2023-01-09 The Life and Teachings of Master Bankei 3

10:34PM Jan 30, 2023

Speakers:

Sensei Amala Wrightson

Richard von Sturmer

Keywords:

unborn

buddha

people

mind

thought

illusions

transform

habit patterns

teaching

animal

reflected

deluded

ignorance

long

arise

lose

suffering

scold

fall

living

Today is the third day of our 2023 Summer seven-day sesshin. It's the 10th of January. And we'll be continuing to read from and comment on passages from "The Unborn: The Life and Teaching of Zen Master Bankei," translated and with an introduction by Norman Wadell.

We left off when Bankei was was going into what gets between us and unborn Buddha mind.

He says despite the fact that you have arrived in this world with nothing but an unborn Buddha mind, your partiality for yourselves now makes you want to have things move in your own way. You lose your temper, become contentious. And then you think I haven't lost my temper. That fellow won't listen to me. By being so unreasonable he has made me lose it. And so you fix belligerently on his words, and end up transforming the valuable Buddha mind into a fighting spirit. By stewing over this unimportant matter, making the thoughts churn over and over in your mind, you may finally get your way. But then you fail in your ignorance to realize that it was meaningless for you to concern yourself over such a matter. As ignorance causes you to become an animal, what you've done is to leave the vitally important Buddha mind and make yourself inwardly a first class animal.

So in this, we had a look at the beginning of this last time, and it's the way he he frames it. Being an animal, in this point, anyway, is, is a metaphor for living this life in ignorance.

All the different realms of unenlightened existence, you could say our aspects of our own human experience. That then he also, space appears to go beyond this in the next passage, you're all intelligent people here, it's only your ignorance of the buddha mind, which makes you go on transforming it into a hungry ghost fighting spirit or animal. You turn it into this and into that into all manner of things. And then you become those things. Once you have, once you've become an animal, for example, then even when the truth is spoken to you, it doesn't get through to you. Or supposing it does, since you didn't retain it even when you were a human being, you certainly won't have the intelligence as an animal to keep it in your mind. So see how we've we've moved from the metaphor here into literally trance migrating through the different realms. So you go from one hell or animal existence to the next, or spend countless lifetimes as a hungry ghost. In modern chairs, we can we can think of the 100 Ghost as being some edit somebody with a one or other kind of addiction problem. You pass through lives and existences one after another in this way, in constant darkness, trends migrating endlessly and suffering untold torment, for 1000s of lives, and through endless kalpas of time. And during it all, you have no opportunity whatsoever, to rid yourself of the burden of your evil karma. This happens to everyone when through a single thought they let the buddha mind slip away from them. So you can see that it's a very serious matter indeed.

Buddhist teaching really emphasizes the the importance and preciousness of being born as a human being where We have this this mixture of suffering and joy in our lives, which opens up a space you could say, for us to undertake spiritual training, spiritual work, we were motivated by our suffering yet not to enmeshed in in negative habit patterns that we can't respond and change, at least some of us anyway. So it's it can be really needed that we acknowledge this the preciousness of this human life. And, and the, there is an urgency to realizing ourselves, because we don't know what our circumstances will be in the next lifetime. Or subsequent ones to that. The teaching is that our karma doesn't all evenly kind of resolve itself, but in a patchwork version, so we can't make prediction predictions based on our prison circumstances. And this doesn't just go for subsequent lives, but subsequent days and months and years. We don't know what our what our current how our karma will unfold, what will eventuate with how long our health will last? how long our lives will last.

Therefore, you must thoroughly understand about not transforming the buddha mind into other things. As I told you before, not a single one of you in attendance here today is an unenlightened person. You're a gathering of unborn Buddha minds. If anyone thinks no, I am not. I am not enlightened. I want him to step forward. Tell me what is it that makes a person an enlightened? He He doesn't answer the question here in the text. But we could say conditioning is what makes us unaligned habit patterns. And anything that's conditioned can be deconstructed and untangled. In fact, there are no unenlightened people here. Nonetheless, when you get up and begin to fall out of the hall, you might bump into someone in front of you as you cross over the threshold, or someone behind you might run into you and knock you down. When you go home Your Husband, Son, Daughter in law servant or someone else may do something that displeases you. If something like that happens and you grasp onto it and begin to fret over it, sending the blood to your head raising up your horns and falling into illusion because of yourself partiality, the buddha mind turns willy nilly into a fighting spirit love this this image here of somebody's horns emerging from the skull as they fall into illusion it is has almost a cut in quality to it that we will do we will all in in a sense have these these horns that that come forth when we're perturbed by something

we literally literally turn into a demon when that happens

we become possessed by our anger or annoyance and and we may see these things as little but that's where anger and violence start with little things that irritations?

Right until you transform it you live just as you are in the unborn buddha mind. You aren't deluded or unenlightened. But the moment you do turn it into something else, you become an ignorant, deluded person. All illusions work the same way. By getting upset and favoring yourself, you turn your buddha mind into a fighting spirit and fall into a deluded existence of your own making. So whatever anyone else may do or say, Whatever happens, leave things as they are. Don't worry yourself over them and don't side with yourself. Just stay as you are right in the buddha mind, and don't change it into anything else. If you do that, illusions don't occur. And you live constantly in the unborn buddha mind, your living, breathing, firmly established Buddha. Don't you see you have incalculable treasure right at hand?

People may be hearing this may have questions about what to do when we we see injustice. And it would be a good question to put to bancha I don't know how he would respond. But

the teaching of Buddhism is a teaching of compassion. And so seeing injustice seeing people being damaged in hurt by some, some aspect of the the government or other people, it seems to me that there is a place for not leaving things as they are in that case. But how we do that is becomes very important. If it just adds to the sum total of anger, of anger and ignorance, then it's not going to be much help. So to be able to come to these places where we seek to change things with an attitude of the unborn buddha mind not judging, jumping to conclusions, but acting out of our compassion. There's an example here actually, in this in this, the account of of bancaires life, that when his his teacher, that has Chinese teacher was faced with injustice, when the rival Chinese monk came came to Nagasaki Bonnke when he learned about this, did his very best to to help resolve the situation. His efforts came to nothing we're told but but he didn't just stand and look on he he actively stood up for dough dosha and tried to find him a new place to teach from. So I think that in that sense question can be answered by that that example.

While you're walking down a road, if you happen to encounter a crowd of people approaching from the opposite direction, none of you gives a thought to avoiding the others. Yet you don't run into one other one another. You aren't pushed down or walked over. you thread your way through them by weaving this way and that dodging and passing on making no conscious decisions in this yet you're able to continue along unhampered just the same. Now in the same way. The marvelous illumination of the unborn buddha mind deals perfectly with every possible situation. Suppose that the idea to step aside and make way for the others should spontaneously arise in your mind before you actually move aside. That too would be due to the war game of the Buddha the minds illusion Minutes of wisdom, you may step aside to right or to the left, because you have made up your mind to do that. But still, the movement of your feet one step after another doesn't occur because you think to do it, when you're walking along naturally, you're walking in the harmony of the unborn. This this is one of the most probably well known images that bond K uses to illustrate the functioning of our unborn buddha mind. And after hearing this for the first time, next time I was in that situation of a busy crowd is actually at a public market there in Rochester. It was quite amazing just to suddenly become aware of that very thing the way in which this this these crowded alleyways between the market stall and full of people and basically everybody moving as they needed to so as not to to bang into anybody. And how smoothly that generally goes, cause there are exceptions but just to appreciate that the harmony that's there unconsciously, as people interact in a busy street districts.

When we do breath practice or Kinane walking meditation, we also become aware of the way that we our breath happens without our conscious will insane without her walking. putting one foot in front of the other changing the weight from one foot to the other. It's quite a complex series of moves that are required. And yet we can be walking along and deep in conversation with somebody and still be able to do that

another example of this sort of artless movement, people I'm sure have seen flocks of starlings flying as one in these big big clouds shifting and changing shape, but beautifully coordinated, no, no pile of dead starlings appears on the on the ground underneath the flock with whether the crashes have happened. processes is is flowing and seamless.

Skipping ahead a bit. Yourself partiality is the root of all your illusions. There aren't any illusions when you don't have this preference for yourself. If the men sitting next to you start color quarreling. It may be easy for you to tell which of the disputants is in the right and which is wrong because you are not involved yourself. You are a bystander. So you can keep a call head. But what if you do have a part in it? Then you take your own side and oppose the other fellow. As you fight with one another. You transform your Buddha minds into fighting spirits or again because of the Buddha mines wonderful illuminative wisdom such things as you have done and experienced in the past cannot fail to be reflected in it. If you fix onto those images As they reflect, you are unwillingly creating illusion. The thoughts do not already exist at the place where those images are reflecting. They are caused by your past experiences, and occur when things you have seen and heard in the past or reflected on in the body mind. But thoughts originally have no real substance. So if they are reflected, you should just let them be reflected, and let them arise when they arise. Don't have any, any thoughts to stop them. If they stop, let them stop. Don't pay any attention to them, leave them alone, then illusions won't appear. And since there are no illusions when you don't take note of the reflecting images, while the images may be reflected in the mind, it's just as same as if they weren't. I think here that that line from Maga when Master Hakuin is chanting praises as in which we just recited our thoughts now being no thought our dancing and songs are the voice of the Dharma.

Heir thoughts intrinsically. The femoral without substance can be transformed into no thought, depending on how we approach them. 1000 thoughts may arise, yet, it's just as though they hadn't, they won't give you a bit of trouble, you won't have any thoughts to clear from your mind, not a single thought to cut off.

To except we have to accept the state of our mind and what we have to work with when we sit down on the mat. But then, if we can understand that everything that we experience everything that arises is the secretion of the brain you could say, then we won't be dragged down by our thoughts and feelings.

Next time bunkie goes on to talk a little bit about sleep and tells a story of a of in one Monastery of people. Striking and castigating a monk who had fallen asleep

he says if you stay awake, you stay awake. If you sleep, you sleep. When you sleep, you sleep in the same buddha mind you all were where you were, awaken. When you're awake, you're awake in the same buddha mind you were sleeping in. You sleep in the buddha mind while you sleep and are up and about in the buddha mind while you're up and about. That way you always stay in the buddha mind. You're never apart from it for an instant. You're wrong if you think that people become something different when they fall asleep. If they were in the buddha mind only during their waking hours and change into something else when they went to sleep. That wouldn't be that the true Buddha's Dharma, it would mean that they were always in a state of trance migration.

All of you people here are working hard to become Buddhists. That's the reason you want to scold and beat the ones who fall asleep. But it isn't right. You each received one thing from your mother when you will report the poor the unborn buddha mind nothing else. Rather than try to become a Buddha when you just stay constantly in the unborn mind sleeping in it when you sleep up and about when you're awake. You're a living Buddha in your everyday life at all times.

One of the the little ideals is held up in same practices being able to continue one's practice through one sleep and then taking it up once one is awake. So we were told sometimes to have the last thought as we as we are drifted off to sleep to be the practice, Mu or what? Who am I? And then to try and have the first thought on awakening also be the con. In this way, there's a kind of continuity between sleeping and waking

there's not a moment when you're not a Buddha, since you're always a Buddha, there's no other Buddha in addition, in addition to that, for which for you to become so that again, since you're always a Buddha, there's no other Buddha in addition to that for you to become instead of trying to become a Buddha, then a much easier and shorter way is to be a Buddha.

Then he gives an example of this just being the unborn buddha mind deals freely and spontaneously with anything that prevents it presents itself to it. But if something should happen to make you change the buddha mind and a thought, then you run into trouble and lose that freedom. Let me give you an example. Suppose a woman is engaged in sewing something, friend enters the room and begins speaking to her. As long as she listens to her friend and sews and the unborn, she has no trouble doing both. But if she gives her attention to her friend's words, and a thought arises in her mind, as she thinks about what to reply, her hands stop sewing. If she turns her attention to her sewing and thinks about that, she fails to catch everything a friend is saying, and the conversation does not proceed smoothly. In either case, her buddha mind has slipped from the place of the unborn, she has transformed it into thought as her thoughts fix upon one thing, they blame all others depriving her mind of its freedom

another example of this would be knitting with hands do the work. So, this this is possible in in activities which which

we could say rhythmical or constant will however have a repetition to them

sweeping or peeling potatoes or walk walking as we've talked about already

then if you have to discriminate if you have to calculate how many potatoes you need for a meal or or work out the measurements for something you're sewing then you have to engage the discriminating mind and do that task it's still it's still the unborn buddha mind but it's moving from from non discrimination you could say into discrimination. The key is to be able to drop the discrimination when it's no longer needed. That's where we often fall down. Discrimination is extremely useful thing it's it's an aspect of being human being able to do this in so many different ways. But we get we get stuck there. And that's when we we are transforming the Buddha the unborn buddha mind into into something that is problematic. Let me tell you about what happened when I was in mera gamma in Sanuki province. As you know, Mara gamma is his castle town. And when I was there many came to listen to the to to my talks. On one occasion a lady showed up, accompanied by her maid servant and an elderly woman. The three of them listened and then lived. Some time afterward, the lady and the old woman came again, the lady said, before she met you, my elderly attendant here was always a willful and disagreeable creature, she would lose her temper the slightest pretext. But you know, it's been quite a while now, since we heard your teaching. And from that time till the present day, she hasn't once been a little tempered. In fact, she's grown most wise. Everything she says is sensible and sound, she doesn't seem to have a foolish notion in her head, she was put me to shame with the example, she said, I'm certain that the reason for the change is in her change in her is simply that she's taken your teaching straight to heart, we owe it all to your influence. Such were her words. And from what I learned, we learned later, the old woman never strayed from the buddha mind again.

This is she, no, don't give her he's giving this example, as one for for sudden change, which is, right from the beginnings of Zen has been an important aspect of the teachings of this potential, we have to, to transform. And this is possible because we're not needing to acquire something from somewhere else, but revealing what is already there.

This change, it can happen. Out of the blue, at least from from our perspective, it might it may seem to come out of the blue

the other side is also true that there can be change, which then has to be worked into our daily lives into our being, because of the momentum that habit patterns have. So it's not there's both the need for gradual kind of cultivation, and for sudden shifts which come through insight. If we, if we were just talking about this with somebody, if you if you really deeply understand that something is harmful, they're not doing it is comes easily is when we have understand or we understand only intellectually, that we struggle with habits that they're they're a mountain countless examples of people who who stopped an addiction overnight, not smoked another cigarette or drink another glass of alcohol.

And these these, so we can take encouragement from these, these instances. But it's also true that the person who stops overnight smoking may have have tried to give up smoking many many times before then and not succeeded. I read somewhere that that people who are giving up smoke smoking have on the average tried six times before that to give up.

What I call the unborn is the buddha mind. This buddha mind is unborn with a marvelous virtue of illuminative wisdom in the unborn. All Things fall right into place and remain in perfect harmony. When everything you do is done according to the unborn, the eye that sees others as they are opens in you. And you know in your own mind that everyone you see is a living Buddha. That's the reason why once you live in the unborn, you never fall back into your old ways. Just like that old woman of Sanuki Once you know the great worth of the buddha mind, you can't leave it for illusion again. But as long as you're ignorant of its great value, you will continue to create illusions for yourself in whatever you do insignificant things included. And you will live as an unenlightened person

so one of the reasons why we have such shame is because we're endeavoring to see things clearly rather than just know them intellectually. See them clearly enough that they're transformative to see through the veils of illusion that that we carry around.

Realize I've didn't turn on my timer, so got 10 minutes more. I lose track of time here. So a little bit more

gives another nother example of straying from our unborn board and Ryan says in houses with domestic help, servant boys and girls are employed in large numbers. Some among them are bound to be careless with things. Occasionally treasured dishes or other articles are broken. Perhaps it is something not even worth mentioning that in any case, you let the blood rush to your head, you lash out and scold the offender angrily. But no matter how prize the tissue or table may have been, it wasn't broken deliberately. It was an accident. And now there's nothing that can be done about it. Just the same, you fly into a rage and let the defilements from yourself sell did passions transform the precious buddha mind given to you when you were born into a fighting demon, you can always buy another tea cup. tea tastes the same anyway, whether it from an ordinary in Mary tea cup, or from a priceless Korean tea bowl, you can drink it just as well from either one. But a temper once lost, can't easily be undone. reading this, I had this memory long ago of as a small child, maybe about four or something breaking one of my mother's precious Christmas tree decorations, very delicate. Not sure what material I made a bit literally sort of pre plastic, something very, very delicate. And I was scared about it. But I went and told her that I'd broken it. And of course she was not of course, but I was fortunate enough to have her react with understanding about it and not not blow up. But just one blow up from a parent to a child and something like this can be very, very painful and long, have long effects. So that's what he's talking about when he says but a temper once lost can easily be undone.

Little thing can conspire. A lot of pain in such a situation. Now if you really understand what I've been saying about the table, you should know without my having to tell you about them one by one, that it's the same for everything else. Whatever happens, just don't turn your Buddha minds into fighting spirits by worrying over it. Don't change them into ignorance or let yourself center the thoughts, turn them into hungry ghosts. Then you will automatically be living in the unborn buddha mind. You won't have any choice on the matter. Once you know the Buddha minds great value If there's no way you can avoid dwelling in the unborn, even if you don't want to, I want to make you know how vitally important it is for you not to change your Buddha minds into the three poisons. So you will have to listen to me attentively. And then be very careful that you don't transform your Buddha minds into something else. Three poisons here cause a greed, anger and delusion, the sources of suffering different brands of over defilement that cause so much unhappiness.

Telling people about the unborn like this, they sometimes assume it's a teaching I came up with all by myself, but that's mistaken. If you look through the sutras and other Buddha's records, you'll find that the unborn was preached in the past in various ways. The patriarchs of the Zen school mentioned it was heard from the golden mouth of Shakyamuni Buddha himself, even children have known of it but it's always the words unborn Undying, that you will find there's never any verification given to show just what this unborn undying really is. I am the first to teach people by giving them proof of the unborn. It's understandable then, that those who don't know this should make the mistake of thinking I thought up the words myself. By by proof, he means his his analogies for the nature of this unborn buddha mind and, and they coming out of a direct experience of that mind.

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