. HOWEVER, we can be content with that house even as, hand in hand, there is still much serious repair work to do (an acceptance-without-acceptance of the leaky windows, spiders and creaky doors). There is nothing to prevent our fixing those, even as we accept their existence! We can accept and not accept simultaneously, repair what needs to be repaired.
Thus, in our “Just Sitting” Shikantaza, we completely accept, embrace and allow the universe, and all in it, just as it is. We drop all thoughts of likes and dislikes, dreams and regrets and need for change, hopes and fears. But simultaneously, hand in hand without the slightest deviation (on another mental “track,” we might say), we live our lives as human beings, and living life requires choices, goals, likes and dislikes, dreams and hopes for change.
War, fire, flood, death and disease, humanity and nature’s most horrible turns can all be observed dispassionately and from an unshakable inner peace, fully accepted… all while we choose to resist what we can, to extend comfort and compassion as we can, to make the world and our selves better when and where we can.
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Sit-a-Long with Taigu: Zazen for Beginners (Part 3)

Like me (Jundo Cohen), Rev. Taigu Turlur is also teacher at Treeleaf Sangha. Born in France in 1964, he started Zazen early — at age 13! — and received Shukke Tokudo ordination in 1983 — at age 18! — from Rev. Mokudo Zeisler of the Deshimaru Lineage, and Dharma Transmission from Chodo Cross in 2003. A lifelong student and servant of sewing the Kesa (Buddhist robes), he now resides near Osaka, Japan.
Taigu will be speaking in our series “Zazen for Beginners” (because we’re always beginners) on sitting with the body … as body-mind are not two.
Taigu writes …
Sitting with our body-mind is the very heart of our tradition. How to sit? You will find on line a lot of information about it. People tell you what you should be doing or what you should not. In some Zendos, firm hands may correct your posture so it looks as if it gets closer to what they imagine to be the real thing. In some instances, Zen practice may nurture in us an army-like attitude, alongside we may display some arrogance and intolerance and sit like huge stones, filled with tensions and knots.
I would like to invite you to something slightly different.
Tricks and methods can work to a certain extent. We may receive very helpful instruction and guidance, but eventually, we are alone and it is within and with this body-mind of ours that we sit. The problem is that everybody is different and you cannot correct somebody’s sitting from outside. The activity of sitting is to allow the flower of the Dharma to blossom, to let sitting sitting us and not to force the body into a rigid-fixed composure.
I am not an expert at sitting. I have no diploma about body-work or the like. Although I started sitting more than thirty years ago, it feels like yesterday. So please, take my words with great caution. I would like to provide a few directions and invite you to start where you are with who you are. Beware of not cultivating a particular thought or of toying with a certain idea during sitting, for instance, the picture of the flower blossoming is just a metaphor to give you a flavor or the balanced way to release the lower part of the body into the ground, it is not supposed to be present in your mind during sitting itself. Sitting itself is free of any clinging, so in Shikantaza, following the breath, counting the breaths, or focusing on a koan are not required. It is coming to a place where through not-doing and not-knowing one enjoys the complete and vast scenery of things-as-it-is. Sitting is to realize , not just intellectually, but through our whole body-mind that nothing is lacking, that our being is imperfectly perfect. Sitting is to strip the doing and thinking habits, which is what we can truly call karma, and return to our true home, always where we are. And please, just be humble, forget your knowledge and experience, drop your bag at the gate of sitting, if you keep the weight of a straw or even a tiny thread, it’s extra. To be a beginner is to come to sitting as a beginner. It is open to everybody. As Master Dogen guided in Fukanzazengi…
In general, a quiet room is good for Zen practice, and food and drink are taken in moderation. Abandon all involvements. Give the myriad things a rest. Do not think of good and bad. Do not care about right and wrong. Stop the driving movement of mind, will, consciousness. Cease intellectual consideration through images, thoughts, and reflections. Do not aim to become a buddha. How could it be connected with sitting or lying down?
Usually on the place where we sit we spread a thick mat, on top of which we use a round cushion. Either sit in the full lotus posture or sit in the half lotus posture. To sit in the full lotus posture, first put the right foot on the left thigh, then put the left foot on the right thigh. To sit in the half lotus posture, just press the left foot onto the right thigh. Let clothing hang loosely and make it neat. Then place the right hand over the left foot, and place the left hand on the right palm. The thumbs meet and support each other.
Just sit upright, not leaning to the left, inclining to the right, slouching forward, or arching backward. It is vital that the ears vis-à-vis the shoulders, and the nose vis-à-vis the navel, are caused to oppose each other. Let the tongue spread against the roof of the mouth. Let the lips and teeth come together. The eyes should be kept open. Let the breath pass imperceptibly through the nose.
Having regulated the physical posture, breathe out once, and sway left and right. Sit still, “Thinking that state beyond thinking.” “How can the state beyond thinking be thought?” “Non-thinking.” This is the vital art of sitting-zen.
What is called sitting-zen, sitting-meditation, is not meditation that is learned. It is the Dharma-gate of effortless ease. It is the practice and experience that gets to the bottom of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The laws of the Universe are realized, around which there are no nets or cages. To grasp this meaning is to be like a dragon that has found water, or like a tiger before a mountain stronghold. Remember, true reality spontaneously emerges, and darkness and dissipation vanish at a stroke.
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Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part 2)

Continuing our series “Zazen for Beginners” (because we’re always beginners) ...
Here’s a basic perspective of Buddhism:
Our mind creates conflict and separation from this life/world because our mind is constantly filled with thoughts dividing this from that, worries and “what if’s“, desires and “if only’s,” judgments of good and bad and high and low, resistance to situations, fears for the future and regrets about the past … all kinds of junk in the mental trunk. In this way, our “self” creates an image of itself separate from, and in frequent conflict with life, the world, everything it considers “not itself” (and even conflict with its image of itself too!)
It is (as the old joke goes) a lot like your self mentally banging yourself with a hammer … Cause it is such a relief when you stop!
Reverse the process … drop the dividing thoughts, the fears and worries, judgments, the likes and dislikes, ideas of past-present-future, resistance and the rest … and all conflicts and separation drop away too. The self is no longer in conflict and isolated from all that it sees as “not the self” … the war is over … and (depending on how much those borders soften or fully drop away) this ’world-life-self-not self-reality’ is known and experienced in very special way(s) too.
Thus, in Shikantaza ‘Just Sitting’ Zazen we sit … allowing thoughts of this, that, past, future and all the rest to drift out of mind.
The hammer is put down.
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Sit-a-Long with Jundo: Zazen for Beginners (Part 1)

So, today, let's begin “Zazen for Beginners.” Because we’re always beginners.
We’ll talk the basics of “Just Sitting” Shikantaza Zazen… There’s a bit more to “Just Sitting” than “just sitting around.“
In a series of talks over the coming days, Taigu and I will discuss this and that about “Just Sitting,” which has much to do with dropping thoughts of “this” and “that.” We’ll talk about where you can expect to “go” in your practice, and what you can expect to attain, which is, of course …
ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE AND NOTHING!
Don’t think, however, that not thinking of “attaining” means that a treasure is not attained.
And freeing our “self” of all need to get somewhere can be truly getting somewhere.
These talks are meant for beginners in “Just Sitting” Shikantaza Zazen and newcomers to Treeleaf Sangha. Shikantaza is our central practice at Treeleaf. But I hope that both new folks and old timers will watch. We are all, of course, ever beginning now and now and now, with “Beginner’s Mind.“
Let’s start by seeing the mind as like a noisy kitchen blender… filled with all kinds of rattlin’ stuff.
Let it settle!
Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.
(Using headphones? Do note that there is loud noise at times in this video!)
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The Ten Oxherding Pictures (XIII)

Rev. Taigu closes his series on the Ten Oxherding Pictures…
“In the world, entering the marketplace… as we get up  and leave our hermitage, we just don’t leave Shikantaza behind. If we do so, what would be the real meaning of our practice? Merging with people, being nobody, we disappear into the crowd. But we let the life of Shikantaza shine through and reveal the real face of this, every single sentient being is truly met and perceived. We don’t teach or instruct, but open our hands, our eyes and ears to the living teachings of the Buddhas which are found in every single form of this universe, from garbage to star. A very humbling experience, serving and being invisible. Our consciousness like clouds, rivers, wind, always passing, never fixed.”
(Click through for more, and to watch today’s talk and “sit-a-long.”)
Today’s Sit-A-Long video follows. Remember: recording ends soon after the beginning bells; a sitting time of 20 to 35 minutes is recommended.