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

In her famous book, Mysticism, Evelyn Underhill wrote : “Mysticism is seen to be a highly specialized form of that search for reality, for heightened and completed life, which we have found to be a constant characteristic of human consciousness. It is largely prosecuted by that ’spiritual spark’, that transcendental faculty which, though the life of our life, remains below the threshold in ordinary men. Emerging from its hiddenness in the mystic, it gradually becomes the dominant factor in his life…Under [its spur] the whole personality rises in the acts of contemplation…to a level of consciousness at which it becomes aware of a new field of perception.”

So what is the Path of Nirvanoception? How does it differ from other paths?

It is essentially the path of the Jnani (as Vedantists would say); the path of analytical meditation, or the wisdom stream (as the Dalai Lama puts it); the path of Discrimination (Merrell-Wolff); the path of Knowledge (Gnosis), and the path of Direct Seeing. All these “names” could apply equally as well.

Put bluntly, if you want twenty years of psychotherapy, see a Freudian analyst. If you want arthritic knees, try the usual paths of meditation. If you want “nice feelings”, try charismatic Christianity.

The Path of Nirvanoception is a direct assault on the summit of Nirvana by attempting to break through to a higher mode of being, thus releasing the clear light of Nirvanoception.

Bankei knew all this very well …

It has not always been like this, Bankei contemplates as he heads towards his quarters. When he had first started to explain the Unborn to small audiences in the old days, he was accused of preaching heresy, even of being a Christian — whatever next!. So different was his message from that of the rather distant Zen masters of the day, who insisted on speaking Chinese to a Japanese assembly, that people were afraid to come near him. When they realised at last that he was declaring the true Dharma, his life changed dramatically.

Nowadays he was often besieged by supplicants and followers. He never had a moment to himself. As many as six thousand souls could turn up at one of his meetings, and each would want a personal interview.

Yet even now, at the height of his popularity, when he preached the Unborn, many folk thought he was making the whole thing up. It was necessary to direct them to the sutras where the Unborn is mentioned as part of a description of the Buddha-nature: “unborn, undying”, or “unborn, unconditioned, unoriginated”. These were only words, however, despite falling from the golden lips of the Buddha himself.

Bankei tried to do it differently. He pointed directly to the Unborn as a living reality in the consciousness of every person, enlightened or unenlightened. Here it is, he said, again and again. Look at it, feel it, accept it, and use it in your life NOW.

But Bankei was getting old, and his much-abused physical frame was nearing its final dispersal. Not that he minded, he lived constantly in the Unborn, beyond birth and death. His one hope is that the people who listen to him and hang on his words, understand what he is trying to say and incorporate it into their day-to-day lives.

So what constitutes the teaching of Bankei and makes it different from other “brands” of Zen? The quintessence of his Zen is that our self-partiality, the tendency to favour ourselves above others or the common weal, causes a distortion of the unborn Buddha-mind, which thereby loses its illuminative wisdom by being “born” as thoughts into the realm of birth and death. It is as if we hijack the Buddha-mind for our own selfish purposes and distort it in the process. The result is the overweaning ego-I, our personality.

It is only by de-self-partialising, or reversing the process, that we can realise the Buddha-mind we were born with, and become a man (or woman) of the Unborn. It is as simple, and as profound, as that.

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