Bankei

[RichardH]

Hi. I am reading Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei, and would like to now how folks here feel about his teaching of "Unborn Zen". I have had this book for some years, but am only now hearing what he as to say.

Thanks Daizan

ed.

[Jundo]

Hi Daizan,

After several years, I happened to re-read Bankei earlier this summer. He is another eccentric Zen Teacher in a long line of eccentric Zen Teachers with their own eccentric ways (a couple of those around this Sangha, for sure! )

I wrote the following when he was recently quoted in the Forum ...

==========================

Hi,

I recently re-read Bankei too, and felt that, although of a Rinzai heritage, he seemed to recommend Zazen of a surprisingly Shikantaza flavor. He was not opposed to Zazen. As he advises on page 59 here, it is not that he says that one should not sit Zazen, but rather that all of life is Zazen too without division on and off the cushion (much the same lesson as around this Sangha if I might say) ...

As for zazen, since za (sitting) is the Buddha Mind's sitting at ease, whilst Zen (meditation) is another name for Buddha Mind, the Buddha Mind's sitting at ease is what is meant by zazen. When you are abiding in the Unborn, all the time is zazen; zazen isn't just when you are practicing formal meditation.

more here on p 59, in which he says his folks should sit because, well, ya gotta do something with the time ...

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=DEuYPXTBlN8C&lpg=PP1&vq=zazen&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=zazen%20za%20sitting&f=false

As I said, I was surprised to see almost no mention of sitting Zazen focused on a Koan (in the Rinzai way), and much advice like this to a disciple (quoted in the OP) ...

Don’t hate the arising of thoughts or stop the thoughts that do arise; simply realize that our original mind, right from the start, is beyond thought, so that, no matter what, you never [actually] get involved with thoughts

more here ...

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=MJGVvysIRjIC&lpg=PT121&ots=RIC8k1nxUI&dq=bankei%20%22don't%20hate%20the%20arising%20of%20thoughts%22&pg=PT121#v=onepage&q=bankei%20%22don't%20hate%20the%20arising%20of%20thoughts%22&f=false

He says (page 96) that Zazen is to be Goalless, not a means to try to attain enlightenment [my bold]...

"All of you should realize the vital, functioning, living Buddha Mind! For several hundred years now, [people in] both China and Japan have misunderstood the Zen teaching, trying to attain enlightenment by doing zazen or trying to find 'the one who sees and hears,' all of which is a great mistake. Zazen is just another name for original mind, and means to sit in tranquility with a tranquil mind. When you do sitting meditation, you're simply sitting, just as you are; when you do walking meditation, you're walking, just as you are."
(Bankei Zen, p. 96, tr. Haskel)

"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!"
(Bankei Zen, p. 76, tr. Haskel)

Gassho, J

================================

Frankly, Bankei offered many insightful and important teachings, and he was a great Ancestor of ours in the lesson of bringing this Way into all of life, that Zazen or any Practice is All of Life and All of life is simply this Way. But he is not one of my favorite old dead guys, and I think sometimes he was just a little too much a casual "do whatever you feel, no need to Practice really, anything goes" type of popularizer preaching to lay folks who came to see him.

Yes, there is "no need to Practice" to someone realizing "Unborn Buddha Mind" in their life ... but the way to realize "Unborn Buddha Mind" is typically to do some Practice. It is a bit like saying "there is no need to wash the dirty dishes, just realize they are clean". Well, that is only half a lesson. Better to say "there is no need to wash the dirty dishes, they are already clean ... now wash them and clean them beyond clean vs. dirty". The first Teaching alone may leave people just with a sink full of dirty dishes!

Also, he said many Wise Teachings, but some dumb stuff (Granted, that is true for any Teacher, cause they are all just artists saying whatever inspires 'em in the moment). Just because he is dead, and people write books about him, doesn't mean he was all that good and talented all the time (he was to Zen what Andy Warhol was to art). Particularly, throughout his talks he repeatedly preaches the following as "proof of the Unborn", which I feel is pretty silly reasoning even for a Zen guy ...

When you all left your homes to come here to the temple, you did so precisely in order to hear me speak this way; you didn't come with any preconceived idea that if, while I was talking, there were sounds of dogs and birds, children or grown-ups some-where outside, you were deliberately going to try to hear them. Yet here in the meeting you recognize the noises of dogs and crows outside and the sounds of people talking;your eyes can distinguish red from white, and your nose tell good smells from bad. From the start, you had no deliberate intention of doing this, so you had no way to know which sounds, colors or smells you would encounter. But the fact that you recognize these things you didn't expect to see or hear shows you're seeing and hearing with the Unborn Buddha Mind. If outside the temple a dog barks, you know it's a dog; if a crow caws, you know it's a crow. Even though you're not deliberately trying to hear or not to hear these different sounds, you recognize each one the moment it appears, and this is proof of the Buddha Mind, unborn and marvelously illuminating.

Hmmm.

Gassho, J

[Jinyo]

I like the metaphor of washing the dirty dishes - it makes things sparkling clear

Did the term 'unborn mind' come specifically from Bankei? I find it a bit confusing and lacks the clarity of 'original mind'.

I suppose we could say that mind's original state is that of the unborn - but then it doesn't function any further than as a metaphor - which isn't all that helpful because in real time - the time of our living, born, existential state - original mind is here - fully existant - moment to moment.

The more I sit the less I'm concerned about what might be interpreted as transcendental views. In time. out of time. beyond time - none of this can be easily expressed (much less proven) by words.

I think I now experience Buddha mind/original mind as peace in action/action in peace. Thoroughly unborn/born.

Gassho

Willow

[Tiwala]

My only source of his teachings are extremely biased (Hakuin's Wild Ivy and Essential Teachings) so I can't really say.

Nevertheless, from what I gather, Hakuin criticises him mostly because he sees the result of his teaching as a bunch of lazy monks.

Here's some stuff he says:

These people, true to their words, do not do a single thing. They engage in no act of religious practice; they don't develop a shred of wisdom. They just waste their lives dozing idly away like comatose badgers, useless to their contemporaries while they live, completely forgotten after they die. They aren't capable of leaving behind even a syllable of their own to repay the profound debt they owe to the Buddha patriarchs.

Gassho,
Ben

[Kyonin]

Could it be that the Unborn teaching was Bankei's way to express that we need to tear down the wall between the self and no-self?

I read this a long time ago and I didn't quite understand. Maybe it's time to give it another go...

Gassho,

Kyonin

[Jundo]

My only source of his teachings are extremely biased (Hakuin's Wild Ivy and Essential Teachings) so I can't really say.

Nevertheless, from what I gather, Hakuin criticises him mostly because he sees the result of his teaching as a bunch of lazy monks.

Here's some stuff he says:

These people, true to their words, do not do a single thing. They engage in no act of religious practice; they don't develop a shred of wisdom. They just waste their lives dozing idly away like comatose badgers, useless to their contemporaries while they live, completely forgotten after they die. They aren't capable of leaving behind even a syllable of their own to repay the profound debt they owe to the Buddha patriarchs.

Gassho,
Ben

Yes, well, Hakuin (and Dogen too) were never masters of the soft spoken understatement when it came to commenting on some Zen Master they didn't care for. So, I would take comments like "do not do a single thing" and "comatose badgers" with a grain of salt and a large dose of exaggeration. It probably means that Hakuin wanted to say that they were just not as "intense" as Hakuin wanted to imply that Hakuin was (and Dogen about Dogen).

People think that all Buddhists go running around like soft spoken flowers mouthing loving and gentle speech. Baloney. Some of those guys (even some folks today) can take about each other with the same rhetorical flourishes of a bunch of Tea Partiers bad mouthing Obama!

There is certainly some grain of truth to what Hakuin was complaining about, and Bankei seems like he was pretty loose in what he asked of folks by the standards of most Zen guys.

Gassho, J

[Tiwala]

I-I have a confession to make! I really enjoy how Hakuin writes precisely because of his imagery... I'm not entirely sure if I actually value reading him more because of his teachings or the way he writes! It's just so entertaining.

Here's another one that I burst out laughing at,

Even should there be such a thing as . . . reaching a state where the great illumination is released by means of dead sitting and silent illumination . . . people are so involved in the numerous duties of their household affairs that they have scarcely a moment in which to practice concentrated meditation. What they do then is to plead illness and, neglecting their duties and casting aside responsibilities for their family affairs, they shut themselves up in a room for several days, lock the door, arrange several cushions in a pile, set up a stick of incense, and proceed to sit. Yet, because they are exhausted by ordinary worldly cares, they sit in meditation for one minute and fall asleep for a hundred, and during the little bit of meditation that they manage to accomplish, their minds are beset by countless delusions.

[Jundo]

Unborn Mind ... Original Mind ...

This is where the Zen Guy hits everybody with a stick ... not to think of "it" as some "thing somewhere over there".

Unborn ... cause "beginnings and endings" are measures of that which is as beginningless and endless as a timeless ticking clock, handless hands moving round in circles. Every baby's birth and old man's death is just this, a "Mobius Strip-less" flowing into all directions, no borders of "inside" or "out", "above" or "below", "on" or "off" the strip-less strip.

A stage-less stage ... a dance, a dream, with dancers coming "on and off" that stage ... yet stage and dance go on and on and on ... back stage and center stage just One ... dancers just dancers because they dance (how could there be a dancer who did not dance? How could there be a dance without dancers?) ... dancers just the dance brought to life, the stage brought to life. Stage-Dancers-Dance just the Dance. We are this Dance called "Original Mind".

Original ...　cause precisely this that and the other thing ... and our eyes too. To paraphrase and slightly amend Meister Eckhart ...

The eye through which I see Mind is the same eye through which Mind sees me, Mind seeing Mind ... Mind minding Mind

Ocean waves looking for the water and the sea ... rising and falling, just the endless flowing flowing flowing.

When one burps or scratches the nose, Original Mind burps and itches.

Not a "thing" because to say it is a "thing" means it is to be compared to "something else" or "no thing". Yet it is every "thing" and "everything", cause nothing left out. It is what is when we drop categories of "something that is 'something' cause it ain't nothing" and "nothing that's 'nothing' cause not something" ... of "being" that only "is" when we are "not not being". It is this thing, that thing, your thing, my thing, the thing's thing, happy things and sad things, all things of dreams, no thing in particular, and whatever supports all things ... Emptiness, the Great Interflowing Fullness that's Anything But Empty.

Mind ... cause only one limited way to think of "mind" is as what's going on between your ears. Yet, if the eye and brain see a mountain and the moon in the sky, and if the mountain and the eye and brain are all made of atoms forged in distant stars long ago, can we not say that mountains and moon and stars and eye and brain are also "mind" all together? Could there be "sight" if nothing to see? Would the mountains be lifeless and lusterless if nobody to see them? "Mind" is a dance of interflowing seer-seeing-seen-sight-sentience-source of eyes and light. I do not mean that "Mind" need be some "Cosmic Consciousness" (though Mind may be so). Rather, to have a "mind" is a dance of beyond the eyes and brain-thoughts behind the eyes, within the eyes and out ... So, what happens if we stop measuring "inside" from "out"?

"Mind" is inside the eye, outside the eye, behind the eye, beyond the eye and the eye itself ... and all that leads to that. All the Great Mobius Stripless ... My Thing, Your Thing, Everything, Nothing.

Somebody hit me with a stick!

Gassho, J

[Jundo]

I-I have a confession to make! I really enjoy how Hakuin writes precisely because of his imagery... I'm not entirely sure if I actually value reading him more because of his teachings or the way he writes! It's just so entertaining.

Here's another one that I burst out laughing at,

Even should there be such a thing as . . . reaching a state where the great illumination is released by means of dead sitting and silent illumination . . . people are so involved in the numerous duties of their household affairs that they have scarcely a moment in which to practice concentrated meditation. What they do then is to plead illness and, neglecting their duties and casting aside responsibilities for their family affairs, they shut themselves up in a room for several days, lock the door, arrange several cushions in a pile, set up a stick of incense, and proceed to sit. Yet, because they are exhausted by ordinary worldly cares, they sit in meditation for one minute and fall asleep for a hundred, and during the little bit of meditation that they manage to accomplish, their minds are beset by countless delusions.

Hakuin was also a great supporter of Lay Practice, with many lay followers who he always encouraged and led to Awakening ...

http://books.google.co.jp/books?id=L0CeQ1o4NpIC&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=hakuin+%22lay+followers%22&source=bl&ots=gQP88ekAXv&sig=lc81nDhe51ziC38AqhM2mG7psq4&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YtFjUq_vE4XrlAWzlYDwBA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=hakuin%20%22lay%20followers%22&f=false

I would say, like Bankei, that "life" is not something we leave to enter Zen Practice. Rather, one realizes that all of life is Zen Practice, both sitting and getting up from sitting. Furthermore, we become "free" in life by realizing that there was never any need to flee, that what is being searched for was here all along ... in family affairs and in the sitting room. Thus, we sit. We sit and realize "no place in need of fleeing".

Gassho, J

[Tiwala]

The monkey is reaching
For the moon in the water.
Until death overtakes him
He’ll never give up.
If he’d let go the branch and
Disappear in the deep pool,
The whole world would shine
With dazzling pureness.
-Old Man Hakuin

http://shambhalasun.com/sunspace/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/2012-09-Poem-212x300.jpg

Ben, the annoying parrot.

[RichardH]

Thank you for your response, Jundo. You must have the same translation as me, because the passage on distinguishing the sound of dogs and birds is what had me scratching my head. Thought maybe he was... well not sure. The term unborn is beautiful. It suggests there isn't merely nothing, while not throwing a bone to chase.

Gassho Richard

[Kokuu]

Did the term 'unborn mind' come specifically from Bankei? I find it a bit confusing and lacks the clarity of 'original mind'

In Tibetan lojong teachings there is the instruction 'Examine the nature of unborn awareness'. I have always found this to be a powerful phrase, as unborn suggests that awareness is not just something limited to now but has always been.

As Richard says above, it points to the fact there is not nothing and yet...

Gassho
Andy

[MyoHo]

Hi guys,

Interesting stuff as always! The word "Unborn" alone was enough to ponder and sit with until toppling over on the spot one day, lol.

That which can not not do, does without doing and we can only marvel at it in the dream, try to make sense and live and no live with the infinite possibilities of what comes forth but also always has been and will remain "unborn". You came from it, I came from it and all will return at this very moment, in the end right now.

It's where all that is or is not, jumps into existence, without a trace of origin and vanishes back without leaving a trace.
Deep emptiness filled to the brim, where everything exists beyond existence, poised to spring into being. It is the moment a decision is made, Tao as the source of all what manifests itself in this dream reality. Empty, holding all forms and possibilities, chances and the course of events in an endless string of bright, not this and not that. It comes and goes back eventually but was never there to begin with. The silence after one inhales to speak or shout, the moment the wheel of fortune makes its final "click", the falling glass just before it hits the floor or the moment the bell sounds in the Zendo. Like an empty canvas in the working space of a skilled painter. As long as the first stroke has not been made, all is possible.

Well, that's my take on it. Just trying to express what cant be expressed. Not a poet ,I know

Gassho

Enkyo

[sittingzen]

The eye through which I see Mind is the same eye through which Mind sees me, Mind seeing Mind ... Mind minding Mind

I could read this over, and over, and over.....

Deep Gassho,

Lu

[Ricky Ramos]

Wonderful and deep words. Life as living Zen and Zazen must go together, as you, Jundo, stated. I could;ve never been able to live a spiritual liife if I did not practice it, or spend time practicing. Like excercising, I could try to run a marathon by practicing by myself, but the right trainer and the right training helps me to do it better.