Is 'just sitting' a post-enlightment practice?

[tao.te.kat]

Pure shikantaza is impossible prior kensho. It was know even for Bodhidharma so long ago (you can find it).

 

Bodhidharma spoke of this in his Essay on the Dharma pulse:

If someone without kensho tries constantly to make his thoughts free and unattached, he commits a great transgression against the Dharma and is a great fool to boot. He winds up in the passive indifference of empty emptiness, no more able to distinguish good from bad than a drunken man. If you want to put the Dharma of non- activity into practice, you must bring an end to all your thought-attachments by breaking through into kensho. Unless you have kensho, you can never expect to achieve a state of non-doing.

 

Prior to kensho you do Zazen Which is not exactly the same. But they're not so different. So there's some confussion.

 

Prior to the turning over described in the Lankavatara sutra (paravritti aka kensho in japanese) zazen is like self-liberation of thoughts in Tibet. You stay there, no point of focus, but attentive, if you get lost in a fantasy, you detect it, let it go and go back to be attentive.

 

After kensho, shikantaza is just sitting because you shouldnt self-liberate, you just stay in front of thoughts when they appear, and you just stay when they dont appear. You are attentive and that's all. Because, as Bodhidharma said you're free and unattached to thoughts. So you achieve a state of "only-sitting" or non-doing.

Edited April 25 by tao.te.kat