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

What I call “nirvanoception” is the third, usually latent, mode of knowledge. I say “usually latent” because we’re mostly unaware of it. We freely use body-mind modes of “perception” (senses) and “conception” (mind) to navigate around our world, while remaining completely in the dark about “space consciousness”, which is working in the background.

Normal consciousness is narrowly focused in our heads. Nirvanoception is wide, space consciousness, which takes no heed of trivial daily concerns. It clarifies during nirvanic experiences because perception and conception are “left behind” with the body-mind.

The aim of any spiritual path is to clean up the doors of perception and conception so that nirvanoception shines brightly in our consciousness. To be precise, it’s how Nirvana experiences itself.

Seventeenth-century Japanese Zen Master, Bankei, made nirvanoception the whole basis of his method. The following is a serialization of his life:

A layman approached Bankei and said: “Master, it is said that you can read people’s minds. If this is the case what am I thinking right now?”

Bankei replied: “You are thinking that.”

Like most Zen masters, Bankei had a droll sense of humour which he often displayed in a self-effacing manner. At other times he would use it remorselessly against an arrogant interlocutor, or as a sharp pointer to the truth when he judged that an intellectual bubble had to be burst. Humour is a natural accompaniment to Zen because it feeds on hubris and paradoxical situations. The following mondo (Zen conversation) is typical:

A monk asked T’ou Tzu, a Chinese master of the T’ang period: “I have heard that all sounds are the voice of the Buddha.”

“Yes, you are right,” said T’ou Tzu.

“Am I also right that all assertions, no matter how derogatory, are reflections of absolute truth?”

“Yes, you are right,” replied the master.

“May I then call you a donkey?”

In many ways Bankei (1622-1693) resembled the old Zen masters of the T’ang Dynasty, whose teachings were vibrant with austere insights expressed in a direct and simple style. Though he lived more than a thousand years after the time of Bodhidharma, and over eight hundred since Hui Neng, Huang Po and Rinzai, Bankei was out of Zen’s top drawer. He was also a highly original interpreter of Buddhism.

Dr. D.T. Suzuki, who rescued his work from obscurity, said of him: “His ‘Unborn Zen’ espoused a fresh departure for the first time since…Bodhidharma. Unborn Zen is truly one of the most original developments in the entire history of Zen thought. Bankei, indeed, must be considered one of the greatest masters that Japan has ever produced.”

The scene is the Winter Retreat of 1690 at the Ryumon-ji temple, which was founded by Bankei himself. In the assembly hall are gathered 1,683 people: priests, masters, novices and laity. They come from all the major Buddhist sects in Japan, Soto and Rinzai Zen, Shingon, Nichiren, Tendai, Jodo and Jodo Shin. The atmosphere, though calm befitting a Buddhist gathering, is expectant, for Bankei is the greatest preacher of his age, likened by his scribe to the Buddha himself.

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Watching the way the old time religions try to resolve their antagonisms with each other is always interesting. They usually begin by invoking a common deity and a shared interest in a united front against the forces of atheism (read “evil”) in the world.

This approach is never sustainable, however, since much of the world’s terrorism is fuelled by adherents of those same religions. It’s an internal problem, not an external one.

It’s true that many terrorists are not “religious” at all but psychopaths looking for a cause that will allow them to express their blind anger and vent their blood lust. But, if a faith harbours such animosity that it acts as a magnet for such people, it has only itself to blame.

The worst cases of this religious hatred are to be found in the three Abrahamic religions : Judaism, Roman Christianity and Islam. Why should that be?

They are all “book” religions, depending on “revelatory” texts to underscore their beliefs. These beliefs, of course, are a moveable feast which feed off contradictions in the texts to support just about anything they want. Protestant Christians are said to have over 20,000 denominations. Atheists, not unreasonably, claim that this invalidates them altogether.

The Abrahamic faiths also come from that hotbed of incendiary politics, the Middle East, where religious faith has been ruthlessly politicized for two or more millennia.

In the West now, a sharp reaction to the Abrahamic frenzy has been discernible for some time. People are turning away in droves from the old, barnacle-encrusted religions towards a more “modern” spirituality. That is to say, to practices which emphasize direct experience of spiritual reality, without the intervention of a “church”, although it may involve a “guru”, or teacher.

If this is the way the world — or a significant part of it — is going, why not use that trend to mitigate the failures of the old system, without seeming to attack it.

If every church or faith, reiterated its support for a universal spirituality that transcended the cultural forms that dominate individual religions, their members would not find themselves in the awkward position of having to defend a set of old rules and rituals against another set of old rules and rituals, thus in a bound removing the sparking points of religious conflict.

In other words, recognize a global mysticism above religion and its institutions.

It could be done, but it would take a lot of will and sacrifice on the part of religious leaders who are already inculcated with the need to hold their own “turf”.

I usually buy Gordon Smith’s latest books as they are published, because they always contain rich nuggets of wisdom on all aspects of the spiritual and the afterlife.

Gordon Smith is generally held to be the most accurate spiritual medium in Britain. He started life in a lowly part of Glasgow, ran his own hairdressing business for a while, and now makes his living as a TV presenter and an author of books.

The following passage occurs in his latest volume : Stories From The Other Side.

Our consciousness keeps expanding but because we live in a world where there are linear thought and time and space we are restricted by what we can describe and what we can understand.

The very nature of our existence is about ripening our consciousness. So often people restrict themselves by thinking that everything has to be achieved or got over in this life. It is such an unburdening process to come to the realision that there is no beginning and no end.

Eventually we learn to mistrust the material world because everything we hold on to ages and dies, including our bodies — a process we monitor daily. As that happens, we become dimly aware of a realm above the bodily which, strangely, a part of us already inhabits.

Gordon Smith is acutely aware of the thin veil which prevents many of us seeing beyond the linear aspects of our daily lives.

Although D.H. Lawrence is known as a very physical writer — to put it mildly — he was also spiritual in his finer moments. Look at this passage from Chapter 15 of Women in Love:

“Whatever life might be, it could not take away death, the inhuman transcendent death. Oh, let us ask no question of it, what it is or is not. To know is human, and in death we do not know, we are not human. And the joy of this compensates for all the bitterness of knowledge and the sordidness of our humanity. In death we shall not be human, and we shall not know. The promise of this is our heritage, we look forward like heirs to their majority.”

Take away the novelist’s sentiment and there are some interesting points made here.

For example, “the inhuman transcendent death” recognizes that while consciousness persists at death, our human traits do not. We transcend ourselves at death.

Lawrence realizes that our humanity is the least of us : “the bitterness of knowledge and the sordidness of our humanity”. We know he often celebrated “the sordidness of humanity”, but here, using a different mouthpiece, he raises his game considerably.

In fact, those who reach out most to the concreteness of life, are often touched by the spiritual. It’s as if in glorifying the world they pass through the thin veil that separates us from the ineffable.

“In death we shall not be human, and we shall not know.” This passage echoes the 14th-century English spiritual text, The Cloud of Unknowing in which the aspirant meets the transcendent “and it is unlike anything we could possibly imagine here on Earth”.

“The promise of this is our heritage, we look forward like heirs to their majority.” Not everyone does, of course, but a touch of poetic licence is well earned.

Novelists often get closer to the meaning of things than scientists and philosophers. Here we see that most physical of men demonstrating a profound knowledge of “the other side”.

Quotation taken from Hemingway Serial.