Just Sitting

Shikantaza, "nothing but precisely sitting", is the central meditation of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, an objectless practice of alert, upright sitting that takes up no technique, no breath-counting and no koan, but simply the wakeful presence of sitting itself. The practitioner sits in a stable posture, eyes open and lowered, neither suppressing thoughts nor following them, neither seeking any state nor rejecting the one that arises. There is, in the strict account, nothing to attain and nothing to do but sit; the sitting is not a means to enlightenment lying elsewhere but the full expression of it here and now.

This is the practice's characteristic paradox and its recurring difficulty. Because it offers no object to concentrate on and no goal to strive for, it resists the goal-directed effort that meditators naturally bring, and the tradition warns equally against the dullness of mere blankness and the subtle striving that turns "just sitting" into one more technique for getting somewhere.