For those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikantaza
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2026
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When I practiced Zen Buddhism formally, yes.
Though I still do open sitting for a few minutes to conclude whatever meditation I was doing. My nonduality teacher recommended it and I found it useful.
Edit: for those interested, The Way app from Henry Shukman is a decent intro to this. Though finding actual Zen Buddhist community is better.
For some reason I saw schizophrenia medication.
Now I can't stop seeing it
I wouldn't mind learning it, actually.
Here's my favorite thing on the subject. It's succinct.
I just took a look. It's certainly concise, considering autism in mind. I wonder if the author is autistic.
Did you click the links to where shrink and grow are described and so on? Because there's more there than just that first page.
I did do just that, wanting to understand what these links are about to quite an extent.
Do you like nylon zip-ties? I am presently quite infatuated. Pretty, durable, useful and cheap.
I happened to use the big ones for some things around my area, actually.
I perform isha kriya which seems similar but you have a yogi (in my case Sadhguru) repeat a phrase repeatedly for several minutes.
However the ending of it has about a 6 minute time of silence. Why do you ask?
Because I do shikantaza and I'm looking for peers to discuss a few points with.
I do it daily by myself and irregularily with a group of friends of mine (sort of weekly our timetables permitting). I've also participated in a few day sesshins once or twice a year for over ten years.
I do it too. Pleased to meet you.
Do you do concentration meditation (anapanasati, samatha...) in preparation for shikantaza? (I used to, now I don't).
Do you prefer the shikantaza state and find concentrative states distasteful? (I do somewhat)
Nice to meet you too.
I occasionally do counting/following breathing at start, especially if there is lots of "noise" in my head. Not sure that would count as actual anapanasati, but I guess that's a line drawn on water in the end.
I do not find concentrative states offputting as such, just maybe not all that useful for me in the long run.
I know what you mean by noise.
Concentration is of course the awesome power tool for handling that but shikantaza gets there eventually too.
The terms I've heard for that are "getting still", "getting silent" and "getting peaceful". I haven't come up with a better one.
Shikantaza is just such a wondrous scifi revolution. It's GENTLE.
Consider that in concentration you withdraw your awareness from the world. A shrinking. This is a blindness. And action taken while blind is .... well you get the idea.
But Shikantaza is an expanding illumination. The invisible becomes visible. It's a superior high too.
And that's just babble of course and I don't expect you to agree with me about their comparative virtues.