From "Meditation Now or Never" by Steve Hagen
No
Time, Place, or Size
when zen
teachers talk about
shikantaza—“just sitting,”
with-
out
focusing on any object or process—they sometimes use the
term
single-pointed concentration. When we first hear this
term,
we might
think they’re speaking of something small, like a speck
of dust.
It seems to refer to filing our concentration down to a
tiny
point. But
single-pointed concentration is actually quite different
in
that it
includes the Whole World.
Single-pointed concentration is like each pixel in a
holo-
gram. It
has all the information of the Whole. Indeed, if you
were
to fully
experience this single
dust-mote moment, you would know
the
Whole.
The thing we need to realize about just
this, the focus
of our
single-pointed
concentration, is that it’s not a “little” point. It’s not
a
“big”
point either. It’s a sizeless
point.
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M E D I TAT
I O N N O W O R N E V E R
It’s called a point because it’s just One. But it’s truly One,
with
a capital
“O.” It’s not one as opposed to many, or one as opposed
to
two or
three. It’s One without any other. Single-pointed
concentra-
tion
doesn’t have any size. It doesn’t have any dimension. It
doesn’t
have any
duration. It doesn’t have any location. It doesn’t have
any
object.
It’s just this. It’s
objectless Awareness.
With objectless Awareness, there’s sound, but no object
of
sound.There
may be the sound of a plane or of birds chirping—but
it’s not a
plane, it’s not birds. It’s just sound, with nothing extra
form-
ing out of
sound.
o
o
o
When the great Zen master Yun Men was asked, “What is
single-pointed
concentration?” he said,“Food in the bowl.Water in
the
bucket.”
We’re easily confused by such direct talk.“That’s it? Just
food
in a bowl
and water in a bucket?”“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This is
nonsense!”“I don’t get it.”“This is too deep for me.”
Catch yourself. Stop thinking
about what
Yun Men said and
just take
it in. “Food in the bowl, water in the bucket.” Nothing
more. Stop
making anything out of it. Stop talking to yourself.
Crawl
into what
is being pointed out. Put down the book for a moment
and have a
direct look at
this.
o
o
o
You’re walking along a lakeshore on a warm spring
morning,
and a duck
crosses your path.You think to yourself,“duck.”
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No Time,
Place, or Size
See if, instead, you can experience without labeling.The
fact
is, the
moment you think “duck,” your awareness is
diminished.The
direct
experience is lost—bound into concepts.
If instead you wordlessly experience this
moment, you will
dis-
cover that
you can always reconstruct the moment later, if you need
to. But
while it’s happening, don’t talk to yourself about it.
Don’t
throw
labels on it. Stay with what’s happening. Don’t try to hold
on
to it.
Just be there, fully present with what’s going on.
You might start to realize true seeing.
This is
single-pointed concentration.
o
o
o
In meditation, words and concepts will spontaneously
appear.
Let them
go. Don’t hold on to them or build upon them. Don’t
think
about them or use them to calculate some expectation.
Just
stay
here.
Start
cultivating a wordless Awareness of just
this.
187
K
nowin g Before You T hink
shikantaza
is meditation in its
simplest form. There are only
three
elements: body, mind, and breath. No gimmicks. Nothing
to
hold on
to. Not even the breath. Breath is still present, of course,
but
we’re not
fixed on it.
Earlier in this book I talked about tranquility (shamatha
in
Sanskrit)
and awareness (vipashyana in Sanskrit). In shikantaza,
these¯
two are
not separate.The mind settles, but not on a particular
point.
In
shikantaza, Awareness is objectless and subjectless—there’s
no
“you” who
does shikantaza. It’s as if concentration has been filed
down to a
single point—yet, at the same time, has expanded out-
ward and
is taking in everything: sights, sounds, feelings,
sensations,
thoughts,
movements. And this Awareness is sizeless and timeless.
In shikantaza we discover that there is no clear
distinc-
tion
between self and other. Are you breathing? Or are you
being
breathed?
You need not answer. There is no essential difference.
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K n o w i n
g B e fo re Yo u T h i n k
Awareness
is general and without location. It’s been this way all
along, but
only now is it clear and obvious.
o
o
o
Shikantaza is a Japanese word made up of four parts.The
first
two—shi
and kan—are Tranquility
and Awareness. Ta refers to
hit-
ting the
exact spot—dead on target, not one atom off—which, in
this case,
means that these “two,” shi and kan, are not even
merged,
but rather
there is no distinction to be made between them. And
finally,
za means to
sit.
Shikantaza is often translated as “just sitting.” But this
label
is
misleading since shikan can
involve any activity. We can know
directly
shikan basketball, shikan driving, or shikan
dishwashing.
Shikanta—tranquility,
Awareness, hitting the mark—is not just lim-
ited to
sitting meditation. All of everyday life can be lived in
the
spirit of
shikan—“nothing but,” just this.
This is a
radically different emphasis from practicing medita-
tion with
the idea that it’s a special activity set apart from
everything
else that
we do.When we practice meditation with such a notion—
or any
notion at all, really—it can easily become brittle, narrow,
and
unworldly.
In fact, it often becomes a form of escapism—a mental
vacation.
o
o
o
Shikantaza is often described as “sitting like a mountain.”
Sta-
bility in
your posture is absolutely critical.You just sit, quiet and
still.
Whatever
occurs—thoughts, sounds, feelings, and sensations that
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M E D I TAT
I O N N O W O R N E V E R
come and
go—are just clouds drifting by. And just as a mountain
is
not moved
or disturbed by clouds, you don’t grab hold of anything.
You don’t
identify with anything. You don’t label anything. You
don’t say
anything about what appears or disappears.You’re simply
fully
present.
In this tranquility of objectless, subjectless Awareness,
every-
thing
drops away, yet all is affirmed.
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