Shikantaza — "Just Sitting"zen buddhismShikantaza has no object of concentration and no technique to perfect — sitting upright, eyes lowered, one simply sits, letting thoughts, sounds, and sensations arise and pass without following or suppressing any of them. It is traditionally described as practice with no gaining idea attached, deliberately removing the sense that this moment is only a means to some better one later. Long-term practitioners across Zen teaching literature commonly describe this as initially uncomfortable — the mind resists having nothing to do — before it becomes the point.What it's for

Lapsed Practitioner — Coming back after stopping is not treated here as a lapse of discipline. The difficulty is read as the idea that sitting is a technique one can be good or bad at — which makes every missed day evidence of failure and every return a fresh performance. In this practice there is nothing to attain and no standard to fall short of, which removes what made stopping feel final.