The inner life
Shikantaza
Direct answer
Shikantaza: Shikantaza, Japanese for just sitting, is the Soto Zen form of zazen in which the sitter holds no object, question or goal and simply sits awake.
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At a glance
- Also called
- just sitting, just sitting zen, Soto Zen sitting
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Zazen, Zen, Koan, Kinhin
Shikantaza, Japanese for just sitting, is the Soto Zen form of zazen in which the sitter holds no object, question or goal and simply sits awake.
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What does shikantaza mean?
Shikantaza is usually translated as just sitting or nothing but sitting. It is zazen without a support: no counting of breaths, no koan, no mantra. The sitter keeps an upright posture and stays alert to whatever is present, neither following thoughts nor pushing them out.
In the Soto school of Zen it is the central practice. Its great teacher, Dogen, held that sitting in this way is not a means to awakening but its expression, a view summed up in his teaching that practice and realisation are one. The Rinzai school, by contrast, gives its students koans to work on.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Meditation.
What sets Shikantaza apart
Shikantaza is defined by the absence of a method. Other meditations give the mind a task; here the only instruction that can be checked is the posture. Dogen made a doctrine of this: sitting is not a road to becoming a Buddha, it is what a Buddha does, so there is nothing to gain from it. That is why Soto teachers speak of sitting with no gaining idea, and why the practice is often described as the hardest form of zazen to do honestly.
- Language: Japanese: shikan, nothing but; ta, an intensifier; za, sitting
- School: Soto Zen, the Japanese heir of Chinese Caodong
- Key teacher: Eihei Dogen, 1200 to 1253
- Early manual: Fukanzazengi, 1227
- Chinese forerunner: silent illumination (mozhao), Hongzhi Zhengjue, twelfth century
- Usual posture: cross-legged, eyes half open, facing a wall
Often mistaken for something else: Koan practice gives the sitter a question to hold; shikantaza gives nothing to hold and treats the sitting itself as complete.
The story behind Shikantaza
Dogen (1200 to 1253) learned the practice in China from the Caodong master Tiantong Rujing and brought it to Japan in 1227, the year he wrote his short manual Fukanzazengi. It continues the silent illumination taught a century earlier by the Chinese master Hongzhi Zhengjue. Soto priests such as Shunryu Suzuki carried it to the West in the twentieth century.
Why Shikantaza matters
Shikantaza names a kind of meditation with no technique to perform, which answers the common belief that meditating always means concentrating on something.
How to read Shikantaza
Zen students use the word for objectless sitting, and teachers use it to tell Soto practice apart from koan work.
Shikantaza in practice: an example
A sitter faces the wall for forty minutes; a car passes, a knee aches, a plan forms and fades, and nothing is done about any of it.
Where readings of Shikantaza go wrong
Doing nothing on purpose is harder than it sounds, and Soto teachers say the practice is learned in a hall with a teacher, not from a description.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- just sitting, shikantaza meditation, shikantaza meaning, just sitting zen, Soto Zen sitting
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What does shikantaza mean?
Just sitting. The Japanese word joins shikan, nothing but, with ta, an intensifier, and za, to sit. It names seated Zen meditation with no object of concentration.
How is shikantaza different from zazen?
Zazen is the general word for seated Zen meditation. Shikantaza is one way of doing it, without breath counting or koans, and is the form the Soto school emphasises.
What do you do with thoughts in shikantaza?
Nothing in particular. Thoughts are allowed to arise and pass without being followed or suppressed. Dogen's manual calls this stance non-thinking, as distinct from both thinking and trying not to think.
