Shikantaza has a couple of versions. There are those who teach it as a body-centred practice, where the posture is the most important. There are those who teach it as a concentration practice where one focuses on the breath and the abdomen. There are those who teach it as practice-enlightenment where there is neither grasping nor releasing of appearances. And there are likely a dozen other forms as well.
If you focus on the body/breath, keep your attention there. If your practice is enlightenment, you have nothing to do with thoughts, they leave on their own anyway.
There is actually a simple logic at work here. If you concentrate on breath/body, you don't meddle with thoughts and other sensory inputs, but let them come and go. If you are stable in your recognition that there is nothing to grasp, you have left behind the intention to fixate on anything, in other words, dropped body and mind.
Sometimes there are thoughts, sometimes there are no thoughts. To favour one or the other is falling into the extremes of existence and annihilation. That's why the practice is neither-thinking / no-thought - if a thought comes, OK; if no thought comes, OK.
There are the ideas to do something and not to do something. It is of course quite normal, but then one should be clear about how to do that properly, and that means learning the Dharma. If you want to go with the ideal form of zazen, there is nothing to do at all, no state to accomplish, and no experience to get rid of. As you sit you have to immediately recognise that all the six types of appearances are such, there is nothing to improve or decrease, and there is no one to do or know anything either.
Just sitting does not mean sitting still. It means not conceptualising sitting. You cannot sit still anyway, unless you're a corpse.
The practice is the experience confirming that all things (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily feelings, thoughts) are such, that is, they appear and disappear on their own. There is no one controlling or perceiving them, as they are all dependently originated ephemeral, illusory instances of experience. That is why there is nothing at all that can be grasped, as attachment itself is a conceptual fabrication of a subject grasping an object, while if you actually look at the experience itself there are no subjects nor objects.
If you focus on the body/breath, keep your attention there. If your practice is enlightenment, you have nothing to do with thoughts, they leave on their own anyway.
There is actually a simple logic at work here. If you concentrate on breath/body, you don't meddle with thoughts and other sensory inputs, but let them come and go. If you are stable in your recognition that there is nothing to grasp, you have left behind the intention to fixate on anything, in other words, dropped body and mind.
Sometimes there are thoughts, sometimes there are no thoughts. To favour one or the other is falling into the extremes of existence and annihilation. That's why the practice is neither-thinking / no-thought - if a thought comes, OK; if no thought comes, OK.
There are the ideas to do something and not to do something. It is of course quite normal, but then one should be clear about how to do that properly, and that means learning the Dharma. If you want to go with the ideal form of zazen, there is nothing to do at all, no state to accomplish, and no experience to get rid of. As you sit you have to immediately recognise that all the six types of appearances are such, there is nothing to improve or decrease, and there is no one to do or know anything either.
Just sitting does not mean sitting still. It means not conceptualising sitting. You cannot sit still anyway, unless you're a corpse.
The practice is the experience confirming that all things (sights, sounds, smells, tastes, bodily feelings, thoughts) are such, that is, they appear and disappear on their own. There is no one controlling or perceiving them, as they are all dependently originated ephemeral, illusory instances of experience. That is why there is nothing at all that can be grasped, as attachment itself is a conceptual fabrication of a subject grasping an object, while if you actually look at the experience itself there are no subjects nor objects.
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