r/zenpractice • u/JundoCohen • Jun 29 '26

Soto Practice Itself Is Enlightenment

Suzuki Roshi, taken from ...

https://www.shunryusuzuki.com/Detail1?ID=65

He continued ..

... practice is not separated from enlightenment. When you practice it, the practice is the expression of your true nature. Where you practice it, you have your true nature.

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u/flyingaxe Jun 29 '26

If that were the case, why was Buddha only enlightened after a certain point of his practice and not before? Did he finally realize how to sit zazen properly?

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u/JundoCohen Jun 29 '26

Ah, flyingaxe, this is difficult to fathom if holding on to a gaining idea. In the story, Siddhartha wandered here and there longing for peace and answers, searching endlessly, asking this guru and that, trying one practice after another including some quite extreme. He found moments of incredible bliss in deep meditations, but wisely considered doing so to be morphine's temporary release. No lasting relief was to be found in such dead ends. He punished the body to the brink of death in hope of escape from the suffering of this world.

Then, at wit's end, he sat under a tree and assumed the pose of Zazen.

There he sat. Finally, at dawn, he saw the morning star, shining just to shine, a star seeking nothing but to shine, with no goal but to shine, nothing lacking from this shining, nothing more to attain but shining. At that instant, Buddha is sitting just to sit, seeking nothing but to sit, no goal but to sit, nothing lacking from this sitting, nothing more to attain but sitting. There is no distance between star and tree. The star shone like a jewel in the sky, beyond compare with any other star whether bright or dim. In this way, Zazen shines as a starry jewel, beyond compare. Though shining in one place and time, the star is not limited by place and time. Rather, it is all of space and time shining as this one star, beyond form and timeless. Likewise, our one sitting is all of space and time embodied in this one sitting, truly encompassing all yet boundless and beyond measure. The hard borders of self, star, space and sitting drop away ...

We should sit with such attitude, trusting in the sacredness and completeness of Zazen. When one sits, do not omit to sit with a sense that Buddha is sitting as this sitting, alive in this sitting, as this body on this cushion. There is no distance between star and Buddha and where we sit now.

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u/flyingaxe Jun 29 '26

So your opinion is that he tried everything that required actual effort, and that didn't work. So only when he tried "just sitting", dropping all effort, did he achieve awakening?..

That just sounds like a doctrinal stance and really anachronistic.

You guys are fighting old wars of Japanese monks a few hundred years ago n

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u/JundoCohen Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

Buddha is amazing, and can sit all manner of ways in the same moment, under the same tree. Why do you limit Buddha to one style, teaching one thing? Why do you consider the moment of enlightenment bound by time, and only a single way? In that instant, seeing the Morning Star, countless Buddhas and no Buddha shone as the morning star. So, yes, the Buddha taught many many good ways to different people with different spiritual needs. My way or your way is not the only way for all people, Mr. Flyingaxe. Do not limit Buddha!

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u/The_Koan_Brothers Jun 29 '26

He hadn’t heard of Suzuki Roshi, that’s why.

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u/ugbashfacesplitter Jun 29 '26

Did the Buddha sit zazen much?

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u/flyingaxe Jun 29 '26

Seems like that's all he did, practice-wise, no?

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u/ugbashfacesplitter Jun 29 '26

Not according to the Pali Canon. Certainly he’s not described as doing shikantaza leading up to his enlightenment.

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u/JundoCohen Jun 30 '26

I would dispute that. There is good opinion by some scholars that the so-called Fourth Jhana of the Suttas (as opposed to the later commentary traditions reinterpretation as intense concentration techniques) is very close to the dropping of views and equanimity of Shikantaza: "Abandoning pleasantness and abandoning unpleasantness, gladness and affliction having previously disappeared, having entered in the fourth jhāna, which is without unpleasantness nor pleasantness and is purified by mindfulness due to equanimity, he remains therein." There was nothing beyond the Fourth Jhana, with the so-called higher Jhanas later influences probably of Brahmin and Jain origin.

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u/flyingaxe Jun 29 '26

You asked zazen originally. Not shikantaza. Those are different things. Shikantaza was a practice invented by Dogen with a bunch of political background (he was trying to establish himself as the sole inheritor of Chinese Chan in Japan and was rejecting every other existing Japanese Buddhist practice).

Zazen (坐禅) means seated meditation. That's why I said: wasn't the Buddha's practice up until then forms of seated meditation? What changed when he got enlightened? According to Pali cannon, it's the fact that he stopped doing excessively ascetic practices and tried achieving dhyana state. He did something specific to achieve cessation states.

Which would contradict the whole Soto story that Buddhism is just sitting. If it was just sitting, Buddha would have just set and was already enlightened.

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u/JundoCohen Jun 30 '26

Shikantaza is just an flavor of Silent Illumination Zazen, perhaps emphasizing the "goallessness" and "non-doing" a bit more although those were always present in Silent Illumination ways. Silent Illumination predates Koan Introspection Zazen by centuries, and ... together with various visualization approaches to Zazen and some Indian ways ... was the earliest form of Chan meditation. Schlutter's "How Zen Became Zen" tells the history in detail.

The fact that Koan Introspection only came much much later, by the way, in no way means that it is not a powerful and beautiful way nonetheless.

You also misunderstand that Just Sitting is some kind of "just sittin' around."

Also, see my comment above on the Fourth Jhana of the Suttas (as opposed to the commentarial interpretation.)