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Shikantaza is a Japanese translation of a Chinese term for zazen to refer to a practice called “Silent Illumination“. Silent illumination is the simultaneous practice of stillness and clarity, or quiescence and luminosity. It is similar to the practice of shamatha and vipashyana, as long as we don’t consider these sequential to each other, first practising shamatha and then practicing vipashyana. In silence there is illumination; in stillness, clarity is ever present. The practice of silent illumination can roughly be divided into three stages: concentrated mind, unified mind, and no-mind. Within each stage are infinite depths. You need not go through all the stages, nor are they necessarily sequential.
