In the writings or stories of many of its masters, Zen appears as an austere discipline requiring years of asceticism in order to bring about satori or enlightenment. The enlightenment experience is usually said to occur, if at all, only after prolonged physical and mental training of shattering rigour. Bankei’s Zen is by contrast approachable and unfrightening, in many ways reminiscent of the gentler spontaneities of Taoism (cf. Lao Tzu). Whilst he attained his own satori only after ascetic practices which brought him close to death, Bankei came to believe that this method was mistaken and unnecessary, and in his own ministry advocated a much simpler way to the goal of Zen. He had a genuine concern not only for monks but for lay people of all ranks, and he took care to speak to them directly and with reference to their own concerns. Whilst his thought rests on the philosophy of the Mahayana, he keeps technicalities out of his discourse as far as possible, focusing instead on how to lead a daily life in the light of Zen teaching. Absent from his sermons or dharma talks are references to the sutras or koans or the lives of past masters; instead there is a sharp focus on the concerns of our daily lives, especially the ego, its attachments and emotions. Human nature has not changed since Bankei wrote, with the result that he addresses us as directly as his audience at the time.
Bankei was born in 1622 in Hamada, a village on the shore of the Inland Sea (present-day eastern Hyogo prefecture). His father, Sugawara Dosetsu, who died when Bankei was 10, was a physician of samurai rank. Bankei is reputed to have been sensitive but strong-willed to the point of waywardness as a child. As with Dogen and Hakuin, he showed religious sensibility early, not only in a profound aversion to death (and so a sense of ephemerality), but also in his reaction to his schooling. As was normal, at the age of 11 Bankei was set to learn by rote the Confucian classic The Great Learning (C: Ta-hsueh; J: Daigaku). He was puzzled by the statement in that work that ‘The way of great learning lies in clarifying Bright Virtue [C: ming-te]’, and was unable to obtain from his teachers a satisfactory statement of what Bright Virtue might be. He later interpreted this incident as the start of his religious quest, which was to occupy him for fourteen years.
Bankei’s dissatisfaction with his school manifested itself as repeated truancy, and in consequence his elder brother (head of the family after their father’s death) evicted him from the house. For some years Bankei lived in a hut erected for him by a relative, relentlessly searching after the nature of Bright Virtue. In 1638, his quest took him to the city of Ako and the Zen master Umpo Zenjo (1568–1653 CE). Here Bankei was ordained a monk and given the religious name Yotaku (Long Polishing [of the Mind Gem]) – the name Bankei he acquired later, in his early thirties. He stayed with Umpo for three years, pursuing a Zen programme based on zazen. Thereafter he spent many years in wandering (J: angya), a traditional part of Zen training, relentlessly practising seated meditation in conjunction with an ascetic way of life. This could not continue without detrimental physical effect, and he contracted tuberculosis. Bankei was almost at the point of death when after fourteen years of struggle he had a satori. He coughed up a mass of black phlegm which rolled down the wall of his hut:
Suddenly, just at that moment, it came to me. I realized what it was that had escaped me until now: All things are perfectly resolved in the Unborn. I realized too that what I had been doing all this time had been mistaken.1
His health improved at once, and he set out to find a teacher who could confirm his enlightenment.
This confirmation he finally received in 1651 from a Chinese Rinzai Zen master, Dosha Chogen (1600?–1661? CE. C: Tao-che Ch’ao yuan), who had lately arrived in Nagasaki. Dosha maintained that, although he had achieved satori, Bankei’s enlightenment was not complete. At first incredulous, Bankei submitted to further training and achieved a further satori in 1652. At this point Dosha accepted that his pupil’s training was complete. Between 1652 and 1657, Bankei moved between various retreats, with a handful of disciples of his own. This came to an end when he was officially made spiritual heir to his former master Umpo, and Bankei began the period of thirty-six years of ministry which occupied the rest of his life, becoming a famous and much sought-after teacher. He died in 1693 at the Ryumon-ji. He was asked shortly before death if, in traditional Zen manner, he would compose a death verse. He said
I’ve lived for seventy-two years. I’ve been teaching people for forty-five. What I’ve been telling you and others every day during that time is all my death verse. I’m not going to make another one now, before I die, just because everyone else does it.2
Having said this Bankei died, showing to the last the same spirt of independence in which he had lived.
At the centre of Bankei’s thought is the concept of the Unborn (J: fusho) or Buddha-mind (J: busshin). The Unborn is being-as-is or reality, a predicateless unity which is in a sense at the source of all things: ‘The Unborn is the origin of all and the beginning of all. There is no source apart from the Unborn and no beginning that is before the Unborn.’3 This is Bankei’s preferred way of stating the Zen doctrine that all sentient beings possess the Buddha-nature or Buddha-mind, the eternal, divisionless unity behind the appearance of the ordinary world of spatio-temporal individuals or samsara. Since the Unborn is an eternal unity, no concepts properly apply to it, since concepts are devices whereby we articulate experience by making divisions in it. Since reality is a unity, all conceptual thought and all appearance of division are unreal:
Thoughts arise temporarily in response to what you see and hear; they don’t have any real existence of their own. You must have faith that the original mind [i.e. Buddha-mind] that is realized and that which realizes the original mind are not different,4
i.e. because the Unborn is entirely undifferentiated.
Bankei had become aware of the Unborn in satori but he did not expect those who came to hear him and had not attained this rare experience to take what he had to say purely on trust. The Unborn, since it is the source of all, is constantly at work, and Bankei tries to give an insight into its nature by means of an analysis of perception. In ordinary perception, there is one element in the field of consciousness to which we pay special attention, and the rest of the field becomes peripheral. Thus, when Bankei’s audience was assembled before him, its members focused their attention on him; but this did not prevent them from discriminating unrelated sounds occurring outside the lecture hall, though without any effort of attention whatsoever. If a dog barked or a crow cawed, these discriminations would be registered effortlessly in consciousness. Now since the attention of the ego is concentrated on the speaker, whatever registers these peripheral perceptions, Bankei argues, is not the ego. The only other possibility is that this peripheral perception, effortless and accurate, is the working of the Buddha-mind: ‘You are able to hear and distinguish sounds when they do occur without consciously intending to hear them because you’re listening by means of Unborn Buddha-mind.’5 This example gives a hint of what it is like to be enlightened or, as Bankei prefers to say, ‘to live in the Unborn’.
The question of what method it is appropriate to use to free ourselves of the illusions of the surface ego and attain the life of the Unborn is one on which Bankei’s views are startling and original. He dismisses as mistaken the central recommendations of both the Soto and Rinzai schools of Zen. The Soto school, founded in Japan by Dogen, gives absolute primacy to single-minded intense sitting or zazen, which Dogen goes so far as to identify with enlightenment. This Bankei dismisses as a misunderstanding of zazen:
For hundreds of years now the Zen teaching in both China and Japan has been mistaken. People have thought, and still do, that enlightenment is obtained by doing zazen . . . They’re dead wrong. Zazen is another name for the primary mind. It signifies peaceful sitting. A peaceful mind. When sitting, it just sits. When doing kinhin [walking to relieve drowsiness], it just walks.6
Bankei is equally dismissive of the koan Zen practice of the Rinzai sect. The koans Bankei refers to as ‘old tools’, and dismisses those who practise ‘tool Zen’ as ‘eyeless bonzes’ who are ‘unable to teach directly . . . if they don’t have their implements to help them, they aren’t up to handling people’.7 The goal of the koan method is to paralyse rational thought by means of the insoluble koan, and this is referred to as ‘raising a great ball of doubt’ in the mind of the aspirant. This Bankei regards as a harmful form of training:
Instead of teaching [the aspirants] to live by the Unborn Buddha-mind, they start by forcing them to raise this ball of doubt any way they can. People who don’t have a doubt are now saddled with one. They’ve turned their Buddha-minds into ‘balls of doubt’. It’s absolutely wrong.8
There is a common error behind both these approaches, in Bankei’s view, and indeed behind any approach which claims to have possession of the method for Zen. The great masters of the past used many different methods to attain the Unborn in themselves and others: Bodhidharma gazed at a wall; Tokusan (782–865) used a staff, and Rinzai (d.867) used shouting and so on. These were all spontaneous, appropriate responses to the circumstances in which they found themselves at the time. To sanctify these as the only practices to be used in Zen is an understandable human tendency, but a mistaken one:
Each [technique] was different, and yet all were measures used in response to an occasion present at a certain time. They were the expedient means of good and able masters. Intrinsically, there is no fixed Dharma. If you try to give the Dharma a fixed interpretation, you merely blind your own eye.9
You ‘blind your own eye’ because by codifying past practice or seeking the answer in the sutras or the records of the masters you become more and not less wedded to fixed patterns of conceptual thought, thereby reinforcing the strength of the surface ego. This is exactly contrary to the goal of Zen. The role of the Zen master is not to take refuge in set rules or practices, but to confront each aspirant directly now, and so deal with each individual as to bring about life in the Unborn. Consistently with this view, Bankei refused to write down his own teachings, and forbade his attendants to do so: once written down, his views (he feared) would simply become another bogus ‘authority’, getting in the way of enlightenment.
While he abjures any special method, Bankei does have some suggestions as to how to approach enlightenment, closely linked with his descriptions of what it is like to be enlightened or ‘live in the Unborn’. The obstacle to enlightenment is the surface ego with its desires and its attachment to conceptual thought. This surface ego is constructed after birth, largely on the basis of the observation and imitation of others, and obscures the true Buddha-mind which (Bankei asserts) is our only innate characteristic. The Buddha-mind is not something we have to seek: we have it already (we are all Buddhas, as Bankei puts it). What we need to do is to allow it to operate naturally, and to do that we must neutralize the ego. This is not easy, and does require great effort. However, rather than direct the effort into asceticism, Bankei recommends that we try instead to rid ourselves of our attachment to the thoughts of the surface ego. The first step on this path is not to seek to direct one’s thoughts, to dwell on some and try to shun others by the use of the will. Instead, ‘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. Then illusions won’t appear.’10
The homeliness of Bankei’s language belies the profundity and radicality of the change in consciousness which this practice brings about. To live in the Unborn or to be enlightened is to live in such a way that the surface ego is dissipated or neutralized. Such a condition brings absolute peace and harmony: ‘In the Unborn, all things are perfectly resolved.’11 Consciousness becomes a mirror, merely reflecting what comes before it, without attachment and with the effortless, intuitive immediacy of which the peripheral perception (described above) gives a faint hint. Because there is no ego there is no attachment, and since there is no attachment there is no fear, even fear of death: ‘When the time comes for [an enlightened person’s] physical elements to disperse in death, he will give himself completely to the dispersal and die without regret or attachment.’12 Again those who live in the Unborn are aware of the futility of conceptual discrimination, unrelated as it is to the nature of being-as-is. It is this, Bankei points out, which lies behind the usually misunderstood Buddhist statement that samsara and nirvana are one and the same: they are the same because this distinction, like all distinctions, fails to correspond to any feature of reality.13 In reality there is only the Unborn, and neither samsara nor nirvana.
Equally unreal to the enlightened are any of the moral distinctions between good and evil over which human beings contend so fiercely: become wedded to those distinctions and, as Bankei often puts it, the Buddha-mind is transformed into a fighting spirit. Loving good and hating evil may seem to be the core of moral insight: Bankei comments that to adopt these attitudes reinforces the ego and so prevents enlightenment:
You think that good
Means hating what is bad
What’s bad is
The hating mind itself
Good, you say,
Means doing good
Bad indeed
The mind that says so!14
This does not mean that Bankei considered himself ‘above morality’, in the sense in which that phrase is sometimes used. Rather, to Bankei as to all mystics, moral rules or codes are necessary only for those who live in the world of the ego or samsara, and who need to check their impulses to selfishness. The enlightened are free of ego and so of selfish desires: in such a condition moral rules are simply otiose. Those living in the Unborn have what Kant termed a ‘holy will’: their spontaneous action is the ‘action’ of the One, or, in western vocabulary, is the will of God.
To live in the Unborn transforms every aspect of life and informs every type of human activity. To live in the Unborn or to be enlightened is by definition to be free of illusion, and to be free of illusion is to be always in possession of the truth:
Once you come to know without any doubt that the marvellous illuminative wisdom of the Unborn is the Buddha-mind and that the Buddha-mind puts all things in perfect order by means of the Unborn, then you can no longer be deluded or led astray by others.15
One important special case of this wisdom is insight into other people: ‘I never err in my judgement of people, nor does anyone else who has the eye of the Unborn. Our school has been called the “Clear-eyed” section for that reason’: when the eye to see others opens, ‘you can see straight into their hearts’.16 This is no mere claim to telepathy, but a strict consequence of Bankei’s metaphysics and epistemology: those who live in the Unborn are (as it were) in touch with the mind of God. To those in such a condition ignorance is impossible.
Not surprisingly, in view of this, the mode of action of the enlightened is also quite other than that of those who have not transcended the ego, whatever their profession. Bankei explained this to a devotee of the martial arts named Gesso, a master of the yari or Japanese lance. Those who live in the Unborn have no attachment to the ego and its discriminations and so exist in the state Zen writers refer to as ‘no-mind’. Whoever is in such a state does not, properly speaking, act at all, since action involves the intention of an individual ego: ‘In performing a movement, if you act with no-mind, the action will spring forth of itself.’17 If in combat it is necessary to deliberate over a course of action, you are already at some distance from the Unborn. For the Zen adept, combat, like any other form of action, is pure spontaneity: the arrow shoots itself, since there is no ‘I’ or ego left to shoot it. Such a condition is at the limits of describability in our ordinary language, designed to embody conceptual distinctions, as Bankei’s description of combat shows:
When, without thinking and without acting deliberately, you manifest the Unborn, you won’t have any fixed form. When you are without fixed form, no opponent will exist for you in the whole land. Not holding on to anything, not relying one-sidedly on anything, there is no ‘you’ and no ‘enemy’. Whatever comes you just respond, with no traces left behind.18
It is to be stressed that, although Bankei gives this description of enlightened action in a martial context, it is generalizable to all areas of behaviour.
Bankei’s thought fell into obscurity not long after his death, no doubt in part because it contradicts, in terms of recommendations over Zen method, the subsequently dominant ‘koan Zen’ of Hakuin. It has emerged again only in this century, thanks to the work of D.T. Suzuki (see pp. 193–198), who reedited the relevant texts (see Bibliography) and made a powerful case for regarding Bankei as one of the most original figures in the history of Japanese Zen. This philosophy is not without its difficulties, notably over whether any evidence for the Unborn is furnished by peripheral perception, though one should not lose sight of the fact that the dharma talks in which this argument is used repeatedly were designed to be heard by a lay audience. Elsewhere, Bankei’s works leave no room to doubt that they are the work of a true Zen master. His greatest strength is to give a clearer indication than most of what it is like to live in the state of enlightenment: fearless, entirely without confusion of mind, without attachment and – to end with the point Bankei returns to most often – with pure spontaneity. Eternal life belongs to those who live in a timeless present.
References to P. Haskel, Bankei Zen: Translations from the Record of Bankei, New York, Grove Weidenfeld, 1984, are given as H, and to N. Waddell, The Unborn: The Life and Teaching of Zen Master Bankei 1622– 1693, San Francisco, North Point Press, 1984, as W.
1 Ryumon-ji Sermons, W, p. 45 (the Ryumon-ji [‘Dragon Gate Temple’] was one of Bankei’s major temples during the latter part of his life). For reasons which will become clear, Bankei refused to write down any of his teachings, and equally refused to allow his disciples to do so either: fortunately, he was disobeyed, and the chief part of what is now called the Record of Bankei consists of verbatim notes of two sets of dharma talks or sermons delivered in 1690 at the Ryumon-ji and the Hoshinji (another of his temples). The only written items by Bankei himself are a few letters and a small number of poems in Chinese and Japanese.
2 W, p. 23. On Bankei’s life, cf. W pp. 1–23; H, Introduction and pp. 140–164.
3 Ryumon-ji Sermons, W, p. 36.
4 Letter to his [female] disciple Rintei (1630–1702), probably written in the early 1660s. H, p. 136.
5 Ryumon-ji Sermons, W, p. 36.
6 Butchi kosai zenji hogo (The Dharma Words of Zen Master Butchi Kosai [i.e. Bankei]), W, p. 122. This work, probably compiled around 1730, is a series of reminiscences by Bankei’s attendant Itsuzan Sonin, 1655–1734. Butchi kosai zenji (Zen Master of Beneficent Enlightened Wisdom) was a title bestowed on Bankei by the emperor, c. 1690.
7 Ryumon-ji Sermons, W., p. 57.
8 ibid.: not surprisingly, Bankei’s Zen was anathema to Hakuin, who systematized and revitalized the koan method.
9 Butchi kosai zenji hogo, W, pp. 126–127.
10 Ryumon-ji Sermons, W, p. 49. Bankei’s assertion that the Buddha-mind is our only innate characteristic involves him in a libertarian interpretation of the doctrine of karma with stern implications for our moral responsibility for our own characters. Some try to blame their bad traits on karma, but Bankei objects: ‘You don’t steal because of karma. Stealing itself is the karma’ (Ryumon-ji Sermons, W, p. 68). Our actions are the result of our decisions, and any decision can be changed. A very similar anti-innatism is present in Sartre’s existentialism, and leads logically to a similar view. In Sartre’s philosophy, we create our own nature (‘existence precedes essence’) and to try to shuffle off responsibility to ambient circumstance or inherited traits is what he calls ‘bad faith’. The logical patterns in these two philosophies are in this respect the same. On Sartre, cf. D. Collinson, Fifty Major Philosophers, London, Routledge, 1988, pp. 157 sqq.
11 op.cit., W, p. 34.
12 op.cit., W, p. 56: it will be clear that ‘life in the Unborn’ is the same state as is described in the Hindu tradition as moksa or release. It is eternal life here and now.
13 ibid.
14 Honshin no uta (Song of the Original Mind, 1653), H, p. 128.
15 Ryumon-ji Sermons, W, p. 48.
16 op.cit., pp. 47–48.
17 Instructions to Layman Gesso, H, p. 138.
18 op.cit., H, pp. 138–139.
Bankei wrote very little himself. The text which contains his words, The Record of Bankei, is made up chiefly of dharma talks or sermons recorded by his disciples.
the Buddha, Hui-neng, Dogen, Hakuin, Nishida, Suzuki
The key passages of The Record of Bankei are available in two English translations:
Haskel, P., Bankei Zen: Translations from the Record of Bankei, New York, Grove Weidenfeld, 1984
Waddell, N., The Unborn: The Life and Teaching of Zen Master Bankei 1622–1693, San Francisco, North Point Press, 1984
D.T. Suzuki issued a series of works by and about Bankei in Japanese from 1940 onwards, and it is to these works that Bankei owes his present growing stature in the history of Zen thought. Most important of these is Zen shiso-shi kenkyu, I (Studies in the History of Zen Thought, first series), Tokyo, 1943, translated by Norman Waddell as ‘Dogen, Hakuin, Bankei: three types of thought in Japanese Zen’, in The Eastern Buddhist, vol. IX (n.s.), no. 1,1976, pp. 1–17; no. 2, 1976, pp. 1–20.