A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

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Another disciple was concerned about his wandering mind. He could not concentrate on the Unborn all the time without his mind sloping off to other thoughts. Bankei insisted, however, that he was never separated from the Buddha-mind. If you were, he said, you would not be asking this question now. Your mind is not really somewhere else. It is just that you have not yet learned correctly about it. You do not know your own self. Instead of just dwelling in it, you change and distort it into other things. When you are in this state, your mind is at a low level of efficiency and you cannot absorb information or function at your maximum potential. You are not absent-minded, just tying up part of your mind by making it do things which it would not normally do.

The psychological aspect in Bankei’s teaching is paramount. This is because he laid so much stress on practice and actually living in the Unborn. Theory, theology and metaphysics take a back seat in the exposition of Unborn Zen. Even the psychology is narrowed down and sharply focused: “Your self-partiality is at the root of all illusions. There aren’t any illusions when you don’t have this preference for yourself.” And, of course, without illusions one lives in the Unborn as an enlightened Buddha.

The Buddha-mind has wonderful illuminative wisdom, he constantly taught. All past experiences and actions are fully reflected in it. It is good spiritual practice, therefore, not to fix onto these reflecting images. If you do, you are creating illusion. Originally, these thoughts had no substance, so the prudent way of dealing with them is to ignore them, whether they are rising or stopping. Then, no matter how many thoughts there are, it is the same as if none had arisen. The tyranny of memory and past conditioning is broken, and with it, neurotic behaviour patterns and other psychological problems.

Brushing off thoughts which arise is just like
washing off blood with blood. We remain impure because
of being washed with blood, even when the blood that
was first there has gone — and if we continue in this
way the impurity never departs. This is from ignorance
of the mind’s unborn, unvanishing, and unconfused
nature. If we take second thoughts (normal thinking)
or an effective reality, we keep going on and on
around the wheel of birth and death. You should
realise that such thought is just a temporary mental
construction, and not try to hold or to reject it.

A close examination of most religions reveals a hefty weight of self-partiality, myth, and dubious authority; so much so that the underlying impulse to reveal God/the Unborn is lost in a welter of forms and ceremonies. The absolute makes an appearance only in distorted or anthropomorphic terms, rarely in its suchness.

The impression left after a reading of Bankei’s talks is that of religion, philosophy, and psychology, merged and distilled down to the finest essence, until all that remains is the bare, ungarnished truth of the non-dual Unborn, fully revealed in the consciousness of each individual.

The conscious act of steadfastly being in the Unborn, is the basis of many Japanese art-forms and activities, including Zen archery, flower arranging, landscaping and gardening, the tea ceremony and brush drawing and calligraphy. The practitioner, by concentrating his mind, submerges himself in the Unborn, where the seer, the seeing and the seen, subject and object, dissolve one into the other and into effortless, non-dual activity.

Dr. D.T. Suzuki, who trained in the Rinzai Zen school, wrote this about Japanese artistic expression: “How does a painter get into the spirit of the (subject)? The secret is to become the (subject) itself…The discipline consists in studying the (subject to be painted) inwardly with his mind thoroughly purified of its subjective, self-centred contents. This means to keep the mind in unison with the emptiness or suchness (of the subject)…and transform himself into the (subject) itself.”

The result is an elegant, artless performance, devoid of ego and self-partiality, in which the Buddha-mind expresses itself with perfection as the True Man of the Way.

Bankei always claimed that he was the only master to give proof that the Unborn Buddha-mind was, as he declared, the sole ground of human consciousness.

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A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

Bankei’s main objective now was to have his enlightenment confirmed by other advanced Zen masters. His own master, Umpo, commented that the experience was the marrow of Bodhidharma’s bones, but Bankei wanted more than that.

His travels took him to Nagasaki, where the Chinese priest, Dosha Chogen had been installed in a temple. Dosha, who always retained the respect of Bankei, was impressed by the young man. He had certainly penetrated to the Self, he agreed. “But you still have to clarify the matter beyond, which is the essence of our school.”

Bankei was nonplussed at this news. He had thought that his satori was the final opening of truth. In time, he came to accept what Dosha said and stayed on at the temple for further post-enlightenment training, much to the discomfiture of the other monks who felt he was receiving preferential treatment. However, within a year Bankei “clarified the matter beyond” while meditating in the zendo early one morning.

When he approached Dosha with the tidings, one of those curious Zen set-pieces took place, which are mystifying to the unenlightened mind. Bankei picked up a brush and wrote, in Chinese — for Dosha could speak no Japanese — “What is the ultimate matter of Zen?”

Dosha then brushed, “What matter?” To which Bankei just extended his arms. When Dosha again picked up the brush, Bankei grabbed it and flung it away. Following this apparent display of bad manners, he stood up, swung his deep Chinese sleeves and left. We can be sure that Dosha was well pleased.

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A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

It is interesting that the issues we now associate with the term “political correctness” arose even in Bankei’s day.

At one public meeting a woman stood up, unintimidated by the eminence of the master. She spoke with some heat: “You know that women are not allowed to climb the sacred mountains,” she said. “And we are not allowed into the precincts either. Why is it said that women have deep karma and that this bars us from such things?”

Bankei sensed he was now in the realm of politics not spirit, so he passed it off with a jest. “You know,” he said to the woman, “that there is a nunnery in Kamakura?” She nodded. “Unfortunately, it’s closed to men!”

Women, he knew, were often treated badly by institutionalized clergy who liked to carve a cosy exclusive niche for themselves. But Bankei was aware that enlightenment was barred to no-one. However, as an administrative problem he could only give a view and hope that it would have some effect on others.

A rather stern, middle-aged monk addressed him from the floor. “In the past,” he began, “great masters like Engo and Daie used koan to lead their students to enlightenment. Why do you not do so?”

Bankei used a stock reply, he was often asked this one. “Did the great masters before the two you name also use koan?” The monk sat down discomfited. It had been a long day, despite the bright weather. Bankei brought the session to a close, thanked the visitors for their efforts in coming to see him and urged them all to take very good care of themselves.

Bankei’s enlightenment eventually came after fourteen years of unremitting labour. In the final days, as did the Buddha before him, he brought himself to the brink of death before nature relented and gave him the vision he had so long sought.

From the day he had been asked to leave his home at the age of eleven, the young Bankei had looked in vain for a competent Zen teacher. In the absence of one, he had tried a number of other options, including the constant repetition of the name of Amida Buddha. This had induced a temporary samadhi, but brought him no nearer to “clarifying his bright virtue”.

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A Life of Bankei by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

Thanks to the work of biologist Rupert Sheldrake, we are now more aware of the sensory situation of man than we were. In a recent book, The Sense of Being Stared At, Sheldrake suggests that we are surrounded by what he calls morphic fields. These personal fields stretch out from our bodies as a kind of extended mind-stuff and are responsible for all the unexplained phenomena we pigeon-hole under the term ”psi” — ESP, telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and others. As Sheldrake asserts, there is a mass of scientific corroboration for these “powers” of the human and animal minds, and his own experiments dramatically confirm them.

Within the notion of morphic fields, Sheldrake also includes morphogenetic fields, which act as the blueprint and creative principle behind the formation of all creatures, like ghostly Platonic forms.

In Rupert Sheldrake’s own words: “Morphic fields also underlie our perceptions, thoughts and other mental processes. The morphic fields of mental activities are called mental fields. Through [these], the extended mind reaches out into the environment through attention and intention, and connects with other members of social groups. These fields help to explain telepathy, the sense of being stared at, clairvoyance and psychokinesis. They may also help in the understanding of premonitions and precognitions through intentions projecting into the future.”

Sheldrake’s ideas on morphogenetic fields explain many grey areas in conventional understanding, especially in the science of genes and DNA. For example: “My suggestion is that morphic fields help impose order and pattern in this sensitive chaos [in the brain], and interact with the brain through their ordering activity. They contain an inherent memory, through morphic resonance. They also project out far beyond the brain through attention and intention.”

These hypotheses are so compelling that it surely cannot be long before the rest of science catches up, despite the earthquake that would follow in the scientific establishment.

But Zen Master Bankei was aware of all this more than three hundred years ago but under a different name : the Unborn Buddha-mind.

Bankei Yotaku, birth name Muchi, came from a family which had been doctors with the rank of samurai for many generations. As a child he was extremely independent and wilful, but with a sensitive intelligence that partly mitigated his faults. He was also extremely brave. At an annual stone-throwing contest, it was always Bankei who refused to give ground and took his side to victory.

His schooling was something of a problem, despite his natural aptitude. Calligraphy was not a favourite subject, especially the endless copying of the hundreds of Chinese characters, which is a fundamental part of a Japanese education, even today. He was often observed cutting classes early in order to avoid this tedious task. Another wearisome lesson involved reciting passages from the four great Confucian classics until the student knew them by heart.

It was during one of the Confucian classes, while reading a text from The Great Learning, that Bankei had a powerful insight. As the teacher spoke the words, “The way of great learning is to clarify bright virtue,” Bankei’s attention was riveted. On asking what “bright virtue” was, he received only stock answers which did not satisfy his curiosity. It was as if he was being prompted by old memories or very deep insights. His overriding desire was that this bright virtue should apply to him personally and not just be expressed in empty words, no matter how high-sounding. He wanted enlightenment, not definitions, and the search would occupy him totally for the next fourteen years.

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