Shikantaza - Leave your mind alone, let it go...

With Spring (supposedly) around the corner, we move into the Traditional Chinese Medicine season of cleaning up, shedding of old things that are no longer useful, clearing out, detoxing and the associated emotional element of letting go.

It feels to me like there is a cart-load of old stuff I can shed this year, and although I am spring cleaning my house, I'm not talking only about sweeping out dusty corners and getting rid of old magazines :)

Automatically Spring time feels good to pacify the mind a little more and practice meditation more often, nourishing the nervous system. Particularly the Zen practice of Shikantaza, the meditation practice of "just sitting". Also called Silent Illumination, Shikantaza is the method of simply sitting in an open meditation, without attaching to any specific focus of attention, such as the breath.

In Chinese, ”Shikan” means 'to be solely concerned about' and “Taza” means 'to sit.' So Shikantaza means to be solely concerned about just sitting.

Essentially Shikantaza - well, all mindfulness meditation, actually - is an exercise in letting go. If meditation is the 'letting go' part, then our mindfulness practice could be considered as training in being aware enough to spot when and where we get stuck.

Talking about letting go is tricky because, like so many other elements of Zen or meditation, it's very subtle. Something that needs to be experienced or felt to be understood completely - and therefore difficult to put into words.

To illustrate letting go, I thought it might be interesting to look at the opposite, which is attachment. The irony of attachment is that we move into a state of clinging to something because we don't want it to be like that. To put it in other words: attachment is the holding onto the wanting of this moment to be something other than what it is. i.e. Fighting with reality. Attachment is basically our habit of trying to control our environment, people or situations until it conforms to our expectations of what it should be.

When we start to micromanage our environment in this way, we hit a blind spot. We can’t see – or we forget - a universal truth of impermanency: everything changes, nothing stays the same.

So besides our complete control being an illusion, when our mind starts becoming attached, it becomes rigid, fossilized & clinging. Letting go becomes difficult then because it's as if we get stuck. And if we don’t have a strong mindfulness practice, we won’t know what our sticky places are, and we won't know at which place in the chain we can break out of it.

It’s sometimes difficult really to take this to heart, or fully accept responsibility for it, but all those places that become sticky or stressful for us, are all about our mind tightening up to clinging.

All the stress we experience in our interactions with people, at home, at work, or when we feel we have too much of something, too little of something else, something coming in when we need it to go, or going when we want it to stay, that's clinging. Frustration, anger, irritation or feelings of being overwhelmed come from clinging. And that’s totally our mind at play.

At face value it could seem like a contradiction: The fact that we can't really let go of something until we turn towards it fully, examine it closely, and sit with it. Or in it. Until you can accept what is, you cannot move forward or through it without suffering.

Letting go means various things but, above all, it's a gentle process, soft, very subtle. I was reminded in an article on Ayurveda about making changes: "If we try to go too fast, that change can itself be a stress that makes us feel bad."

My experience of letting go is a specific way of accepting something, therefore acceptance (we're back there again!) is a large part of letting go or dropping attachment. Being mindful of what our expectations are, of ourselves and others. It means letting go of our ideas of how we think things should be. It's not expecting or manipulating a certain outcome.

It's a gentle change of direction, a change in perception. This change in direction is not moving away from something. It’s really more about turning towards something else, shifting our perspective. I'm thinking about breathing and shifting perspective, wondering if I can use it as an analogy? Let's see: Usually, when we visualise breathing, we automatically think about breathing air into the lungs. But breathing is also about the exhale. When we start to shift our focus away from the inhale and move towards the exhale part of our breath, we experience a different sensation of breathing altogether. Both are part of the breath, but each has a subtle difference in texture and effect. Similarly, letting go is softly shifting our focus towards something else, rather than away from something. Both are moving in a certain direction, but it has a different texture and effect.

Letting go could also be thought of as an opening or softening up of our definition of what we think we need to be happy or comfortable. When we soften and shift our perspective, usually the problem no longer feels like the problem it was before.

What letting go doesn’t mean:

If attachment means wanting things to be different to what they are now, and we're working towards not wanting something to be other than what it is, letting go doesn’t mean you wouldn’t EVER want things to be different or make changes in the future.

Sometimes the concept of attachment, desires and letting go is misinterpreted. Being attached and having relationships are not the same thing. Love, kindness, helping others, compassion and wanting to be a good person, partner or parent is the kernel of living a conscious life.

Letting go of attachments doesn’t mean we can’t have close relationships or strong feelings towards others. It doesn't mean learning to let go of relationships or pulling away emotionally so we don't feel anything when someone leaves. Attachment in a relationship is when our perspective becomes one of clinging and the expectation that someone else is somehow responsible for our feeling of happiness.

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche explained the difference between love and attachment this way recently: Love is when you are thinking ... "how can I make you happy?" Attachment is when you are thinking ... "why aren't you making me happy?"

Some questions which could be useful to consider before a Shikantaza or any other meditation, to consider how it relates to you, if at all:

What old patterns or habits can I shed?

What irritates me most? What angers me right now? What makes me sad? What do I wish I had or wish I hadn't?

Do I have expectations? Are the expectations of myself or others? Does the situation require force or micromanagement from me so it conforms with my expected outcome?

What if... I change my perspective of this situation? What if I were to let go of my expectations? If I don't like it, what if I dive right in and sit with it?

Can I let go of the need to be perfect in shedding all these things? Can I make changes gently? Do I need to change it?

Shikantaza - like all meditation - is mind training. It creates light, space and ease in our mind. It helps ease our passage through life.

Have a happy day.

Mx