Bankei
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Bankei
and His Description of the Awakened State
Bankei and His Description of the Awakened State
In this file, I posted some sayings/poem/waka of Bankei, Zen Master, along
with my short comments. His expression
of Awakening is simple and direct. This
attracted many people in his time to listen to him and to follow his
teaching. His point in essence is, in my
interpretation: “We have the Buddha
(Unborn) mind as we are born with one - from the beginning-less beginning. For instance, you may hear the sound of crow
even if you are doing something else.
This mind that listens is the Buddha mind. So, in living your life, just be aware of this and not to lose it.
For example, you will lose it by unnecessarily generating doubts to
solve the koan or to practice sitting in order to gain the Buddha mind. Live with this mirror like mind, the Buddha mind.” - Kio Suzaki
(5/20/03)
Sayings of Bankei
(Selected from The Unborn, North Point Press)
Your self partiality is the root of all your illusions. There aren’t any
illusions when you don’t have this preference for yourself. (p.49)
The thoughts …. are caused by your past experiences and occur when things
you have seen and heard in the past are reflected on the Buddha mind. But thoughts originally have no real substance. So, if they are
reflected, you should just let them be reflected, and let them arise when they
arise. Don’t have
any thought to stop them. If they stop,
let them stop. Don’t
pay any attention to them. Leave them
alone. (p.49)
You have to
realize that your thoughts are ephemeral and unreal and, without either
clutching at them or rejecting them, just let them come and go of
themselves. They are like
images reflected in a mirror. A mirror
is clear and bright and reflects whatever is placed
before it. But the image does not remain
in the mirror. The Buddha mind is ten thousand times
brighter than any mirror and is marvelously illuminative besides. All thoughts vanish tracelessly
into its light. (p.117)
[T]he Buddha mind
… is unconcerned with either birth or death….. But most people are
unaware of that; they think everything is a result of their deliberation and
discrimination. That’s a great mistake. (p.120)
As soon as the
notion to .. attain the Way enter your mind, you’ve
gone astray from the Unborn. …Anyone who
tries to become enlightened thereby falls out of the Buddha mind… You are Buddha to begin with. (p.121)
The true unborn
has nothing to do with fundamental principles and it’s
beyond becoming or attaining. It is
simply being as you are. (p.123)
Enlightenment is
something that stands in contrast to “illusion.” As each person is a Buddha body just as he
is, he hasn’t a speck of illusion in him. What is it then that you want to enlighten? (p.123)
There aren’t any set of objectives in my Dharma, as there are
everywhere else. There’s
nothing set up to be enlightened about.
There is no commenting on koan, … Since there is nothing to grasp,
people can’t come to terms with it easily.
… They are hindered by
what they know and by their inclination to use their minds. (p.127-8)
((*
Simple direct and clear. Just practice, be, - live. When I read these the first time, I kept on
reading more and more, and kept on searching the answer elsewhere. But coming back to his words now - years
later, his words appear to be most refreshing. The
whole point of his saying is simple. It
is the same as many others pointed out, e.g., mindfulness, shikan
taza, everyday mind, mirror mind. I am hopeful that we get the sense out of it
as direct experience and practice/live accordingly from moment to moment! – Good luck, Kio))
- Here is the last quote:
The Dharma is
unfathomably deep. The Buddha wisdom is
unfathomably profound. The farther you
penetrate, the deeper it is. It’s for that reason I
have never in my life been able to bring myself to speak a few words and
confirm great enlightenment in someone.
(p.135)
Waka (Short Song) by Bankei
(p.180-
184 selected translation by myself from Sayings of Bankei
Zen Master - Iwanami)
Everybody’s thoughts on
Satori, is like a fight on the painted rice cake.
I simply live in the house of
emptiness, sleep alone using the world as the pillow.
Fallen off the bottom of the
old pail, there is yet a ring to view the three worlds*.
* Three
worlds: world of desire, events/materials, and intellect/spirit. (all three are
seen as illusionary). (Kegon)
Ignoring the Buddha within,
why do you look for the Dharma on paper?
Having the mind as it is found, immediately this body is all Buddha.
This mind being unborn and
undying, earth, water, fire and wind are just a temporary residence.
There is no samsara when the mind does not get
caught up, having nothing is living Buddha.
Knowing this world as dream,
there is nothing in this world that is worrisome or
unbearable.
Having the body conditioned
in the drifting world, it is your own loss to get into delusion.
Be aware of the monster that
creates the world of lie as if it is truth.
By having the body
conditioned by the five desires, spend the time accordingly.
Having gone through the
training of Buddha’s way, there is nothing that is different.
By not desiring this or that,
it is as if the whole world is my own.
Having accumulated the money
and avoiding the poor, have you forget the days when you had no money?
Thinking that hating bad is
good, yet it is that hating mind that is bad.
Aging year by year but not
this mind; as this is the unchanging mind ((Buddha
mind)).
Creating self is the work of demon, it leads to the suffering created by ourselves.
By thinking enlightened mind
as our own, thought and thought wrestle each other.
Rounding up the good and bad,
wrap them by the paper and throw it away.
Die and live in the world day
and night, you will find the whole world in your hand.
Wishing the heaven and hating
the hell, I received the suffering in this world.
Throwing life to gain money,
only to find that money is not needed.
Occasional
Comments
Finding that there were people who was very much saddened to hear the sickness of Bankei, “Those see me with the thoughts of life and death,
how can they know me?” (p.220)
(from
the book, The Unborn)
A group of a dozen lepers
came to see him. While the other priests
tried their best to avoid the visitors, Bankei gave
each of them some rice to eat out of his own bowl. His companions were profoundly ashamed. (p. 139)
From His
Sermon
* The
following is copied from kyusen's site but seems to
be originally taken from Unborn, by North Point Press.
You're probably all wondering what this unborn Buddha-mind
is like.
The Buddha-mind, unborn and illuminating all things with perfect clarity, is
like a mirror, standing clear and spotlessly polished. A
mirror, as you know, reflects anything that's before it. Whatever's
placed in front of it, the shape never fails to be reflected, though the mirror
has no idea or intention of doing so. And when the
object is taken away, the mirror doesn't reflect it any longer, though it makes
no decision to cease reflecting. ((There
is no trace.))
Now that's just how the unborn Buddha-mind works. You
see and hear all things, no matter what they are, although you haven't
generated a single thought to see or hear them, because of the vital working of
the unborn Buddha-mind each of you receives at birth.
Once you've got the principle of this Unborn fixed in your minds, you're Unborn
whether you're a man or a woman. You are always unborn. You go along living in the Buddha-mind quite unconscious
of being a man or woman.
Although you each have Buddha-minds, you've deprived yourselves of them because
of the mistaken way that you've been brought up. A
lifetime of learning the wrong things. You still have
a Buddha-mind, for all the bad things you've learned and the delusions your
thoughts create for you. You can't possibly lose it. It's just darkened by the illusions caused by your selfish
desires and partiality.
Perhaps a comparison will help make this clear.
The sun shines day after day without fail, yet if clouds appear to make the sky
overcast, it can't be seen. It still comes up in the
east every morning and goes down in the west. The only
difference is that you can't see it because it's hidden behind the clouds. The sun is your Buddha-mind, the clouds are your illusions. You are unaware of your Buddha-minds because they're
covered by illusions and can't be seen. But you never
lose them, not even when you go to sleep.
The unborn Buddha-mind that your mothers have given you is thus always there,
wonderfully clear and bright and illuminating.
==
Your unborn mind is the
Buddha mind itself, and it is unconcerned with either birth or death. As evidence that it is, when you look at
things, you are able to see and distinguish them all at once. And as you are doing
that, if a bird sings or bell tolls, or other noises or sounds occur, you hear
and recognize each of them too, even though you have not given rise to a single
thought to do so. Everything in your
life, from morning until night, proceeds in this same way, without your having
to depend upon thought or reflection. But most people are unaware of that; they think everything
is a result of their deliberation and discrimination. That's a great
mistake.
The mind of Buddhas and the minds of ordinary men are not two different
minds. Those who
strive earnestly in their practice because they want to attain satori, or to
discover their self-mind, are likewise greatly mistaken. Everyone who recites the Heart Sutra knows
that "the mind is unborn and undying." But they have not
sounded the source of the Unborn. They
still have the idea that they can find their way to the unborn mind and attain Buddhahood by using reason and discrimination. As soon as the notion to seek Buddhahood or to attain the Way enters your mind, you’ve gone astray from the Unborn - gone against what is
unborn in you.
* p. 120 The Unborn, North Point Press, 1984
-- Bankei Yotaku
(1622-1693)
The Japanese Rinzai priest Bankei
did not leave behind any written exposition of his Zen teaching and he gave
strict orders that no one else was to reduce it to writing.
But records were made nonetheless, his followers being unable to bear the
thought that their master's words and deeds should go unrecorded. So although much more was lost than they were able to
commit to paper, we must be grateful for the record they have preserved for us:
it is our sole means of learning about his Unborn Zen.
He delivered (his talks) in engagingly plain, everyday Japanese, the ordinary
language of the common man. They are popular in the
word's best sense. No one had brought Zen to the
ordinary person in such an informal and yet thoroughgoing manner.
-- from "The Unborn, The Life and Teaching of Zen
Master Bankei"-- translated by Norman Waddell
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