Can shikantaza be a doorway, not a method?
I sit zazen (just sitting) and sometimes the instruction, “just sit,” turns into a little test: Am I empty enough? Am I not doing? Then the cushion becomes a scoreboard.
The Buddha’s teaching seems to point at direct knowing, not a style. Yet in Sōtō, shikantaza (just sitting) is often called the whole path. Is that a contradiction? If “just sitting” is a method, it can be graded. If it is not a method, what keeps it from becoming vague?
I’d be glad to hear views from people who read this differently: as a practice of care, as a metaphor, as a skill to be learned, or as something that only appears when striving stops.