6
Dōgen, Hakuin, Bankei: Three Types of Thought in Japanese Zen
In addition to Suzuki’s numerous works that were written in English for a non-Japanese readership, he published a wide variety of books, articles, critical editions of Buddhist texts, and popular pieces for newspapers in Japanese. From the late 1930s until the end of the Pacific War, as he was producing the various volumes of Essays in Zen Buddhism and his other major works in English on Zen, Suzuki also worked on three volumes in Japanese, “Studies in the History of Zen Thought” (Zen shisōshi kenkyū), in which he focused on key Chinese and Japanese figures in the development of Zen, including Bodhidharma, Huineng, Shenhui, Dōgen, Hakuin, and Bankei, while also discussing the history of koan Zen in Japan as well as a variety of Dunhuang Chan texts. Underlying these essays was a drive to see whether there was an intellectual and spiritual unity to the Zen tradition that tied Suzuki’s own experience of koan practice with his teachers, Imakita and Sōen, to the earliest presentations of the tradition in the Dunhuang Chan materials.
In this essay we see the coalescence of two major areas of research and writing for Suzuki during the Pacific War years. In such publications as Japanese Spirituality (Nihonteki reisei), Suzuki argued that Buddhism was consonant with and the foundation of a distinctive Japanese spirituality, while highlighting such figures as Shinran and Bankei as among the figures giving the purest expression to that spirituality. At the same time, as noted above, Suzuki was exploring the history of Zen thought in China and Japan, in the process producing several editions of the sayings of Bankei, who, prior to Suzuki’s research, was a relatively marginal figure in Japanese Zen studies. Here Suzuki compares Bankei to two other major figures in the development of Japanese Zen, Dōgen and Hakuin, pronouncing that Bankei, of the three, is the most distinctively Japanese with regard to his approach to Zen. In most of his writings on Zen, Suzuki devotes almost exclusive attention to the Rinzai tradition, so this essay is also remarkable for its sustained attention to Dōgen, one of the seminal figures in the history of the Japanese Sōtō denomination.
This essay was originally published in Japanese in Zen shisōshi kenkyū—Daiichi, published by Iwanami Shoten, Tokyo, in 1943. The book was later republished in the Suzuki Daisetsu zenshū, 1:1–344. The essay translated here is found on pages 57–83. The English version published here originally was published in The Eastern Buddhist (New Series) 9, no. 1 (1976): 1–17; and 9, no. 2 (1976): 1–20. The translator of the essay, Norman Waddell, has substantially revised his earlier translation of the essay for this volume and has updated some of the references in the footnotes as well.
• • •
When we attempt to fully appreciate the special character of Bankei’s Zen, taking into consideration its significance and place in the history of Zen thought, especially within the context of Japanese Zen, it becomes necessary for us to distinguish between what may be called the three types of thought in Japanese Zen. By “types of thought” I mean the attitude typically taken in interpreting enlightenment, which constitutes the basic reality of Zen. Differences in this basic attitude are also differences in the way of evaluating enlightenment in terms of the thought implied in it, and, accordingly, in the way of expressing it. This also comes to involve differences in the methods or techniques for realizing enlightenment as well as differences with regard to how enlightenment is construed.
These various differences may be said to fall into three general types, which are exemplified in the Zen of Dōgen (1200–1253), Hakuin (1689–1768), and Bankei (1623–1693). Dōgen Zen linked shikan taza, “just sitting” Zen, and Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō Zen to the Zen of the Chinese Caodong (Sōtō) tradition. It is unique to Dōgen. Hakuin Zen systematized traditional Rinzai Zen koan practice, turning it into the Japanese type of Rinzai Zen that we see today. Bankei Zen, with the two characters, Fu-shō, “Unborn,” succeeded in bringing Zen experience into the realm of general thought, and without neglecting in doing that to maintain the working of Zen’s direct and intuitive nature within that experience.
I think that the distinctive character of Bankei’s Unborn Zen can be seen with greater clarity by comparing it with Dōgen Zen and Hakuin Zen. The basic principles of Unborn Zen are well described in the following excerpts from a compilation of Bankei’s sermons made by his disciple Itsuzan.1
Bankei spoke to an assembly of people, “Each of you must realize your vitally functioning Buddha-mind. For hundreds of years now in both China and Japan the Zen Dharma has been misunderstood, with people thinking that enlightenment comes by doing zazen, or trying to discover a ‘master of seeing and hearing.’ They are seriously mistaken. Zazen is another name for the fundamental mind. It means peaceful sitting, peaceful mind. When you sit, it is just sitting, when you do kinhin, it is just kinhin. You could not preach Buddhist Dharma even though you had all heaven and earth for a mouth. Those who preach the Buddhist Dharma, by and large, only blind others. There is not a speck of illusion in the mind your mother imparted to you when she gave birth to you. To say because you’re unaware of this, ‘I’m deluded because I’m an ordinary unenlightened man’—that is not even fair to your parents. Buddhas of the past and people of the present day are all of one body. There’s nothing setting them apart. When you draw water from the ocean and pour it into different buckets, it will freeze solid in very cold weather, its shape varying according to the shape of the bucket, large, small, square, or round, that it is in. But when it thaws, it is all the same ocean water.
“You are unaware that you’re a living, acting Buddha, and you think that you become a Buddha by accumulating merit from religious practice and attaining enlightenment. But that’s a fatal mistake, and because of it you wander from one darkness into another. Isn’t that sad!
“As for me, I don’t preach about Buddhism. I just give my comments and criticism on the mistaken notions you people have.”
A visiting priest said, “I practice with the aim to becoming enlightened. What about that?”
Bankei said, “Enlightenment is something that stands in opposition to illusion. Each person is already the Buddha-body, without a speck of illusion. What are you going to enlighten out?”
“That would mean being a fool,” the priest replied. “In the past, Bodhidharma, and after him many Zen masters all attained the great Dharma in enlightenment.”
Bankei said, “As a fool, a Tathagata saves people from suffering.2 He neither comes nor goes. He remains just as he was born and doesn’t obscure his mind. All past generations of Buddhist patriarchs were just like that.”
The word “Unborn” does not appear here, but that is the significance of the expressions “vital Buddha-mind,” “original mind,” and “Buddha-body.” Bankei’s disciple Itsuzan, who compiled the collection in which it appears, was not deliberately avoiding the word, for it often appears elsewhere in his compilation:
Clenching your fist, hurrying around too, it is all Unborn. The moment you have even the slightest thought of becoming a good person, or get it into your head that you have to hurry up and begin seeking something, you are acting counter to the Unborn.
At the place of the Unborn there’s no difference between such things as being born and not being born. Everyone speaks about the “principle” of the Unborn, but there are no principles in the Unborn. If so much as a principle existed, it wouldn’t be Unborn. And there’s no need for you to become Unborn. The true Unborn is having nothing to do with principles and being just as you are.
Each of these comments contains the central idea of Bankei Zen. This in fact is the true confirmation of satori itself. In all these quotations Bankei would seem at first glance to be denying satori or enlightenment. However, when he says Tathagatas and Zen patriarchs work to save sentient beings like fools, he is not rejecting Enlightenment as such; he is rejecting—admonishing—this specific questioner’s attitude with regard to Enlightenment. All he has to do is just to remain from the first in Enlightenment, as the Unborn. Yet he tries to make Enlightenment into something else, hoping by some special method he can get possession of it—that, Bankei stresses, is wrong. Make Enlightenment relative by placing it in opposition to illusion and it loses its absolute nature and ceases to be Enlightenment. Since Enlightenment is, as such, the Unborn, its basic nature of suchness, “as-it-is-ness” (sono-mama), must be preserved and maintained to the very end. That is why what Bankei calls “suchness” is not something relative; it is fundamentally and originally absolute. In the presence of this absoluteness nothing to be termed illusion can be found—there is “not a speck of illusion,” Bankei says. People with their mistaken notions create what is originally nonexistent, and from that the attaining or “opening” of Enlightenment is said to occur. In reality, Enlightenment is not something that you open up for the first time; it is always there just as it is from the start. This is the Unborn. It is around this central idea that Bankei Zen unfolds and develops. It is with an eye to this very point that Bankei says, “I preach neither the Buddha Dharma nor Zen.”
There is no question that in this sense Bankei’s Unborn Zen is “sono-mama (being-just-as-it-is) Zen.”3 Sono-mama (as-it-is-ness) is where all religions ultimately find peace of mind. It is a place of absolute passivity. It appears in a variety of forms because of differences in the paths people take to reach it, and in the way in which they then enjoy things “as they are.”
In the thought of a great Zen figure such as Rinzai with his so-called total activity (zentai sayū) Zen, one might not expect to find even a trace of the passivity and nonactivity that characterize sono-mama Zen. Yet an impartial reading of the following passages from the Records of Rinzai (Rinzai roku) demonstrates otherwise. To be sure, Rinzai’s words have an intensity and vehemence that make us sense the commandingly brusque and martial “Shogun Rinzai.” Nevertheless, what flows under the surface is sono-mama Zen—the state of absolute passivity reflected in Rinzai’s famous words, “the noble man who does nothing whatever.” Sono-mama is identical with “no-mindedness.” Nonetheless, those who have not deeply penetrated this reality tend to regard sono-mama in a merely spatial, static, negative sense, neglecting to see its temporality and its dynamic and positive side.
Here are excerpts from Rinzai’s sermons:
I don’t have a thing to give you. All I do is cure your ills and take your chains off. You men of the Way, try to come forward here independent of all things. I’d like to have a real exchange with you. But I’ve been waiting five, no, ten years now. There hasn’t been a single man yet. All I’ve had are ghosts hanging around the tree leaves and in the grass, disembodied spirits in the woods and bamboo groves, fox-spooks, biting madly into so many heaps of filth. . . .
I’m telling you, there isn’t any buddha, no holy teaching, no practicing, no realizing! What are you doing looking around in neighbors’ houses! You mole-eyed monks, putting another head on over your own! What do you lack in yourselves? You men of the Way, what you’re making use of here right now is the very thing that makes a buddha or patriarch. But you don’t believe that. You go on seeking outwardly. Make no mistake about it. There isn’t any dharma outside you. There’s nothing inside you that you can lay your hands on either. You grasp at the words from my mouth. What you should do is stop what you’re doing. Do nothing. . . .
As far as I’m concerned, there isn’t much to do. Just be ordinary. Put on your robes. Eat your rice. Pass the time doing nothing. You come here from all over, wanting to seek buddha, wanting to seek Dharma, wanting to seek emancipation, wanting to seek to get out of the three realms. Fools! When you’ve left the three realms, where are you going to go? “Buddha,” “patriarch”—those are names that will only fetter you in chains of praise!
This too can be termed a form of sono-mama Zen. In any case, just as shrimp cannot get free of the basket no matter how much they jump, all of us live and die at the place of the absolute Unborn. But when this is brought forth onto the field of thought, it assumes many diverse aspects. If so, where is it that the orientations of Unborn Zen and Dōgen Zen may be said to differ?
On the one hand Bankei’s Unborn Zen rejects all relative understanding of satori, and on the other rejects any fixed and ready-made system of koan Zen as well. On this score it might be said to strongly resemble the emphasis of Dōgen’s Zen.
What, then, is the significance of Dōgen’s shikan taza (“just sitting”)? How does “just sitting” differ from sono-mama Zen? Bankei’s Unborn Zen does indeed call to mind views expressed by Dōgen.
I shall first examine the so-called taza-ism of Dōgen. Doing this should result in a clearer understanding of Unborn Zen as well. A discussion of specific points of difference between Unborn Zen and koan Zen will be taken up in a later chapter.
The shikan taza espoused by Dōgen emphasizes teachings transmitted to him by his master Rujing while he was studying at Mount Tiantong in China. In the sixth part of Dōgen’s Eihei kōroku (Comprehensive Records of Eihei Dōgen)4 is a lecture that begins,
The distinguishing characteristic of the entire family of buddhas and patriarchs is negotiation of the Way in zazen. My late master Tiantong (Rujing) said, “Sitting cross-legged is the teaching of wise old buddhas. Commitment to Zen (sanzen) is body-and-mind dropping off. There is no need for offering incense, paying homage, reciting nembutsu, penance disciplines, or sutra reading. It is attained only in shikan taza (just sitting).”
While “just sitting,” “cross-legged sitting,” “zazen” all refer to the same zazen, “zazen” is used in at least two senses; there is, moreover, no particular uniformity in the way they are used, nothing to tell the reader which meaning is intended in a particular case. In Shōbōgenzō as well, unless we read very closely, things can become very confusing. In passages like the following, reference is obviously to zazen as such, “body-and-mind dropping off”: “Buddha-patriarchs transmit zazen from one to another” (SBGZ zazenshin); “For one lifetime or ten thousand, from beginning to end, without leaving the monastery—just sitting cross-legged day and night” (SBGZ sanmai ō zanmai).5 In the case of the previous quotation from the Eihei kōroku, however, no distinction between zazen, cross-legged sitting, commitment to Zen (sanzen), and just sitting is clearly drawn. On the other hand, in such statements as the following, zazen signifies the technique or method of intense seeking in negotiating the Way: “Sit, and by that means attain body-and-mind dropping off” (Bendōwa); “The primary concern for Zen monks above all else is to engage in shikan taza” (Shōbōgenzō zuimonki);6 “Clarify the great matter by doing shikan taza” (Shōbōgenzō zuimonki).
On the plane of the identity (or nonduality) of practice and realization, both zazen as the means (practice) and zazen as the end (realization) may be called nondual. When the object is to explain them, however, it is best to have this difference well defined. The conflict between Kanna Zen and Silent Illumination Zen7 arises in large measure from a failure to observe this distinction. We can say that “taza-ism” places the emphasis on philosophy, overlooking the psychological or practical aspect. The nonduality of “practice and realization are nondual” belongs to philosophy. This nonduality alone is not enough. Once we begin to speak of practice or of realization, we must give sufficient thought to each of them.
In the Zazenshin written by the Chinese Caodong priest Wanshi Shōgaku and in Dōgen’s own Shōbōgenzō zazenshin as well, the writers are expounding their understandings of Buddhist truth. They make no mention of shikan taza, “just sitting.” They simply present accounts of the experience of body-and-mind dropping off that is attained through sitting. In Shōbōgenzō zazenshin we see Dōgen mixing at will, in a confusing way, the two senses in which he understands zazen, using them randomly as he seems to be striking out at everything around:
Many of those who serve at present as temple masters in the various monasteries in the land of the great Song (China) do not know zazen or learn it. Even if some of them have clarified their understanding of zazen, they are few. Of course in the temples there are prescribed times set aside for zazen. Doing zazen is made the proper duty for all, from head priests down through the ranks of the brotherhood. In the counseling and guidance of Zen students as well, zazen practice is encouraged. But, in spite of this, head priests who understand zazen are rare.
An examination of the meanings that zazen has in this quotation shows that:
1. “Many of those who serve at present as temple masters in the various monasteries in the land of the Song (China) do not know zazen or learn it.” This could hardly mean they do not know or learn how to do zazen correctly in its formal sense. We may suppose that in China monks were engaged in cross-legged sitting in all the monasteries in conformity with traditional practice. So I gather that here Dōgen means that they knew nothing about the proper mental state for zazen, the purpose and significance of zazen, or the introspective investigation of its spiritual implications, and that they made no effort to learn about such things.”
2. “. . . there are of course prescribed times set aside for zazen” is apparently a reference to the regular practice of sitting in the Meditation Hall.
3. “. . . doing zazen is made the proper duty for all.” I presume this means that doing the zazen described in 2 is the primary responsibility of Zen priests, and also that it is the practice all students of Zen are encouraged to perform. As such, this is the same sense as “for zazen a quiet place is suitable,” “exert effort solely in the practice of zazen,” and “all buddhas and all patriarchs, when doing zazen” in Shōbōgenzō zazengi.8
4. “But in spite of this, head priests who understand zazen are rare.” This is the inner content of zazen: with all but a very few exceptions, head priests are ignorant of where the original aim and essential significance of zazen lie. Perhaps we may even regard this as being spoken from the standpoint of the nonduality of practice and realization; namely, head priests do not know that zazen is what Wanshi’s Zazenshin9 (see below) terms “the essential dynamic moment of all buddhas and all patriarchs.” This is the zazen Dōgen describes with these words: “If the Buddha Dharma is not transmitted, neither is zazen. What is passed from master to disciple in the authentic personal transmission is the quintessence of this zazen alone” (SBGZ zazenshin).
Dōgen goes on to deliver a withering blast at the category of brief writings on zazen known as Zazenshin and Zazenmei that were being used in Chinese Zen.10
Therefore, although in the past a few eminent priests have written Zazenmei (Inscriptions on Zazen), Zazengi (Principles of Zazen), and Zazenshin (Exhortations for Zazen), nothing is to be gained by reading any of the Zazenmei or Zazenshin, and the Zazengi are unclear as to actual zazen practice itself. These works were written by people who knew nothing about zazen and who had not received it in authentic personal transmission. Examples of these works are the Zazenshin in the Keitoku dentō roku and the Zazenmei in the Katai futō roku.
The words mei (inscription) and shin (exhortation) are similar in significance,11 but gi (principles), as is seen in Dōgen’s own Fukanzazengi (Universal Promotion of the Principles of Zazen), refers to a work concerned chiefly with the practicer’s deportment in zazen, how to do zazen. In the quotation above, the statement “The Zazengi are unclear as to the actual practice of zazen” seems to be an independent sentence; hence the following: “They were written by people who knew nothing about zazen,” which presumably refers to the authors of all three categories, Zazenmei, Zazenshin, and Zazengi. Zazen in this context must probably be understood in the meaning of item 4 above. We may therefore suppose that Dōgen is contending that none of those throughout the past who have spoken about zazen has had any understanding of the zazen of body-and-mind dropping off, the essential and pivotal moment for every buddha and patriarch, that they have all been ignorant of the zazen in which one is “sitting undisturbed in self-joyous samadhi” (Bendōwa).
In the following quotation from Shōbōgenzō zazenshin we come upon the words kufū (intense seeking) and taza (sitting). What is their relation to zazen? Kufū is sometimes used in combination with bendō, kufū bendō, “negotiating the Way in intense seeking.” Again, since Dōgen states that sanzen (commitment to Zen) is zazen, kufū can also denote sanzen. In some places taza seems to connote regulation-style zazen; in others, it does not.
It is to be pitied that those priests pass their whole lifetime in Zen monasteries and yet do not for a single sitting engage in intense seeking (kufū). They themselves are never one with their sitting (taza). Their seeking does not encounter their self. This is not because their zazen dislikes their body-and-mind; it is because they do not aspire to true intense seeking and in their impulsiveness they become confused and muddled. What they have compiled in their works tells merely about “going back to the origin,” “returning to the source,” about the vain business of thought-cessation and mind-tranquilization. They do not reach the level of Tendai meditation practices or the views of the highest Bodhisattva stages. How much less could they personally transmit the authentic zazen of the buddha-patriarchs! Compilers of Zen records in the Song period were mistaken to include such works in their collections.12 Zen practicers of later times should lay them aside without reading them.
This leads us to conclude that Dōgen believed that works such as the Zazenshin (Exhortation to Zazen) by the Chinese priest Goun in the Keitoku dentō roku collection do not transmit authentic zazen. They teach nothing but thought-cessation, mind-tranquillization, and so forth. On the other hand, he holds up the Zazenshin of the Chinese Zen master Wanshi as a rare utterance that expresses the genuine truth of zazen. His praise of Wanshi and his work is unbounded:
This is the Buddha-patriarchs. It is an exhortation to zazen. A direct utterance that conveys the truth. It is a single radiant light illumining the Dharma-world inside and out. It is the buddha-patriarch of all buddha-patriarchs new and old. Buddhas of the past and buddhas who came after them all go forward thanks to this exhortation. Ancient patriarchs and patriarchs of today all appear from this exhortation.
Then, raising up Wanshi’s work a notch higher, he says:
The “exhortation” of Wanshi’s zazen exhortation is an actual manifesting of the great activity. It is the dignified deportment beyond the world of sound or form. It is the features had at the time when your parents were not yet born. It is “You’d better not disparage the buddhas and patriarchs!” It is “You could still lose your person and life.” It is a three-foot head and a two-inch neck. (Shōbōgenzō zazenshin)
Readers without experience in reading the sayings in the Zen records will not be able to make very much out of such comments. Briefly, he is saying that Wanshi’s Zazenshin presents in the clearest, most thoroughgoing terms what it is that makes buddha-patriarchs what they are, which is prior to any appearance in sound or form, word or object, which exists even prior to the differentiation of heaven and earth, but which, nevertheless, does not lie outside one’s deportment in the world of forms and appearances where the eyes are horizontal and nose is vertical. This, Dōgen declares, is zazen. Learning this zazen is Zen.
Zazen therefore is both original realization and wondrous practice: “As it is already realization in practice, realization is endless; as it is practice in realization, practice is beginningless. . . . If we cast off the wondrous practice, original realization fills our hands; if we transcend original realization, wondrous practice permeates our body” (Bendōwa). This is the zazen Wanshi teaches in Zazenshin. Dōgen describes it in Bendōwa as follows:
Because of this, when even just one person, at one time, sits in zazen, he becomes, imperceptibly, one with each and all of the myriad things and permeates completely all time, so that within the limitless universe throughout past, future, and present, he is performing the eternal and ceaseless work of guiding beings to Enlightenment. It is, for each and every thing, one and the same undifferentiated practice and undifferentiated realization. Only this is not limited to the practice of sitting alone; the sound that issues from the striking of Emptiness is an endless and wondrous voice that resounds before and after the fall of the hammer. And this is not all the practice of zazen does. Each and every thing is, in its original aspect, provided original practice—it cannot be measured or comprehended.
You must know that if all the incalculable buddhas in the ten directions, as countless as are the sands of the Ganges, mustered all their might together and by means of buddha-wisdom attempted to measure and know the total merit of the zazen of a single person, they would be unable to do it.
Dōgen always attempts to preach Zen from a twofold standpoint. On the one hand, he is a great thinker; on the other, he is a devout, passionate, solemn, practical, conscientious man of religion and student of Zen. As a thinker, he puts zazen on a plane where practice and realization are nondual. But as a practical man of Zen, he treats zazen as the art of intensely seeking and negotiating the Way. The following passage appears at the end of the fifth part of Shōbōgenzō zuimonki:
Although one may seem to gain some understanding through examining koans and model cases, in fact such practices cause you to move away from the Way of the buddha-patriarchs. Passing your time sitting erect, without gaining or realizing anything at all—that in itself is the patriarchs’ Way [this is the reason for the term “Silent Illumination” Zen]. It is true that those of the past encouraged both the study of model cases and sitting, but it was above all the practice of sitting they encouraged. And although there are people in whom enlightenment opened through the study of model cases, even there the enlightenment occurred on the merit of their sitting. Truly, the merit hinges on the sitting.13
Dōgen does not reject enlightenment; he merely places a stronger emphasis on zazen. He says, “among the basic essentials in the study of the Way zazen is first and foremost” (Zuimonki). Here he is clearly preaching practice apart from realization, and that, moreover, is also a feature of his teaching. Realization is enlightenment, satori. Practice is sitting, zazen, taza. To see the identity of practice and realization and the nonduality of dhyana and prajna not just in sitting erect and vainly passing one’s time but in “sitting erect” alone—that is in effect Dōgen’s philosophic thought wedded to his Zen intuition.
At the same time, he has a strong tendency to take the standpoint of nonduality as a peak from which to gaze over at the endless variety of ways leading down. Although we find him talking in Bendōwa about “making the myriad dharmas exist in realization and practicing that one total Reality on the way leading forward from that realization”—the core truth implied in negotiating the Way of intense seeking—in Shōbogenzō zazenshin, contemplation of the silent illumination type is conspicuously evident, and the interrelationship between things, the “thinking of nonthinking,” tends to be hidden. Although he writes of “fish swimming along in perfect ease” and “fish swimming like fish,” greater than this sense of activity is the resonance given to the silent, contemplative aspect seen in phrases such as “the water clear to the very bottom,” “the clarity of the water penetrating into the earth.”14 This feeling is especially pronounced in the parts preceding the last two sentences about fish and birds at the end of Wanshi’s Zazenshin, where the composition seems conceptually to draw attention to the aspect of identity (soku) alone.
It was from the richness of the speculative element in Dōgen Zen that the ninety-five fascicle Shōbōgenzō came into being. Although thorough historical and scientific study is needed to determine which parts of it are his and which are later additions, at any rate, it is a fact that the difficulties of Shōbōgenzō have often left his descendants in the Sōtō sect weeping at the crossroads. When we read Dōgen’s discourses in the Eihei kōroku, Zen records composed in Chinese, they do not seem much different from others of their type in Zen tradition, but when we read Shōbōgenzō, written in Japanese, we confront him using the Japanese idiom with uninhibited mastery. The rhetoric and the hermeneutic are something extraordinary and altogether unprecedented that astounds us. We see in this a great difference from the direction Rinzai Zen historically has taken in applying its practice.
For reference, here is the complete text of Wanshi’s Zazenshin (Zazen Exhortation), followed by Dōgen’s commentary on it in Shōbōgenzō zazenshin. First, Wanshi:
The dynamic moment of all buddhas, the momentous dynamic essence of all patriarchs, knows without encountering things and illuminates without confronting conditions. As the knowing takes place without encountering, knowledge is naturally subtle. As the illuminating occurs without confronting conditions, it is naturally wondrous. Since the knowing is inherently subtle, there is not the slightest discriminative thought. As the illuminating is naturally wondrous, there is not the least indicative sign. If there is no discriminative thought whatever, the knowing is beyond comparison or comprehension. If there is not the least indicative sign, the illuminating is ungraspable yet perfectly clear. Water is clear to the very bottom, fish swim along in perfect ease. The sky is infinitely vast, the birds flying far, far away.
With skillful interplay of parallelisms, Wanshi has produced a piece of finely wrought literature. The substance, however, is in the passage “knows without encountering things, illuminates without confronting conditions.” “Knowing” is absolute knowing, nondiscriminative wisdom. “Illuminating” is the state of things before heaven and earth reveal “any indicative sign.” “Things” refers to discrimination, “conditions” to differences or distinctions. It is an example of the logic of soku-hi.15 Dōgen expounds on Wanshi’s meaning with a rhetoric that is typical of his unique Japanese style.
“Knows without encountering things.” “Knows” is not perceiving [discrimination]. Perceiving is an inferior capability. It is not cognition. Cognition is a mental function. Because of this, knowing does not “encounter” events or things [is not objective knowing]. Not-encountering-things is, as such, knowing. Do not regard this as omniscience or universal knowing. It must not be limited to personal, inborn knowing. Not-encountering-things is “when the bright one appears, strike the bright one; when the dark one arrives, strike the dark one.” It is “Sit off your mother-born hide.”16
“Illuminates without confronting conditions.” This illumination is not reflective illumination. It is not spiritual illumination. “Not-confronting-conditions” is in itself this illumination. It is not that illumination becomes conditions; for conditions are, as such, illumination. “Not-confronting” means “never being concealed throughout the whole world,” “not presenting oneself even when the world is broken asunder.” It is subtle and wondrous, and it is the reciprocity of nonreciprocity.
Dōgen’s outlook always has this characteristic of reciprocity of nonreciprocity (ego-fuego). Nonreciprocity implies a duality, but by having the two relate reciprocally he makes this duality nonduality. One is not treated apart from the other; the whole is said to be both reciprocal and nonreciprocal. Or, taking advantage of the grammatical possibilities inherent in the Chinese, he simply puts them in juxtaposition as “reciprocity/nonreciprocity,” leaving it to each reader’s understanding to furnish the logical connection between the two concepts. Fish swimming deep in the water like fish, birds soaring up into the heavens like birds—this is the “real and immediate manifestation of truth” (genjō kōan); this is shikan taza (just sitting); this is the “zazen transmitted personally between one Buddha-patriarch and another.”17
The zazen Dōgen speaks of as the personal transmission of buddhas and patriarchs—shikan taza—can be said to possess features that closely resemble Bankei’s Unborn Zen. Yet the odor of Silent Illumination that pervades Dōgen’s kind of sitting is not easily removed. This tendency, which Hakuin described as “sitting still and silent like a withered tree and holding on to the death,” is readily discernible in words such as these in Dōgen’s Eihei kakun (Precepts of Eihei Dōgen):18
Zen master Daibai Hōjō . . . went to the highest peak of Plum Mountain. Living on pine tree flowers and wearing lotus leaves for clothing, he practiced zazen day and night for the rest of his life, nearly thirty years. . . . He therefore attained an excellent achievement in the Buddha Way. From this we can understand that zazen is the deportment that comes with Enlightenment. Enlightenment is just zazen, nothing else.
Unborn Zen, in contrast to this, is always active. “All is perfectly well taken care of in the Unborn,” he says. The Unborn is not found in the nonthinking of single-minded zazen practice. It reveals itself fully on all occasions of our daily life, whether we are sitting, standing, walking, or lying down. It makes do with “you yourself as you are today.” Bankei’s Zen is our everyday mind, just as it is. A faint shadow of inactivity and stagnation is discernible in Dōgen’s Zen. He is a great thinker, the author of a magisterial collection—ninety-five books of unique Zen writing. Bankei is like the common citizen, more down to earth, more ordinary, less articulate. Yet he musters all the deepest profundities of the buddhas and patriarchs, which he embodies fully in himself, and he brings them all together in the one word “Unborn.” He presents this to people, leaving it to each one to grasp what he can according to his own capabilities.
Dōgen and Bankei both gave full play to their unique talents within the different historical backgrounds in which they lived. Bankei seems to have a largely Japanese character. By that I mean the way he shies away from theoretical argument, avoids verbosity, and goes to the bare essentials of the matter at hand, yet somehow at the same time making sum and substance understandable. Whether or not this is a characteristic that should be unconditionally promoted in the future is of course a separate matter. Yet the ultimate source of this knack of directly grasping the essence should not in Bankei’s case be ascribed merely to his being Japanese. And that the Unborn is truly the product of his thought should of course go without saying.
As a thinker, Dōgen is surely one of the great Japanese. However, I think the reason for the reverence in which he is held as founder of the Sōtō sect and for the continuance to this day of the religious line that emanated from him is due to the specific character of Dōgen himself, rather than to his work Shōbōgenzō. It is true that Shōbōgenzō is an important element that expresses one side of his great personality, but is there not something of even greater strength and even more importance in Dōgen? Rather than the philosophy that is incorporated in Shōbōgenzō, is it not the mind or spirit that inspired that philosophy and that has at the same time supported the sect’s “sustained practice” (gyōji)19 through the centuries—is it not that which is responsible for creating and shaping the Sōtō sect? It seems to me that we see Dōgen’s true face more clearly, and with greater depth, in the Shōbōgenzō zuimonki than in Shōbōgenzō. Of course, an individual’s personality, the principles that sustained him, and so forth are not sufficient in themselves to establish a religious sect. There must be genuine talent and capacity in the disciples that gather around the teacher and succeed him. The background of the age is something that cannot be overlooked either.
When two objects of a comparison are isolated as absolutes abstracted from their contexts, things do not appear in a true light. Whoever or whatever it may be, it has emerged from within a certain historical milieu, and this must also be taken into account as we compare them. We should not limit ourselves merely to the broad historical circumstances; in the case of a person, we should investigate the contacts and associations he had in his personal life. In our comparison of the Zen of Dōgen and Bankei, I think we will find there is even greater interest in exploring the paths the two men traveled prior to the time they began to expound their Zen teachings than in merely viewing their teachings as isolated entities.
While a straight comparison of shikan taza (“just sitting”) and the Unborn deserves separate study as well, I think that we should look beyond that into the circumstances which led Dōgen to become the exponent of shikan taza, and those which brought Bankei to advocate his Unborn Zen. That should reveal the truth embodied in each of their Zen teachings on their own terms. I think then we will be able to appreciate the place each of them holds and the meaning each possesses in terms of Zen as a whole.
I will first explore the process by which Dōgen was led to declare that “negotiating the Way in zazen” (zazen bendō), that is, just sitting, is the sole way of Zen practice, and by which Bankei was brought to proclaim that in all the many generations of enlightened Zen patriarchs, he was the first one “to give genuine proof of the Unborn.”
As for the teaching Dōgen received from his master Rujing (Nyojō) during his two-year stay at the Tiantong monastery, it may be summed up in the words he reiterates again and again in his writings: “Cross-legged sitting is the Dharma of old buddhas. Zen practice (sanzen) is body-and-mind dropping off. Offering incense, making bows, nembutsu, penances, and reading sutras are unneeded. It is attained only in just sitting.” His practice under Rujing was in accordance with this teaching.
Rujing told him that he should bring his mind into his left hand when he did zazen. This is a zazen technique based on the same psychological principles as the Contemplation on the Letter A and the Moon Contemplation found in the Shingon sect. In the Shingon practices, however, one places the object of meditation at some distance from oneself; in the meditation taught by Rujing, the mind is not apart from one’s body. It is not clear from the available sources just how Dōgen was supposed to conceive the mind as it rested on the palm of the hand. Was it as some sort of crystalline sphere, or just as something present there? I think we may presume that the meditation was a matter of concentrating the mind on the palm of the hand.
After practicing this method of meditation for a time, Dōgen went and reported to Rujing: “I did as you taught me. Both my hands disappeared. There is no place to put my mind.” Rujing replied with the advice: “In that case, from now on make your mind fill your entire body. Fill it so there isn’t a single empty place left anywhere.”
How does one go about “filling the body with the mind”? Here there is no question of the mind as a crystalline sphere, or as having a vaporous or liquid quality either. Hakuin describes a method of meditation in his work Idle Talk on a Night Boat (Yasenkanna)20 that he learned from the hermit Hakuyū who lived in the mountains northeast of Kyoto. Hakuyū told him to imagine a lump of butter on top of his head slowly melting down and permeating his entire body. But what was the essence of what Dōgen called “mind”? Whatever it was, by virtue of the practice described above, he was one day able to go and tell Rujing, “As a result of making my mind spread throughout my body as you directed me to, my body-and-mind have completely dropped away. It is like the sun spreading its light throughout the great sky, its round shape unseen.” When he heard this, Rujing confirmed Dōgen’s attainment: “Today you attained true emancipation and entered into great samadhi. Keep and preserve this truth. Do not lose it.”
A work titled Nihon tōjō rentō roku (Records of the Succession of the Lamp in the Japanese Sōtō School)21 records this version of the events:
One night, when Rujing was going around the zazen hall, he saw a monk dropping off to sleep. He rebuked him: “The key to Zen practice is body-and-mind falling off. What good will it do you sleeping like that!” When Dōgen, who was sitting nearby, heard this he suddenly became one with enlightenment.
At daybreak he went to the abbot’s quarters and offered incense. Rujing said, “Well, what about it?” Dōgen said, “Body-and-mind dropping off.” Rujing said, “Body-and-mind dropping off, dropped off body-and-mind.” Dōgen said, “This is merely a temporary bypath I’ve entered, master. Don’t confirm me without due consideration.” Rujing said, “I’m not confirming you without due cause.” Dōgen said, “What do you mean by not confirming without due cause?” Rujing said, “Dropped off body-and-mind.”
Although there are slight discrepancies between this and the version I quoted above, what is important is Dōgen’s experience of “body-and-mind dropping off.” If we accept that the experience was a result of his efforts to make his mind pervade his entire body, then an interesting idea suggests itself. In contrast to the meditative practices of the Shingon sect, which are objective and realistic, the one Dōgen performed is subjective and psychological. Even without knowing how he and Rujing conceived the mind in trying to make it permeate the body, they were obviously regarding mind and body as two separate things. As a result of this meditation, body-and-mind were forgotten, although it is perhaps preferable to say “falling off” rather than “forgetting,” which implies something of a psychological or conscious nature.
“Falling off” implies that something that has been covering or attached to someone, binding and burdening him externally as in a state of discrimination, drops or falls away. Dōgen himself tells us, in his own recording of the event, that the falling off was complete and thoroughgoing. And yet nothing positive or affirmative is seen to emerge from it. “Body-and-mind dropping off, dropped off body-and-mind” represents a negation, but he makes no mention of something coming after this negation. Compare his utterance to the declaration of the Tang Zen master Yangshan: “skin and flesh fall completely away, there is nothing but the one reality,” in which the “one reality” emerges after the negation. There is something lacking in Dōgen’s utterance. If “just sitting” ends with the experience of mind-and-body dropping off, there is no way it can avoid being mere “Silent Illumination,” using that term in a pejorative sense.
Why didn’t Dōgen’s effort proceed in an affirmative direction toward the “one reality”? Could it be that the psychological experience that appears spontaneously in any person who gains liberation from the fetters (or consciousness) of the body-and-mind dualism was in his case so intense that recognition of the one reality suffered relative neglect? The dualistic view of body-and-mind is fundamentally a production of the discriminating intellect. Until we can get free of this intellect, we are destined to remain trapped within a dualistic consciousness, and true freedom will remain beyond our grasp.
The culmination of Zen practice is found on the one hand in liberation from this consciousness, or in what is the same thing, the experience of “body-and-mind falling off.” That is no doubt why Dōgen repeats over and over in his writings that “Zen practice is body-and-mind falling off—just sitting.” If it is seen from the standpoint of what Zen calls the Great Function and Great Activity (daiki, daiyū), however, there is an unavoidable feeling that something is lacking. But it must be said that Dōgen devoted himself faithfully to putting his teacher Rujing’s teachings into practice.
Bankei tells us that we are the Unborn Buddha-mind just as we are, in the state in which we were born. We are living the life described in Zen as “a single iron rod stretching straight out for ten thousand leagues,” which is untrammeled by things such as “body-and-mind” or “birth and death.” The mewling cry of the newborn baby fresh from its mother’s womb is in fact the lion roar of the Buddha declaring at his birth, “Heaven above, earth below, I alone am the honored one.” There is no duality here whatever. No discriminative thought. We are manifesting the reality of body-and-mind dropping off. This of its nature does not lend itself to psychological analysis or objective observation, yet it is something that we nonetheless experience in our normal everyday life. As we grow older, what Bankei calls “self-partiality” begins to emerge. We gradually go astray, begin exercising our minds in “irrelevant tasks,” becoming ever more deeply set in our wayward habits.
In the everyday world, the coming of age is sometimes referred to as attaining the age of discretion. But this “discretion” or “discrimination” is a nasty customer. When it reaches full fruit in a self-centered thirst for possession that holds sway over our entire consciousness, our life no longer enjoys the basic and intrinsic nature it had when we first appeared in the world. Duality of body-and-mind is a presence that shadows us wherever we are. From it “birth and death” emerges as well. We must at all events experience and realize for ourselves “body-and-mind falling off, fallen off body-and-mind” once. It is in here that Dōgen’s “just sitting” has its great significance. But if what I call the “discrimination of nondiscrimination” does not emerge from it, then, to borrow Bankei’s words, “the wonderful, enlightened activity of Unborn illuminating wisdom cannot come into play.”
But Dōgen was not always “just sitting.” Shōbōgenzō and other works are to a large extent his commentaries on a great variety of koans. Nor did he confine himself to comments on koan. He went on to develop a unique philosophy. Those who came after him saw only his “just sitting” at the expense of his philosophy and the complexities of his koan interpretations, or else they perceived only the latter, forgetting his insistence on just sitting. Or they ignored neither of these yet attached little importance to the rigor of Dōgen’s practice-oriented life or to his scrupulous concern for the education of his disciples. If we wish to see the real Dōgen, none of these aspects can be overlooked. In the interest of comparing him with Bankei and his Unborn Zen, I will confine myself to exploring the meaning that “zazen,” seated meditation, had in his teaching, as well as the source that gave rise to this meaning.
In exploring how Bankei arrived at his teaching of Unborn Zen, we discover the ways in which it differs from Dōgen’s view of zazen and at the same time the proper angle from which to attempt a comparative assessment of the two. Bankei’s point of departure was altogether different from Dōgen’s (and this was not merely the result of the different ages in which the two men lived), and the courses their subsequent religious practice followed can be said to have had altogether contrary bearings as well. Whereas Dōgen was guided step by step in his practice by an experienced master, in Bankei’s case there was no one we might in a real sense call his teacher.
As a youth Dōgen is said to have experienced doubts about the need for practice and realization in light of the Buddhist teaching that all sentient beings are intrinsically possessed of Buddha-nature. Bankei’s entrance into religious life occurred within a Confucian context. At twelve, he became curious about the term “bright virtue” (meitoku) when he came upon it in a passage in the Great Learning, one of the basic Confucian texts: “Clarifying bright virtue is the way of man.” Confucianism did not teach that bright virtue is intrinsic in everyone, only that clarifying it is the proper path for man. One of the fundamental tenets in Buddhism is that not only man but all beings are originally endowed with Buddha-nature. Even at this young age, Bankei probably had some notion of the Buddhist teaching, but his first step in the direction of Zen came from this uncertainty over the meaning of the Confucian bright virtue. Unable to find anyone to explain it to him, he turned to Zen for an answer. Yet despite his best efforts he could find no Zen teacher who could provide the answers or give him the kind of guidance he needed. Perhaps if he had had a master such as Rujing, he too might have come to experience “body-and-mind dropping off” and achieved an understanding of bright virtue in that way. Without such an opportunity, he had no choice but to work through to a resolution on his own.
The power of his will was remarkable. We see evidence of this even in some episodes from his early childhood included in his biographical records.22 So when he devoted himself to finding a way to resolve his doubts about bright virtue, he did so with an extraordinary tenacity of purpose. Some idea of his incredible perseverance in the face of the intense mental and physical suffering he experienced during this period can be gained from the frequent reminiscences he includes in the sermons and talks of his later life.23 By any standards, his prosecution of the struggle was extraordinary, and it may be regarded as having been instrumental in his forging out his Unborn Zen. Had he not undergone the difficult ordeal he did, he might well have wound up in the traditional role of most ordinary Zen teachers, giving teishō (formal Zen lectures) on koan and Zen writings, perhaps emphasizing zazen too.
As it was, he did not want others to have to repeat his hard experience. It was the compassionate desire to somehow enable them to attain what he had attained without the accompanying suffering that brought him to enunciate his teaching of the Unborn. From the depths of his heart he poured out his message to younger people to make them realize that the Unborn was something they could grasp without such great difficulty.
All of you here are very fortunate. I wasn’t as lucky as you. When I was a young man there weren’t any wise teachers to be found. Or at least if there were, I wasn’t fortunate enough to meet up with them. Being rather foolish, I suffered tribulations others could not possibly know, and I expended a great deal of futile effort. The experience of that has engrained itself deeply in me. I can never forget that bitter lesson.
That’s why I come here like this day after day, urging you to profit from my own painful experience. I want you to be able to attain the Dharma while you’re seated comfortably on the tatami mats, without putting forth any needless effort. You should consider yourselves very fortunate. Where else can you find something like this?
I was a foolish young fellow, and I would like to tell you about how I wasted all that effort. However if I did, I’m afraid some of the young men among you will get it into their heads that they won’t be able to achieve the Dharma unless they struggle as I did, and set about repeating my mistake. And that would be my fault. I really do wish to tell you about this, but if I do, I want the young people to please listen very carefully and understand: you can attain the Dharma without the profitless struggle I put myself through. Keeping that in mind, then, listen to what I say.
Yet Bankei also goes on at great length to explain the futile effort he himself had expended. The fact remains, however, that without this “useless effort,” he would not have attained the depth of discernment and character he did. There is no reason to believe that Bankei himself was not aware of this. I think we can regard this too as the working of what we may term the psychological principle of vicarious suffering.
In any case, the hardship aside, it is enough if one just comes in touch with the vital central point of Unborn Zen. As Bankei was actually in grasp of that point, he was, as he often declared, always there ready to confirm the Unborn in others. Since the Unborn is originally something each person receives from his mother at birth, Bankei is not talking of some abstract impossibility, producing something out of nothing. It was the mind of great compassion (karuna), instilling him with the desire to make this fact known to his fellow men, that kept Bankei constantly occupied, traveling, and spreading his teaching for over half a century.
He has none of Dōgen’s magniloquence. He spent his life in contact with ordinary, common people, explaining how there is nothing at all difficult about Unborn Zen. Moreover, if it is seen from the nature of the true Dharma itself, there is something about this that does indeed make us conscious of the fact that Bankei’s personal hardships were in fact “vain effort.” He touches on this in the following passage from his sermons:
Imagine a group of travelers climbing through a stretch of high mountains devoid of water. They get thirsty, so one of them goes into a distant valley below in search of water. He does this with considerable difficulty. When he finds some and returns with it to give his companions a drink, don’t those who drink without having exerted themselves all quench their thirst just the same as the one who did? There isn’t any way to quench the thirst of a person who is suspicious and won’t drink the water.
Because I didn’t meet a clear-eyed teacher, I mistakenly engaged in difficult austerities. My ultimately discovering my mind-Buddha and making all of you know about your inborn mind-Buddha is just like those people drinking water and quenching their thirst without going out to seek it. For each of you to be able in this way to use the Buddha-mind inherent in your own self just as it is and achieve a mind of blissful tranquility without resorting to any illusory austerities—isn’t that a teaching of inestimable worth!
If things are seen from this perspective, we can say that in spite of all the austerities Bankei undertook with such courage in his youth, they were not essential to his realization of the Unborn. However, Bankei was not always teaching the Unborn to the general public. He was not only urging people to follow the Way of Easy Practice (Igyō dō). Apparently he had two different teaching postures, one when he was dealing with the common people and laymen, the other when dealing with the monks immediately under his guidance. With his personal disciples he showed not the slightest quarter, demanding without compromise that they open their Dharma eyes completely. The reason for this is simple. Those who leave home to enter the priesthood are destined to become the teachers of all beings in the world. They must command the respect of their fellow teachers. An unseasoned, half-baked priest would be unable to shoulder such a responsibility. Bankei set extremely high standards for himself, and he followed them scrupulously throughout his life. And so he exhorted his disciples, “I’ve told you how you can achieve your goal right there where you’re seated, without any expenditure of effort, but because your commitment to the Dharma is lacking, you are unable to believe and follow it.”
After resolving his own Great Doubt, Bankei was possessed by a strong desire to find a means to communicate the understanding he had achieved to others. To discover a way to do this, in a way that would convince people of its truth, required an extraordinary deliberation.
Personal experience can have universal application and function in society only through the agency of thought. When it stops in personal experience alone, it comes to resemble Śākyamuni Buddha’s initial inclination after attaining Enlightenment, which was to immediately enter Nirvana. “Somehow,” said Bankei, “I wanted to be able to reach those of ordinary capabilities with a few words. That is how I came up with the idea to teach you like this using the word Unborn.” It took long years of reflection and deliberation while practicing in isolated hermitages in various parts of the country before he finally arrived at this teaching. In China, priests sometimes engage in this type of solitary practice even today. Perhaps if Bankei had studied under a genuine teacher from the outset, he would never have thought of devising an original teaching of his own. But this is what makes him different from other Zen masters, those of his own age and those who appeared after him, and this is also the reason he was able to enunciate his teaching of Unborn Zen.
I believe the different ways Dōgen and Bankei took as they started out on their Zen practice account in large measure for the difference between Unborn Zen and “taza” Zen. But Bankei has an originality that sets him apart from both Dōgen and Hakuin. It is related to the teaching method he adopted once he raised the banner of the Unborn and embarked on his lifelong missionary effort. He did not use or rely on Buddhist sutras or Zen writings. He rejected the use of Chinese, the language traditional in Japanese Zen. He seems to have decided on this principle at around the time he attained enlightenment as a young monk. It may be said to be influenced by the historical period in which he lived—that is, it was a decision to go against the prevailing teaching current of his time—yet it would seem that the character of the practice he subjected himself to played a large part as well. He says:
I never quote the words of the Buddhas or Patriarchs when I teach. All I need to do is examine directly the personal affairs of people themselves. That gets the thing done, so I don’t have to quote others. I don’t say anything about the “Buddha Dharma” or the “Zen Dharma.” I don’t need to. I can take care of everything perfectly well, clear everything up for you just by examining you and your concerns directly, here and now, so I don’t have to bother preaching the Buddha Dharma and Zen Dharma.
One of his disciples adds:
The master was always critical of the many evil customs that were prevalent among teachers and students in the Zen temples of his day. Because of this, his own dealing with students was for the most part direct and to the point. He did not allow indiscriminate use of the staff or shout, diversions into literature, deliberations using words and phrases, or unnecessary displays of personal insight. He never brought up words and phrases from sutras or Zen texts. If anyone would come to him for teaching, he just spoke to him intimately using the common language of every day, regardless of whether or not he was possessed of special intelligence.
When Zen was first being introduced into Japan, the Japanese had little choice but to follow the Zen and other Buddhist writings in the Chinese language. Even in Dōgen’s Japanese writings such as Shōbōgenzō, which were composed during this same period, stiff Chinese phrases and quotations in Chinese, many of considerable length, are interspersed freely throughout the Japanese text. The situation was much like that in Meiji Japan, when scholars introduced Western words into their speech and writings and created new words translated from European sources that no one could understand unless he already knew the original foreign words. It was an unavoidable set of circumstances. New ideas from foreign lands often could not be fully expressed using the available resources of the Japanese language. Had the ideas developed from ones already present within the Japanese mind, they could have been expressed using the language current at the time. But it was unable to cope with the great number of new ideas coming in helter-skelter, from foreign sources.
Hence the reliance of priests on Chinese literature—sutras, Zen records, and the like—was an inevitable necessity in the early period of Japanese Zen. We must also remember that someone like Dōgen belonged in the intellectual vanguard; the young Japanese who received his teaching would also have been in that classification. It would have been quite natural for Chinese to have been the medium for communicating ideas. Even Dōgen’s contemporaries Hōnen and Shinran, exponents of the Way of Easy Practice, whose aim was to make Buddhism easily accessible to all people, when they came to commit their thought to paper, did so in Chinese, though they may have used Japanese in their letters and occasional writings.
Bankei lived in an entirely different world from Kamakura Japan, but on this question of language, he was a “nationalist.” It had been four hundred years since Dōgen’s time, and it might be imagined that in the meantime Zen thought had become fully Japanese, purged of all exotic, foreign tinges. But such was not the case. Only fifty years after Bankei’s death in 1693, his disciples took transcripts of his Japanese talks and sermons and translated them into Chinese. It seems that a kind of superstition regarding the Chinese language still held sway among the Japanese educated classes. Bankei himself, however, was remarkably thoroughgoing in his adoption of Japanese:
One day, Bankei said, “When I was a young man I also tried practicing question-answer type deliberations with other monks. I worked hard at it. In spite of that, I think it’s best for Japanese to use the language they use every day when they inquire about the Way. That is most suited to them. Japanese aren’t very good at Chinese. When questions and answers are carried on in Chinese they can’t express themselves fully just as they’d like. There’s nothing at all they can’t ask if they use the same language they use in daily life. So instead of straining trying to ask things in Chinese, it is better for them to ask them freely, using a familiar language they use comfortably. Now, if it were a case where we couldn’t achieve the Way unless we used Chinese, I would of course tell you to go ahead and use it. But the fact is that we can ask about the Way and achieve it with ordinary Japanese without any trouble at all. In that case, it is wrong for us to ask questions in a language we have difficulty using.
I want all of you to keep this in mind, and whatever you want to ask about, I don’t care what it is, feel no hesitation. Ask it just the way you want to, using your own words, and I’ll clear it up for you. Since you can work things out this way, what could be more valuable than the Japanese language you use every day?
The distinguishing feature of Bankei’s pedagogy is his utter rejection of anything apart from himself in any way—whether spatial or temporal—and his endeavor to “clear things up for people” through comments and criticisms directed to the person right before him at a given time. Here we see the reason for his refusal to place any reliance on sutras or words from the Zen records, and for rejecting the use of Chinese. Zen has no part whatever in talking about what is past or with abstract, conceptual comments on things removed from oneself. Since the matter of “you yourself today” is Unborn Zen, and since our everyday language serves perfectly well to say that we are cold when we are cold and hot when we are hot, Unborn Zen has from the first no need for a voluminous ninety-five fascicle Shōbōgenzō, nor for the hundreds of old koans and cases that Dōgen deals with at great length in that work.
What sets Zen apart from the other schools of Buddhism is its lack of interest in theory and its stress upon the importance of personal experience. In truth, that is how all religions ought to be, and it cannot be said that this emphasis is found only in Zen. That is why it is customary in religious literature for the writer to elucidate his beliefs using the vocabulary and language in common use among those who make up his audience. The Zen records of China are filled with the colloquial language of the age in which they were produced. It can hardly be otherwise. Zen is something a person experiences with the utmost concreteness, and the medium he uses to give expression to it must also be one that is closest and most personal to him. I said before that Bankei went against the current of his age, but that is not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that he transcended such things. He tried to communicate the substance of his own experiential understanding as it really was directly to others with the most immediate sense of personal intimacy. This indeed is where Unborn Zen differs from Dōgen Zen (which makes zazen paramount) and from Hakuin’s koan Zen.
It is time to say a few words about Hakuin and his Kanna (“seeing into the koan”) Zen. First, let us note the manner of his entrance into Enlightenment. It is different from that of either Dōgen or Bankei, and we can discern in this difference the special character of his Zen.
From the beginning of his practice Bankei seems to have had little to do with koans. While he apparently had contact with Zen priests (he was ordained by a Rinzai priest named Unpo from his native Akō), there is nothing in his biographical or other records to suggest he was ever given koans to work on. We do not know what teaching methods Unpo used with his disciples. All Bankei’s accounts tell us is that he embarked on a rigorous life of religious practice because he couldn’t understand bright virtue. In Angōkyokki, a compilation of sayings and episodes from Bankei’s life by his disciple Sandō Chijō,24 we are told that it was Unpo who confirmed his enlightenment. But Bankei himself clearly stresses the importance of his meeting with the Zen master Daozhe (J. Dōsha), a Chinese priest who had come to Japan and was residing in Nagasaki. However, in later life Bankei was unable to endorse Daozhe as his teacher either.25
It seems likely that Bankei had no active involvement with koan practice at any time in his career. He regarded koan Zen’s method of raising a doubt in the student as an artificial, unspontaneous maneuver pressed upon him from without. Therefore, when the time came to deal with students as a teacher himself, he cut down everything that rose to the encounter with the single, self-fashioned blade of his Unborn Zen.
Hakuin was involved with koans from the start of his practice. He wrestled with Zhaozhou’s “Mu” koan. He also experienced his share of religious anguish. But he does not seem to have had, as Bankei did, something that might be called a great philosophical Doubt. Probably this is the reason for Bankei’s instinctive hostility to the artificiality of koan Zen. However that may be, Hakuin’s writings tell how he resolved to concentrate once and for all on a course of assiduous Zen practice through reading a passage in the Changuan cejin,26 and the occasion of his breakthrough into Enlightenment occurred as he was working on the “Mu” koan, so it was probably inevitable that his teaching was subsequently oriented toward Kanna Zen. Afterward, when Shōju Rōjin (1642–1712) prodded him to greater effort, badgering him with the koan “Nanquan’s Death,” it must have served to strengthen this disposition to koan practice all the more.27
The custom today in Rinzai Zen—actually Hakuin Zen—of dividing training into stages, with each stage allotted its own particular koan, was not created by Hakuin alone. It was developed over a period of many years by his followers.
How did Dōgen go about the actual training of the monks under him? We may be fairly sure that he had them practice his “taza” Zen; may we not also suppose that he made considerable use of koan practice, that is, the method of having his disciples introspect the “public cases” from the Zen records? Was not his Shōbōgenzō, a work composed using both Japanese and Chinese, written to serve as a kind of touchstone for testing their understanding? It is moreover true that for hundreds of years after Dōgen’s death, Shōbōgenzō was treated as a secret book, used only in the teacher’s chambers. Not only was it inaccessible to outsiders, it was not freely shown even to Sōtō priests. The study of Shōbōgenzō did not begin until the Tokugawa period, at about the same time Bankei was rising to prominence as a Zen teacher. Without going into further detail here, I would just like to observe that when it came to scrutinizing old koan, Dōgen yielded little to the Kanna Zen specialists in the Rinzai school. And while granted it was probably not like the testing koan work that takes place today in the sanzen rooms of the Hakuin school, I believe that even in the centuries after Dōgen’s death his followers did not totally give up their investigation of the “exempla” of the ancient teachers.
Hakuin Zen is koan Zen through and through. This means it has both the dangers and the benefits inherent in such an artificial system. Dōgen’s taza Zen is without any limits, and from the beginning there is no possible way for us to grasp it. One may say that koans are also beyond our grasp as well, but when you work on a koan it is right there before you, and all your effort can be concentrated on it. With taza Zen, for all its talk of “body-and-mind dropping off,” it is no easy matter to know where and how to begin. Koan Zen provides steps for the practicer, and if he can somehow get a foothold on the first step he is brought along from there without much difficulty. This is clearly a problem, though one cannot deny its convenience.
This is the real reason why masters of the past devised the method of giving koan to their students. It was, as I have been saying, an expression of the deepest compassion—what Zen calls “grandmotherly kindness.” But along with that kindness goes an accordingly great danger. The danger lies in the tendency to formalization. It may happen that a petty thief crowing like a cock at dawn will get past the barrier by deceiving the gatekeeper into opening the gates. As a matter of fact, in the koan system such fellows do get past, or rather we should say that they are passed through. The danger that the goods will be sold cheap is something intrinsic to the system. In any construct devised by man a pattern invariably evolves. When the pattern becomes fixed, the quick of life cannot move within it. When the realm of true reality which is free of samsaric suffering is treated in such a way that it comes to resemble the fixed gestures and patterned moves learned in a fencing class, Zen ceases to be Zen. At times patterns work well and are useful. And they do have the virtue of universal currency. But no living thing is produced from that alone. I suppose, though, there are some who even find enjoyment in such a counterfeit, lifeless thing, much as they would divert themselves with games of chess or mahjong. Bankei states,
These days people take up the stories of the ancient masters and deliberate meaninglessly over them. Intent on chasing after others’ words, feeding on others’ dregs, they are unable to break free of others’ orbits. They pass their lives in a dark ghost-haunted cave, gauging and speculating in the region of discriminatory illusion. It is never like that here with me. Here, you must open wide your own eye at once and stand absolutely alone and independent, encompassing all heaven and earth. Every single word or saying left behind by those of the past were uttered in response to particular occasions, according to changing conditions—a way of stopping a child’s crying by showing him an empty fist. How could the school of the patriarchs have even a single Dharma to preach! If you chase after phrases and cling to words, you’re no different than a man who loses his sword over the side of a ship and marks the spot on the rail. The sword is already far away. (Bankei Zenji goroku, 137)
In Zen it is often said that real satori comes only with real practice. When an existential doubt wells up spontaneously from within and drives one to intense concentration, as it did in Bankei’s case, he will as a natural result try to resolve it using any means he can devise. So when this total, all-out quest arrives at its denouement, genuine satori should result. On the other hand, left to a framework that depends on the use of koan, what will be created is a doubt that can only be termed artificial, not the kind of demand that rises deep from within. Bankei’s criticism is based on his own experience:
People nowadays say they must have a doubt because those in the past did. So they cultivate one. That’s an imitation of a doubt, not a real one. So the day never comes when they arrive at a real Enlightenment. (Bankei Zenji goroku, 110)
After all has been said of Hakuin Zen, it must be admitted that here lies its pitfall. Hakuin Zen evolved after Bankei had already left the scene, but even during his lifetime it seems to have been the fashion in Rinzai Zen for priests to make a kind of game of memorizing some koans and imagining this kind of charade, so-called lip-Zen, was Zen itself. Here are two passages from Bankei’s sayings relevant to this.
A monk said, “Suppose right now the ‘Triple Invalid’ appeared before you, master, how would you deal with him?” Bankei said, “You seem to think very highly of triple invalids [those who are blind, deaf, and dumb at the same time], the way you scrutinize them, all eager to actually become one. Right at this instant you are not a triple invalid, so instead of trying to be one—which would be very difficult in any case—get to the bottom of your own self! That’s the first order of business for you who do not have those three incapacities. To go around talking about other things will get you absolutely nowhere. Listen now to what I tell you.” (Bankei Zenji goroku, 134)
This is case 88 of the Biyan lu (Hekigan roku), “Xuansha’s Triple Invalid.” Here are Xuansha’s (Gensha) words:
All masters speak about their office of ministering for the sake of living beings. How would you deal with a triple invalid if he should appear suddenly before you here? You may hold up a mallet or a hossu, but a man suffering from blindness cannot see you. You may give play to all the verbal resources at your command, but a man suffering from deafness cannot hear you. You may let him tell his understanding, but that is impossible for a man who is mute. How then will you deal with him? If you cannot deal with him, the Buddha Dharma will be pronounced wanting in spiritual efficacy.
This type of story is of course hypothetical, yet Zen masters of the past devised various means for testing religious seekers. Or we can say that this was their way of guiding them. In any case, all are merely “skillful means” growing out of their compassionate concern for their students. Regarding one’s real peace of mind, though, it is immaterial whether one understands such a koan or not. Regarding one’s understanding of the true purport of Zen, too, we can state flatly that this “Triple Invalid” is idle hairsplitting. Since Bankei is thoroughly aware of just where the questioning priest stands spiritually, he says, “The first order of business for you is to get to the bottom of your own self!”—an indeed salutary instruction.
Here is the second passage:
The main figure of worship at Ryūmonji (Bankei’s temple) was an image of Kannon. It was made by Bankei himself. Fully aware of this, a monk from Ōshū who was standing insolently against a pillar while Bankei was giving a talk asked, “Is that figure a new Buddha or an old one?” Bankei said, “What does it look like to you?” “A new Buddha,” replied the monk. “If it looks to you like a new Buddha,” said Bankei, “then that’s that. What is there to ask? Since you don’t know yet that the Unborn is the Buddha-mind, you ask useless questions like that thinking it’s Zen. Instead of bothering everyone here with such silly questions, sit down and keep your mouth shut, and listen to what I say.” (Bankei Zenji goroku, 91)
This monk also makes a rather foolish display of himself. It is said that in the Tokugawa period Zen monks would often engage in such mockeries of Zen dialogues when they encountered one another on pilgrimage. From this it seems that this was already taking place in Bankei’s day. The annoyance he displays may be said to be fully warranted.
A doubt that one must resolve as a matter of life and death must emerge from within. When it does not, when the doubt is merely something received from someone else that is brought to bear on a koan, surely the abuses the koan system has within it become intolerable. It is not for this reason that Zen teachers instituted the use of old model cases and koans. They represent the skillful means of Zen masters desiring in their great compassion to bring a student face to face with the wonder of nondiscriminatory prajna wisdom. In this respect Bankei can be said to have attempted a return to the early Zen of the Tang dynasty. His own words, “I preach neither the Buddha Dharma nor the Zen Dharma,” convey the real truth of the matter:
Zen masters of modern times generally use “old tools” when they deal with pupils, thinking they cannot make the matter clear without them. They do not reveal it by thrusting straightforward without using the tools. Those fellows have made their tools indispensable and now cannot do without them. They are the blind children of the Zen school.
Also, they tell their students that they won’t be able to get anywhere unless they raise a “great ball of doubt” and then break through it, and that they need first of all to raise this ball of doubt, setting everything else aside until they do. Instead of teaching them to live by their unborn Buddha-mind, they saddle students who haven’t any doubt with one, thereby making them transform their Buddha-mind into a ball of doubt. A terrible mistake. (Bankei Zenji goroku, 26)
The true face of Bankei Zen emerges in the words “[they] transform their Buddha-mind into a ball of doubt.” This might be thought to imply that Bankei is stressing a correlation to sono-mama Zen. But if that were so, he would not speak of the “Unborn.” It is in this feature of Unbornness that his unique standpoint is seen. It also explains why Unborn Zen is different from Dōgen’s shikan taza, just sitting.
I believe that the quickest way to understand Bankei’s Zen in greater depth would be on the one hand to investigate Zen before and after the appearance of koan Zen, and on the other hand to inquire into the relation that must exist between Silent Illumination Zen and realization of Enlightenment. There is, in fact, a close mutual relationship between all these. A good grasp of one of them will clarify the others as well, and with that, I personally feel, an overall picture of Zen will be achieved.