Empty Practice

While the title I chose for this post might feel a little negative, it's the only way I can think of to accurately express something I've been coming to terms with with my own practice, and finding and feeling with what I hear and read of practice in others. Most people, and including myself though I'm starting to see it for what it is, approach practice with a goal, or an expectation. Even in a broader scope an intent. I came to practice to figure things out, to figure 'me' out. I think most of us have come to the mat some days to meditate 'on' something.

But it doesn't work like that.

Shikantaza, the 'method' if you will of zazen that I attempt to practice, is literally translated as 'just sitting'. While part and parcel with that is sitting with what comes up, we very often can bring our own baggage along to the mat. I've talked to people interested in sitting, who often speak of wanting to get something out of it. The sitting becoming a means to an end of some inner peace, or relaxation, or whathaveyou. The issue with this, is that there is still a subjective 'me', who will receive whatever this is that we imagine. Whatever comes up in the practice is then fed back into the concept of 'me', either this profound feeling of relation that 'I' experience, or a feeling of frustration that 'I' have not. Oddly enough, even with those who wish to experience a dropping away of this 'I', often express it still in terms of I, as if it's something for them to gain, or to lose.

To sit, I've been finding in my own practice, has to be in the end, just to sit. Not to 'get something out of it'. Not even to 'not get something out of it'. The practice is just for the practice. Sitting, just to sit. Because it's the action that matters. What comes up in the practice will come up, and that may be related to the self, or may not. But that is let go of. It is not meditated 'upon'. Come to the mat empty of intention. The Way isn't about getting anything from it. This is just sitting. Nothing more. And nothing less.