129. As legs and backs get sore from long sitting in zazen, we might start to question Dogen's claim that shikantaza is 'the dharma gate of great ease and joy'. Yet in spite of our doubts on this score we will hopefully find that in the practice of shikantaza we can and do learn to 'just-be' with whatever arises in the present moment of our ordinary heart-mind, whether it is a case of pain or bliss. In this practice of 'just-being' with whatever arises in the present moment we will find a special intimacy with the koan that says:
In the well that has not been dug,
Water is rippling from a spring that does not flow;
There someone with no shadow or form
Is drawing the water.
The practice of shikantaza is a matter of 'letting-be' whatever comes up in the present moment of our ordinary heart-mind, of 'letting-go' whatever obstructs our Zen practice in this moment, and 'being-with' our very ordinary selves and the ordinary selves of others, and with the ten thousand things, without attachment, as we come home to our own Buddha-nature, our ordinary heart-mind, where we have always been.
In the well that has not been dug,
Water is rippling from a spring that does not flow;
There someone with no shadow or form
Is drawing the water.
The practice of shikantaza is a matter of 'letting-be' whatever comes up in the present moment of our ordinary heart-mind, of 'letting-go' whatever obstructs our Zen practice in this moment, and 'being-with' our very ordinary selves and the ordinary selves of others, and with the ten thousand things, without attachment, as we come home to our own Buddha-nature, our ordinary heart-mind, where we have always been.
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