Shikantaza: Just Sitting

Dogen’s objectless meditation — how to sit, what to expect, and honest evidence

What is shikantaza and how do you practice Dogen’s "just sitting" method?

Shikantaza ("just this sitting") is the central meditation practice of Soto Zen, formulated by Dogen Zenji (1200–1253). It is objectless, open-awareness meditation: you sit with alert presence, not focusing on any particular object and not trying to achieve any state. Dogen taught that shikantaza is not a means to enlightenment but the expression of it — sitting is itself the practice. Benefits overlap with studied open-monitoring meditation, though shikantaza’s specific claims are experiential rather than clinically validated.

Dogen Zenji brought Chan (Zen) from China to Japan and distilled it into one instruction: just sit. Where Rinzai Zen gives you a koan, Soto Zen gives you a cushion and tells you that wholehearted sitting is itself the complete expression of Buddha-nature. That simplicity is also its difficulty: without an object to return to, the practitioner must learn to rest in pure open awareness rather than drifting into thought or blanking out. Below are the core practices of shikantaza, each with the mechanism behind it and an honest account of where evidence exists.