Bankei Zen

by Peter Haskel

The Master addressed the assembly: “Just as always, every single day when I come out to talk, today too the crows go kaa-kaa, the sparrows, chuu-chuu, and I haven’t anything different to say myself. All the same, when you really acknowledge this one word [’unborn’],18 you’ll find everything is smoothly managed.

  “The proof of this is that, while all of you here are turned toward me, intent only on hearing my sermon and wondering, ‘What’s Bankei going to say?’ you aren’t trying either to hear or not to hear the cawing of the crows and the chirping of the sparrows out in back. But, even so, once they start to chirp and caw, you recognize and distinguish the crow’s kaa-kaa and the sparrow’s chuu-chuu. And it’s not only for crows and sparrows: everything here, when you perceive it with the Unborn, will be simultaneously distinguished, and you won’t overlook even one thing in one hundred or one thousand. In the meanwhile, if a gong rings outside the temple, you know it’s a gong, if a drum sounds, you know it’s a drum. Your distinguishing everything you see and hear like this, without producing a single thought, is the marvelously illuminating dynamic function, the Buddha Mind that is unborn.”

  Two-thirds is with the Unborn

  “If you divided the day into three parts, you’d find that, of all your activities from morning till night, two-thirds would be managed with the Unborn. Yet, without realizing this, you imagine you operate entirely through cleverness and discrimination—a serious error indeed! As for the remaining third, unable to abide in the Unborn, you change your Buddha Mind for thoughts, attaching to things that come your way, so that even right in this life you’re creating fighting demons, creating beasts, creating hungry ghosts, and when your life comes to a close, you fall right into the Three Evil Realms. To believe the Three Evil Realms exist after you die is a great mistake, a bit of far-fetched speculation!”

  Looking for enlightenment

  “To exert yourselves in religious practice, trying to produce enlightenment by doing religious practices and zazen, is all wrong too. There’s no difference between the mind of all the buddhas and the Buddha Mind of each one of you. But by wanting to realize enlightenment, you create a duality between the one who realizes enlightenment and what it is that’s being realized. When you cherish even the smallest desire to realize enlightenment, right away you leave behind the realm of the Unborn and go against the Buddha Mind. This Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately is one alone—not two, not three!”

  No delusion, no enlightenment

  “You people all imagine you’d become buddhas now for the first time. But the Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately is unborn, so it has no beginning and no end. There’s not even a hair’s breadth of anything you can call delusion. So get it squarely in your minds that there’s nothing arising from inside. The main thing is simply not getting involved with the world of externals.19 That which isn’t involved with the world of externals is the Buddha Mind, and since the Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, when you abide in this marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind just as it is, there’s no delusion, no enlightenment. Whether you’re making a fist or running about, it’s all the unborn functioning of the Buddha Mind. What’s more, if you’re the least bit in a rush to become a superior person right away, you’ll immediately go counter to the Unborn and leave it far behind. In the innate Buddha Mind, there’s neither joy, sorrow nor anger—nothing but the Buddha Mind itself, marvelously illuminating and distinguishing [all things].

  “So, when you distinguish the things that confront you in the world of externals—joy, sorrow, anger, or anything under the sun—it’s the dynamic function of the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind, the Buddha Mind you originally possess.”

  Water and ice

  “Since the Buddha Mind each of you has innately isn’t ‘created,’ it doesn’t contain even a speck of delusion. So anyone who says, ‘I’m deluded because I’m an unenlightened being’ is a terribly unfilial person slandering his own parents! In the Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately, the buddhas of the past and the people of the present are all one substance, with no difference between them. It’s just like the water of the ocean: In the depths of winter, the water freezes and turns to ice, assuming various forms—angular, or round; but when it melts, it’s all the one water of the ocean. When you realize the unborn nature of the Buddha Mind, that’s the water itself, just as it is, and you can freely dip your hands right in!”20

  Stopping thoughts

  “Since the Unborn Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, it hasn’t so much as a hair’s breadth of any selfish bias, so it adapts itself freely, and, as it encounters different sorts of circumstances, thoughts sporadically pop up. It’s all right so long as you simply don’t get involved with them; but if you do get involved with thoughts and go on developing them, you won’t be able to stop, and then you’ll obscure the marvelously illuminating [function] of the Buddha Mind and create delusions. On the other hand, since from the start the Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, readily illumining and distinguishing all things, when you hate and loathe those deluded thoughts that come up and try to stop them, you get caught up in stopping them and create a duality between the one who is doing the stopping and that which is being stopped. If you try to stop thought with thought, there will never be an end to it. It’s just like trying to wash away blood with blood. Even if you succeed in getting out the original blood, you’ll be left with the stain of the blood that came after.”

  The mirror

  “Since this Buddha Mind is unborn and marvelously illuminating, it’s a thousand, ten thousand times brighter than a mirror, and there’s nothing it doesn’t recognize and distinguish. With a mirror, no sooner do the forms of things pass before it, than their reflected images appear. Because, from the start, the mirror is without conscious intention, it hasn’t any thought of rejecting or not rejecting the forms of things that come before it, no thought to remove or not to remove those images it reflects. This is the function of the shining mirror. We can’t help comparing the marvelously illuminating function of the Buddha Mind to a mirror, so I’m simply making the comparison. But the mirror doesn’t even come close—the Buddha Mind is a thousand times, ten thousand times more wonderful!

  “With the dynamic function of the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind, every object that comes before your eyes is individually recognized and distinguished without your doing a thing. So, even though you’re not trying to do so, you recognize thousands of different impressions by sight or by sound. All these are things with form, but even those without form—the things in people’s hearts that can’t be seen—are precisely reflected. Even with the different sorts of faces you encounter, their good or evil thoughts are reflected by the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind.

  “Take the people assembled here, intent on listening to my talk: If someone happens to cough, you’re not making a deliberate effort to listen; but as soon as there’s coughing—even though you’re not trying either to hear it or not to hear it—you can distinguish it well enough to say whether that cough just now came from a man or a woman, an old person or a young one. Or take the case of someone whom you last saw twenty years before: You haven’t seen him since, and then, by chance, you meet on the street and, prompted by this encounter, the events of twenty years before at once spring clearly to mind. How different this is from the function of the mirror!”

  Fire is hot

  “This sort of thing, your recognizing and distinguishing instantly and spontaneously whatever you see and hear, is the dynamic function of the Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately, the Buddha Mind, unborn and marvelously illuminating.

  “As another example of the unborn function of the Buddha Mind: When you’re just there with no particular thought at all and someone puts a flame to your fingertips, you give a start, and, without thinking, automatically pull back your hand. This too is proof that the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind is unborn and perfectly manages [everything]. On the other hand, to t
hink, ‘That was a flame just now,’ and then realize, ‘It’s hot!’ and get angry with the fellow who burned you is to fall into the realm of secondary experience, deliberating after the fact.”

  Be stupid!

  “I tell my students and those of you coming regularly here to the temple: ‘Be stupid!’ Because you’ve got the dynamic function of the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind, even if you get rid of discriminative understanding, you won’t be foolish. So, all of you, from here on, be stupid! Even if you’re stupid, when you’re hungry, you’ll ask for something to eat, when you’re thirsty, you’ll ask for some tea; when it gets warm, you’ll put on thin, light clothes, and when it’s cold, you’ll put on more clothes. As far as your activities of today are concerned, you’re not lacking a thing!21

  “With people who are clever, there are sure to be a great many shortcomings. To have transcended those clever people whom all the world holds in great esteem is what’s meant by ‘stupidity.’ There’s really nothing wrong with being a blockhead!

  “When people say that someone is a clever fellow, I ask to meet him, and when I do and we have a chance to talk, it looks to me as if people in the world are praising an awful lot of foolishness. The fact is that those clever people acclaimed by the world are, from the start, deluded by their own cleverness. They distort the Buddha Mind and obscure its marvelously illuminating [dynamic function], considering other people as of no account, contradicting whatever they say, slighting and insulting them. Of course, since those they’re insulting are also amply endowed with the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind, they aren’t going to let themselves be slighted like that, so they get angry and answer right back, heedlessly pouring forth abuse. The true man’s ideal is to show kindness to those who are foolish and help those who are evil. To be recognized as a good man by the people of the world is precisely what makes being born a human being worthwhile. How can it be any good to earn yourself the reputation of a wicked person?

  “So when you go back to your homes and meet your old acquaintances, you should have them wondering about you all: ‘How did Bankei teach them Buddhism, anyway? Why, they’ve come back even more stupid than before they left!’

  “What I’m talking about isn’t the stupidity of stupidity and understanding. That which transcends stupidity and understanding is what I mean by stupidity!”

  Smoking

  “I know it’s something I’m telling you day after day, but don’t get into bad habits! Bad habits occur when you attach to things that others do. These things become ingrained so that you can’t get them out of your mind, and end up by forming bad habits.

  “Take smoking: Is there anyone who’s a smoker right from birth? No, indeed! Seeing others smoke, you imitate them, and then your smoking becomes ingrained and turns into a bad habit. Even when you’re in the presence of important persons, or in places where smoking isn’t allowed, you still have the urge to smoke, and all because you’ve got into the bad habit of being accustomed to smoke all the time. What’s more, when you’re thirsty and you smoke tobacco, it doesn’t quench your thirst; and when you’re starving, I’ve never heard that you could satisfy your hunger by smoking, either! Yet, despite the fact that it’s a completely worthless activity, once you happen to pick up smoking and make it a habit, it becomes something you just can’t stop. Through this one example, you can clearly understand every situation. So, even in small things, avoid creating bad habits and making yourself deluded.”

  No such thing as enlightenment

  A monk who had come from Sendai in Ōshū22 said: “Somewhere I seem to recall there being the expression, ‘The mind enslaved to physical form.’23 I’m anxious to accord with original mind at all times, but how should I practice in order to do this? Please instruct me.”

  The Master replied: “In my school, there’s no special form of instruction; and as for religious practice, there’s no particular way for doing that either. People fail to realize that right within themselves they’re fully endowed with the Buddha Mind they have from their parents innately, so they lose their freedom and talk about wanting to ‘accord with original mind.’ When you’ve realized that the Buddha Mind you have from your parents is unborn and marvelously illuminating, your hands and feet will function freely, and that’s the working of the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind which is unborn.

  “As proof that your Buddha Mind is unborn and freely functioning: When you came from Sendai having heard about Bankei, you traveled a long way; but as you stopped for the night here and there along the road, you weren’t thinking continuously about me. In the daytime, you looked around at all the sights, and if you had traveling companions, you talked to them. But even though you didn’t walk along thinking about our meeting and deliberately keeping it in mind at every step of the way, in the end you arrived here at my place. This is what’s meant by the Buddha Mind being unborn and perfectly managing things.

  “Now, the herons you see in Sendai are white, without having to be dyed that way; and the crows, without being dyed, are black. And right here too, even though when you see them you’re not deliberately trying to distinguish between the two, as soon as they appear before you, you know the white one’s a heron and the black one’s a crow. Without rousing a single thought, it’s all smoothly managed, isn’t it?. . . .”

  Then, the monk asked: “I find it impossible to control all my passions and delusions. What should I do? It’s simply proved too much for me, and I wish to receive your instruction.”

  The Master replied: “Your idea of wanting to control your passions and delusions is itself delusion, changing the Buddha Mind for delusion! Delusions don’t have any actual substance when they arise. In fact, they’re nothing but shadow figures, things you’ve seen and heard that pop up sporadically in response to circumstances.”

  Again, the monk questioned the Master: “What is enlightenment?”

  The Master replied: “There’s no such thing as enlightenment. It’s a completely extraneous pursuit. To realize conclusively that the Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately is unborn and marvelously illuminating—that’s enlightenment. Not realizing this makes you deluded. Since the Original Buddha Mind is unborn, it functions without thoughts of delusion or thoughts of wanting to be enlightened. As soon as you think of wanting to be enlightened, you leave the place of the Unborn and go counter to it. Because the Buddha Mind is unborn, it has no thoughts at all. Thoughts are the source of delusion. When thoughts are gone, delusion vanishes too. And once you’ve stopped being deluded, talking about wanting to attain ‘enlightenment’ certainly is useless, don’t you agree?”

  Abide in the Buddha Mind

  A monk asked: “My regular practice is to read the sutras and perform zazen. I feel these activities are meritorious and do them all the time. Should I now give them up as useless?”

  The Master replied: “Practicing zazen and reading the sutras is fine. Zazen is something that all monks who seek to draw the water of Shaka’s stream must practice and not despise. Daruma’s wall-gazing,24 Tokusan’s ridding himself of his sutras,25 Gutei’s raising his finger,26 Rinzai’s ‘katsu!’27—even though these vary according to the different circumstances at the time and the particular manner of the teacher involved, they all just have to do with experiencing for yourself the One Unborn Buddha Mind. You don’t mistake the sound of a gong for that of a drum, the sound of a crow for that of a sparrow, the sound of a sparrow for that of a crow—all the sounds you hear are individually recognized and distinguished without your missing a single one. It’s the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind that’s listening, the Buddha Mind which is unborn. The words of Rinzai’s Record28 and these things I’m telling you are exactly the same, there’s no difference between them. From here, the only question is whether or not you have faith. If you can’t abide in the Unborn Buddha Mind just as it is, and stir up different thoughts, regretting the past, worrying about the future, then, in just a day’s time, without even knowing it, turning and t
ransforming, you’ll have changed the Buddha Mind for passing thoughts, and you’ll never have a moment’s peace!

  “Now, you may be doing zazen and reading the sutras, but abide in the Buddha Mind that you have from your parents innately, just as it is, and realize the Unborn. If you practice zazen or read the sutras with some deliberate aim in mind, hoping to accumulate merit, or whatever, you’ll only be changing the Buddha Mind for merit, or changing it for zazen and sutras! That’s how it is, so all you’ve got to do is acknowledge with profound faith and realization that, without your producing a single thought or resorting to any cleverness or shrewdness, everything is individually recognized and distinguished of itself. And all because the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind is unborn and smoothly manages each and every thing.”

  When thoughts arise

  A novice of fourteen or fifteen asked: “When I practice zazen, thoughts seem to come up. What should I do about this?”

  The Master replied: “To distinguish and recognize each one of the different thoughts that arise—that’s none other than the dynamic function of the Buddha Mind. Because the Buddha Mind is unborn and marvelously illuminating as well, whatever things are retained in your mind rise to the surface. In the Buddha Mind, there aren’t any thoughts or ‘things’; so when you don’t get yourself involved with them, don’t worry about trying to get rid of them or stop them, you’ll just naturally accord with the Unborn Buddha Mind.”

  Letting things take care of themselves