Shikantaza (只管打坐, Japanese: 'just this, sitting') is the term Dogen Zenji (1200–1253) used to describe the zazen practice of the Soto school. The word shikan means 'nothing but' or 'wholeheartedly'; taza means 'sitting.' Together: sitting that is complete in itself — not aimed at a goal, not measured by results, not using a specific meditation object. The practitioner sits with full attention, without waiting for anything to happen, without judging whether the sitting is going well or poorly. This is not passive or inattentive: Dogen describes shikantaza as the most concentrated and complete form of exertion available to a human being. The distinction from ordinary relaxation, or even from other forms of meditation, is total commitment to this moment of sitting, without remainder.

What does shikantaza mean in Japanese?

Shikantaza (只管打坐) is composed of four characters: 只管 (shikan) meaning 'just' or 'nothing but' — a wholehearted, single-pointed quality without distraction or division; and 打坐 (taza), 'striking sitting' or 'just sitting,' where 打 conveys a sense of thoroughgoing engagement rather than gentle rest. The full compound: sitting completely, with nothing held back, with no agenda alongside it. Dogen's use of 'just' (shikan) carries the same weight as his use of 'only' throughout the Shobogenzo: it is not a diminishment but an intensification — this, and nothing added to it or taken away.

How is shikantaza different from other forms of meditation?

Most meditation practices involve an object: the breath, a mantra, a visualization, body sensations, a koan. The practitioner's attention returns to this object when it wanders. Shikantaza has no specific object. The practitioner does not focus on the breath, though they breathe. They do not suppress thoughts, though thoughts arise and pass. They do not wait for a particular state — calm, concentrated, open — to emerge. The instruction is simply to sit completely, without the overlay of seeking, without the judgment of whether this sitting is successful. This makes shikantaza both simpler and more demanding than object-based meditation: simpler because there is nothing to do, more demanding because the mind has nothing to hold onto and immediately begins looking for a foothold.

What is the relationship between shikantaza and awakening?

Dogen's central philosophical claim — preserved throughout the Shobogenzo and stated most directly in the Genjokoan and Fukanzazengi — is that practice and realization are not separate. Sitting in zazen is not preparation for awakening; it is already the expression of awakening. This is sometimes called the 'identity of practice and enlightenment' (shusho ichinyo). In Rinzai Zen, the structure is different: koan practice is a means toward the specific event of kensho (breakthrough), after which practice deepens. Dogen rejected this framework. For him, to seek enlightenment as a future state that sitting will eventually produce is already to have missed what sitting is. The practice itself — fully engaged, without agenda — is already what awakening points toward. This is not a consolation prize for those who don't have kensho; it is a different and more radical claim about the nature of realization.

How do you practice shikantaza?

The posture instructions are the same as for zazen generally: sit upright, cross-legged on a cushion or in a chair with feet flat on the floor; spine stacked and alert; hands in the cosmic mudra (left hand resting on right, thumbs lightly touching); eyes half-open, gaze lowered at a 45-degree angle to the floor. What differs is the quality of attention during the sitting. There is nothing to concentrate on. When the mind wanders — into planning, remembering, commentary on the sitting — you notice, and the noticing itself is a return to the present without requiring an object to return to. You do not add effort to redirect the mind; you simply sit. You do not try to maintain a particular state; you simply sit. If something arises — discomfort, sleepiness, agitation — you do not try to eliminate it; you simply sit. The instruction 'just sit' is not a permission to be casual. It is an invitation to be completely here.

Is shikantaza the same as zazen?

Shikantaza is a mode of zazen — specifically the mode Dogen described as the correct and complete form of sitting practice. All shikantaza is zazen; not all zazen is shikantaza. Zazen is the general term for the seated meditation practice of Zen. In Rinzai training, zazen is typically done with a koan as the object of investigation — a different mode of sitting. Shikantaza is the Soto characterization of what zazen is when it is practiced without a specific object or technique, in the spirit of Dogen's teaching that practice itself is already realization.

← Glossary

只管打坐 · shikantaza (Japanese) · "just sitting" / "nothing but sitting"

What is Shikantaza?

Dogen Zenji’s term for the zazen of the Soto school — sitting with complete attention, without agenda, without a meditation object, and without measuring whether the sitting is going well. The most demanding instruction in Zen is also the simplest: just this.

Dogen Zenji — Fukanzazengi (Universal Guidelines for Sitting Meditation, 1227)

“Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen.”

Dogen’s instruction

Dogen Zenji (1200–1253) traveled from Japan to China at the age of twenty-three to find a genuine transmission of Zen. He studied under Rujing (Tiantong Rujing, 1163–1228) at Tiantong monastery, and it was there, in 1225, that something cracked open. The story preserved in the tradition says that during a predawn sitting session, Rujing scolded a dozing student: “In zazen, body and mind fall away — why do you sleep?” Dogen heard this and experienced precisely that: body and mind falling away. When he brought the experience to Rujing, Rujing confirmed it. Body and mind fallen away — the falling away of body and mind.

When Dogen returned to Japan and founded the Soto school’s Japanese lineage, he brought a single instruction at the center of everything: shikantaza. Just sitting. The Japanese characters are 只管打坐: shikan (nothing but, wholeheartedly) and taza (sitting — where the character 打, “strike,” conveys thorough engagement rather than passive rest). Together: sitting completely, without division.

The instruction sounds simple. It is not. Sitting without an object, without a technique, without measuring — without any of the handholds the mind ordinarily uses to manage its experience — is not comfortable. The mind that has nothing to do immediately invents something to do: planning, reviewing, judging the quality of the sitting, wondering whether this counts as meditation, comparing itself to other practitioners. Shikantaza means sitting through all of this without adding to it and without fleeing it. Just this.

Practice and realization as one

The deepest claim Dogen makes — preserved in the Genjokoan, the Bendowa, and throughout the Shobogenzo — is that practice and realization are not separate. Sitting in shikantaza is not preparation for awakening. It is not a means to an end. The sitting itself, when it is genuinely just sitting — completely present, without the overlay of seeking something beyond it — is already the expression of what awakening points toward.

This is the most radical element of Dogen’s teaching and the most frequently misunderstood. It is not a consolation for people who have not had a breakthrough experience. It is a claim about the nature of realization: that when you are completely here, without remainder, there is nowhere else to arrive. The seeking itself — the orientation toward a future state that will finally be different enough — is precisely what shikantaza dissolves. Not by answering it but by removing the ground it stands on.

This is why Dogen’s formulation differs so sharply from the Rinzai framework, in which koan practice drives the practitioner toward kensho (breakthrough) as a specific event. Dogen did not deny that such events occur. He reframed their significance: they are not the point of practice; they are moments in practice. The point of practice is practice itself. The goal, in this sense, is already the beginning.

Shikantaza and the Soto school

Soto Zen (曹洞宗), founded in China by Dongshan Liangjie and Caoshan Benji in the ninth century and transmitted to Japan by Dogen in the thirteenth, takes shikantaza as its central practice. In contrast to Rinzai, which uses a structured koan curriculum and dokusan (private interview with a teacher), Soto practice centers on communal sitting, dharma talks (teisho), and the ongoing cultivation of what Dogen calls “body and mind falling away.”

In practice, many contemporary Soto teachers incorporate koans or other forms of investigation into their teaching. The line between the schools at the level of actual practice is less sharp than the theoretical descriptions suggest. But the organizing orientation is different: Soto practice begins from the premise that nothing is missing; Rinzai practice begins from the urgency of getting through. Both arrive somewhere that cannot be adequately named from the outside.

What shikantaza feels like

This is a question the tradition tends to answer obliquely. Dogen’s phrase “thinking of not-thinking” — hishiryo, non-thinking — is the closest he comes to a phenomenological description. Not the suppression of thought (that is the wrong picture — shikantaza is not about making the mind blank). Not passive acceptance of whatever arises (that is too casual). Something closer to: thoughts arise, are present, and pass, without the practitioner adding the layer of “me, thinking these thoughts.” The sitting knows itself. The sitter is not separate from the sitting.

This is not achievable through trying to achieve it. The moment you try to produce the state of “thinking of not-thinking,” you have stepped outside of it. This is why the instruction “just sit” is given without elaboration: elaboration would be the wrong kind of help. Just sit means exactly that. If you are doing something more than sitting, or something less, it will make itself known. The instruction is to notice, and keep sitting.

Common questions about shikantaza

What is the difference between shikantaza and mindfulness meditation?

Mindfulness meditation — as taught in clinical contexts and most secular mindfulness programs — involves deliberate, sustained attention to a specific object, typically the sensations of breathing, with a structured approach to returning attention when it wanders. The aim is to cultivate certain qualities: concentration, equanimity, awareness of impermanence. Shikantaza has no object, no technique for returning attention, and no quality it aims to cultivate. Where mindfulness practice is a training program with a method, shikantaza is an instruction to inhabit this moment without a method. The differences in outcome are real but difficult to describe from outside the practices.

How does shikantaza relate to zazen?

All shikantaza is zazen; not all zazen is shikantaza. Zazen (坐禅) is the general term for the seated meditation practice of Zen. In Rinzai training, zazen is done with a koan as the object of sustained investigation — a different mode of sitting from shikantaza. Dogen held shikantaza to be the correct and complete form of zazen practice, but this reflects his particular understanding rather than a consensus across the tradition. The term zazen appears throughout all Zen schools; shikantaza is specifically the Soto characterization of what zazen is when practiced in the spirit of Dogen’s teaching.

Is shikantaza easier or harder than koan practice?

Neither is easier. Koan practice has a structure that generates pressure — the practitioner has something to present in interview, a problem that demands resolution. This pressure can be clarifying but also leads practitioners to try to “solve” the koan intellectually, producing clever responses that miss the point. Shikantaza removes this structure entirely, which means there is no external pressure — but also no foothold. The practitioner has to sit with pure sitting, without the organizing urgency of a question. Many practitioners find this more difficult, not less, because the mind without an object immediately begins generating its own agendas. Both practices require long, sustained commitment to reveal what they are pointing toward.

Did Dogen teach koans as well as shikantaza?

Dogen was deeply engaged with the koan tradition. The Shobogenzo contains extensive koan commentary — Dogen’s readings of cases from the Blue Cliff Record and other collections are among the most sophisticated in the literature. He was not opposed to koans; he was opposed to treating them as puzzles to be solved through clever interpretation rather than as direct occasions for investigation. The Soto school’s later minimization of koan practice does not fully represent Dogen’s own approach, which integrated shikantaza and koan study in a way that his successors sometimes simplified. Contemporary Soto teachers vary widely in how much koan instruction they incorporate.

What does Dogen mean by "body and mind falling away"?

The phrase “shinjin datsuraku” (身心脱舒, body-mind falling away) was Dogen’s description of his own experience under Rujing, and it becomes a recurring term in the Shobogenzo. It refers to a collapse of the ordinary sense of a bounded, located self that is separate from experience. Not death, not unconsciousness — more like the disappearance of the frame around the picture. What remains is not nothing; it is experience without the habitual overlay of “me, having this experience.” Dogen is careful not to present this as a permanent achievement or a specific altered state. It is, in his framework, the nature of shikantaza when shikantaza is fully realized: not a breakthrough to be held onto, but the fact of sitting itself, clearly seen.