2023-01-10 The Life and Teachings of Master Bankei 4

10:32PM Jan 30, 2023

Speakers:

Sensei Amala Wrightson

Richard von Sturmer

Keywords:

buddha

suffering

mind

unborn

illness

deluded

thought

pain

temper

born

people

arising

illusions

teaching

creating

sickness

realm

serious illness

continues

brightness

Today is day four of our 2023 Summer seven day sesshin. And it's the 10th of January. I think I may have said yesterday that it was the 10th. So for people who listen to the podcast it may be slightly confusing when you listen but I'll go by the day number rather than the date.

We'll be continuing to read and comment on passages from "The Unborn: The Life and Teaching of Zen Master Bankei," translated and with an introduction by Norman Wadell.

When I was a young man, I went around the country wasting time and energy on ascetic practices, all because I wanted to discover my Buddha mind. I ended up bringing on serious illness instead. I've been confined to sick beds for long periods. So I've learned all about sickness at first hand. Everyone who is born into this world and receives bodily form is therefore bound to experience illness.

To have a body and mind, is is to be guaranteed pain sooner or later. This is the the teaching on which Buddhism is built. The first noble truth: unenlightened life is suffering.

The Buddha's search began with with suffering, he saw the suffering of sickness, old age and death when he went out of the palace. And he when he developed his his 12, links of dependent co arising, he started at the end of that, that that series in terms of asking well, why do we suffer with a suffering come from and he came up with this, this 12 links of dependent co arising and also with the Four Noble Truths, which are common to all the different schools of Buddhism. And he sometimes likened to a physician, a great physician, because the way he set these out, was similar to how a doctor might talk about an illness. First, there was the disease, suffering, then he looked into what the causes of the disease were, and he To cut a long, long story short, just saying that grasping is the cause of our disease, then he offered prognosis, that there is in fact a way out of our suffering, if we can release our grasping, or as far as Bunkai would put it, if we can reside in the unborn. And then, the fourth part was his prescription for for a cure from this disease, the eightfold path. But like any any prescription, it's the taking the medicine that is the important part. So very well for you to receive a description of, of the the path to health and happiness, but you have to actually take the medicine to walk the path

not so much in our text, but in in contemporary Buddhist teaching, a distinction is made between pain and suffering. Pain is the unavoidable part can be physical, or social, personal The, this is the pain that will experience sooner or later. The pain, of birth, of sickness of old age of dying for being separated from those we love, equally painful, having to put up with people or situations that we find works and everything is constantly shifting and changing. And so even our pleasures have pain built in, in the sense that sooner or later they'll that pleasure will end. That's that's the nature of the condition universe we live in. This is and losing, having to shouldn't feel well some pleasurable state or or comic result is acutely painful.

This is illustrated in the law that exists around the, the six realms of existence, and how in the, in the Daiva realm the realm of of seemingly endless and exquisite pleasure. At a certain point even though the dangers are there for these miserably long periods of time. Eventually the beautiful garlands of flowers which they were at all time, start to fade and brown and drop off. And their own bodies these these Davis bodies go from being glowingly beautiful to starting to also decay and to smell. So the smell of decay as part of that as well. And the the divers are inconsolable when this process starts to unfold. They've had no motivation to realize the true nature of practice because of the exquisite comfort. And of course when this decay starts to happen, it's already too late.

Back to Bank A talking about sickness.

Everyone who was born into this world and receives bodily form is therefore bound to experience illness. But if you become confirmed in the unborn buddha mind, you aren't troubled by the suffering that normally accompanies illness, illness and suffering a differentiated dullness is illness and the suffering is the suffering. Now the way it works is this being originally unborn, the buddha mind has no concern with either pain nor joy, since being unborn means that it is completely detached from thought. And since it is through the arising of thoughts that you experienced both pain and joy, so long as the Buddha nature remains as it is in its original unborn pneus and worried by an unattached illness, it doesn't experience suffering. But if a thought arises from the ground of the unborn, and you start to worry about your illness, you create suffering for yourself. You change your buddha mind into suffering, it can't be helped. The sufferings of hell itself are no different. In this passage we can take when he talks about illness he's talking about, about the unavoidable pain and pain that comes with having a body and a mind But then the worry that we add on top of that, the narratives we, we tell ourselves about us our sickness that we could say is the suffering part. Now, suppose someone is suffering because he worries anxiously about his illness, the illness may at some point begin to improve. Yet because he worries over and above the original illness, about the medicine being wrong or about the physician being inept. He changes the buddha mind into various painful thoughts, until the deep disease in his mind becomes more serious affliction than the original illness. While the turmoil of thoughts crowd through his mind, as he attempts to escape from his illness, the original illness may gradually continuing to improve, and he may regain his health. But now he suffers, because he's plagued by the troubled thoughts churning in his mind, which have grown and intensified in the course of his illness and recovery. This can be so much so that that the suffering added on top of the pain can can make it difficult to see the actual improvements that can be happening. I think, in in dealing with illness, whether it's our own or somebody that we're looking after, to, to be sure to take note of how our spirits are doing. It's not just the physical illness that we we need to address but how it how it affects us emotionally.

Continues. But even though I say this, if someone who is down with an illness or undergoing any other kind of suffering, will say that he doesn't suffer, he would have to be called a liar, his ignorant he's ignorant of the way in which the buddha mind works. If he pledged on his honor, that he was positively not suffering, it would only mean that his suffering was taking the form of not suffering, there is no way such a person could be free from suffering. It's a little convoluted here, but I'm guessing that what he's saying here is, don't think that there are any guarantees in terms of not feeling pain, that pain is part of illness. And, and for that reason. We need to make friends with it. accepted, not think that we're going to get

off scot free, because maybe because we have some, some understanding some some realization of the unborn

and he says take his his suffering was taking his suffering was taking the form of not suffering. Think this refers to that point about our even our not suffering has an element of suffering in it because of impermanence.

Since the working of illuminative wisdom is intrinsic to the buddha mind by which it knows and perfectly different differentiates not only suffering but all other things as well. When the sickness comes, the buddha mind remains free of any involvement or concern with pain or suffering. But even then, since you will inevitably think about your sickness, is best at times to give yourself up to the sickness and to moan when there is pain. Then all the time, both you're sick, and when you're well. You'll be living in the unborn buddha mind, but you ought to be aware that when thought becomes involved in your suffering, the buddha mind is changed into the thought of sickness or the thought of suffering quite apart from the sickness itself. And you will be suffering because of that.

There are koans about this very point of becoming one with our suffering When it when we're in pain, to moan to be to be one with them with the pain

but there is there is also an end. And we'd say that with serious illness, there are often many things to think about decisions to be made about treatments. changing conditions of the body quickly over time. And it's it's a, it's a very demanding time. serious illness, especially before death, when there's a lot actually going on. And it makes demands on the people around the sick person and or the sick person themselves. So, there is thought that has to happen, decisions that have to be made choices. But at the same time we can watch out for when the mind is is changed into the thought of segments or the thought of suffering. Because this is the suffering that we can do without the we don't need to add on top of the pain. In practice can help us to see the difference between the necessary choices that have to be made and you turning, turning our sickness or illness into some kind of a static object that we obsess about or worry about.

The unborn buddha mind is originally free from all thought. So so long as a person is ignorant of the Buddha minds unborn pneus and suffers because he has changed it into a thought. No matter how loudly he made a light deny His suffering, His denial, the notion that I'm not suffering is only a determination he has created out of thought he couldn't possibly be the pet attached from suffering. He may think he's not suffering, but in as much as he hasn't confirmed himself and the unborn buddha mind that is detached from birth and death, that very birth and death is the cause of his suffering. And here his his contrasting true realization of the unborn nature of things as opposed to an idea about things being unborn This is why we tend to shame to two

embody this truth for ourselves to taste it for ourselves so that it's no longer just an idea. But but a reality for us, and shorter that we will be tossed about by birth and death. That's a given.

The working of your bright illuminating buddha mind is as different from an ordinary mirror. As a cloud is from mud. Kyoto, Osaka, Adel Sendai in Nagasaki, or wherever once you've been and seen a place, even after many years pass, and you're at an entirely different location. If someone else who has been there comes and talks to you about it, your conversation will go along in agreement. Moreover, when a mirror is able only to illuminate and show objects, a yard or two away at most, the working of the Buddha minds resplendent clarity is such that you can see and recognize a person over a block away, you can see a towering mountain peak 50 legs distance, even behind rows of hills, and your board and mind can tell that it's Mount Fuji or mount Congo or some other mountain. So while the buddha mind is often compared to a mirror, how vastly different brightness brightness really is. Even the sun and moon light up only the heavens and the earth. The marvelous brightness of the buddha mind, by means of words is able to enlighten people and deliver them from their illusion One by one. And when someone hears the truth and understands and affirms them, he will know for himself that the Buddha mines wonderful brightness surpasses even the brightness of the sun and the moon. What an incalculable treasure on buddha mind is buddha mind can reach beyond the, the farthest reaches of the Universe

interesting here that he, he talks of the power of the brightness of our mind, to enlightened people, by means of words, cause he himself is, is teaching by means of words, his teaching coming out of his intimate experience does have this power to enlightened people. To deliver them from their illusions one by one, he says that he could equally say that, that we deliver ourselves, the the, that the, the words, our fingers pointing in the direction we need to go, but we actually have to go that direction ourselves. But we shouldn't underrate the importance of these fingers pointing at the moon.

A monk said to bunk A. I was born with a short temper. It's always flaring up. My master has reinstated with me, time and again, but it hasn't done any good. I know I should do something about it. But I was born with a bad temper. And I'm able to rid myself of it no matter how hard I try. Is there anything I can do to correct it? This time, I'm hoping that with your teaching, I'll be able to cure myself. Then when I go back home, I'll be able to face my master again. And of course, I will benefit by it for the rest of my life. Please tell me what to do. Bankai that's an interesting inheritance you have is your temper here now? Bring it out. I'll cure it for you. Monk. I'm not angry right now. My temper comes on unexpectedly, when something provokes me. You were born with it. You weren't born with it, then you created it yourself. When some pretext or other happened to you? Where would your temper be at such times if you didn't cause it? You work yourself into a temper because of your partiality for yourself, opposing others in order to have your own way. Then you unjustly accuse your parents of having burdened you with a short temper. What an extremely unfair filial son you are. You wonder if that would provoke his temper to come forth. This, this approach of of asking him to bring forth his, his the monk's temper, it's a little bit like the one that people have heard of between Waker and Bodhidharma. When weyco asks Bodhidharma to set his mind at rest, and body this Dharma says bring forth your mind and I will settle it for you and wake us is I've looked for my mighty really master and I cannot find it. And then Bodhidharma says and so I've put it to rest for you pacified?

He continues, each person receives the buddha mind from his parents when he's born. His illusion is something he produces or law alone by being partial to himself. We might take take issue with this all alone, that we we you could say that we we construct our illusions in tandem with power US circumstances and conditioning. But what Bankai is wanting here is for us to take responsibility for one's own mind

it's foolish to think that it's inherent, this NGO he's talking about when you don't produce your timber, where is it? All illusions are the same. As long as you don't produce them, they cease to exist. That's what everyone fails to realize. There they are creating from their own selfish dark desires and deluded mental habits, something that isn't inherent, but thinking it is, on account of this, they are unable to avoid being deluded in whatever they do. When we when we say that, that we're unable to rid ourselves of our habits, no matter how hard we try, we're, we're reifying ourselves, where we turning ourselves from what what we are, which is a process into a fixed thing.

You must certainly cherish your illusions clear daily, for you to change the Buddha nature into them, just so you can be deluded. If you only knew the great value of the buddha mind, there's no way you could ever be deluded again, not even if you want it to be, fix this clearly in your head. When you are not deluded, you're a Buddha. And that means you're enlightened, there is no other way for you to become a Buddha. So draw cloud flows and listen carefully. And be sure you understand what I say. I think this is a very liberating thing to understand when he says

when you're not deluded, you are a Buddha. And that means you're enlightened. Just think about any any day in our lives. And where where we may have missed moments when we weren't deluded. They may have been very fleeting, but they existed, many of them actually. When we when we act selflessly, when we just do what's in front of us wholeheartedly. Many, many moments throughout any diet day when we're Buddha. When we speak kind word to somebody, or feel our anger rising and just sigh and let it go when we reach out our hand and take a cup, and drink.

Continues you create your outposts of timber, when the organs of your six senses. It's seeing hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking are stimulated by some external condition and incite you to oppose other people. Because you desire to assert your own Precociously held ideas. When you have no attachment to self, there are no illusions have that perfectly clear. All your parents gave you when you were born was a buddha mind, nothing else. What have you done with it? From time you were a tiny baby, you've watched and listened to people losing their tempers around you. You have been schooled in this until you two have become habituated to arrest ability. So now you indulge in frequent fits of anger. But it's foolish to think that's inherent. They learned that you could say learn behaviors, as he says being that he's become this guy's become habituated to irascibility. But of course anything that we can learn we learn We can unlearn anything that's conditioned or fabricated, we can deconstruct. It may not happen overnight. It may take a great length of time, but it's possible. So now you indulge in frequent fits of anger. But it's foolish to think that's inherent. Right now, if you realize you've been mistaken, and don't allow your temper to arise anymore, you'll have no temper to worry about. Think it's more common actually, to still allow it to arise, but not act on it, this would be a step in the process. We might even before that step, you might just have the being aware of the anger arising. And before that, are being able to look back on a situation and recognize where anger arose. So small steps. But eventually, you'll be able to catch it sooner and sooner. Acknowledge it, recognize it, but not let it flower into something.

Instead of trying to correct it, don't produce it in the first place. That's the quickest way Don't you agree? Trying to do something about it, after it occurs is very troublesome and futile. Besides, don't get angry to begin with, then there's no need to cure anything. There's nothing left to cure.

That's the ideal, but most of us go through these steps. That eventually, that anger stops arising so frequently, wear it around arises and then dissipates. Once you realize this, and you stop creating that temporary of yours, you'll find that you won't have any other illusions either. Not even if you want to fall you'll be living constantly in the unborn buddha mind, there is nothing else. Since everything is in perfect harmony, if you live and work in the unborn mind of the buddha, it's my school. of salami that again, since everything is in perfect harmony, if you live and work and the unborn buddha mind of the Buddha's. And then he gives an aside my school is also known as the buddha mind said, live in the buddha mind and you're living Buddha. From that moment on. This is the priceless thing directly pointed to I want you to trust completely in what I've been telling you do just as I've said, To start with, try to stay in the unborn for 30 days. Once you've accustomed yourself to that, then you'll find it's impossible to live apart from the unborn. It will come naturally to you then, and even if you don't want to even if you grow tired of it, they'll still be no way you can avoid living in the unborn and doing an admirable job of it to everything you do will be according to the unborn born you'll be a living Buddha.

You should all listen to my words, as if you were newly born this very day. If something's on your mind, if you have any preconception, you can't really take in what I say. But if you listen as if you were a newborn child, it will be like hearing me for the first time. Since then there's nothing in your mind. You can take it right in grasp but even from a single word and fully realize the Buddha's dharma. We engage in this process of of emptying out the mind. In our practice, it's it's essential. We could we could really say that the practice is about losing, losing our impediments shedding them, rather than gaining anything or acquiring anything or or formulating in a thing rather it's about releasing, releasing, releasing, releasing allowing ourselves to become more and more receptive. There's a there's a story that is near or at the beginning of one of the pioneer pioneering book servers at about Zen in the West, called Zen flesh and bones and it tells of a scholar coming to see a master and asking the master for teaching. And then the master says, well, let's we'll have a cup of tea. And he brings out the tea the tea bot and the cups and, and, and the scholar is already spouting different theories and his understanding his showing the Masters understanding of, of Buddhism and Zen and the Masters pouring his tea and just keeps pouring even when the cup is brimming over and spilling. And the the guy the scholar says, Master master your your the tea is pouring over the cup. And the master says will that's like your mind is full, there's no room for anything, empty your mind of everything, every concept.

Now the question or this one laywoman from Izumo. She says according to what you say, all we have to do is simply remain effortlessly in the buddha mind. Don't you think that teaching is to lightweight? Bank, a lightweight you sit no store by the buddha mind, you get angry and turn it into a fighting spirit. You give veiled vent to selfish desires and change it into a hungry ghost, or do something foolish and converted into an animal. You deluded Lee turn the border mind into all sorts of different things. That's lightweight, not my teaching. Nothing is of more gravity, and nothing more praiseworthy than living in the buddha mind. So you may think when I tell you to live in the buddha mind that it's lightweight, but believe me, it's just because it has such weight that you're unable to do it. This, however, might give you the idea that living in the boredom mind is a very difficult business. But isn't it true that if you listen carefully to my teaching, understand it well and live in the buddha mind, then simply and easily without doing any hard work. You're a living Buddha this very day. This is not something he's just saying. But he sees this potential in each of his students. Not just potential actual functioning of a buddha mind.

You decided after searing what hearing what I said that dwelling effortlessly in the buddha mind was an easy matter. But in fact is not easy. So you go on transforming it into a fighting spirit, a hungry ghost or animal. You get angry even over trifles. When you do you create the cause of rebirth as a fighting spirit. So though you may not be aware of it, you're spinning your existence as a human being creating a fighting spirit of the first order. And sure enough, if you work earnestly edit, you will not only be a fighting spirit during your lifetime, you will fall into such an existence after you die as well. Have no doubt about it. On account of self interest you toil away to turn the buddha mind into greed and desire. Since that's the cause of rebirth as a denizen of the realm of hungry ghosts, you're unknowingly paving the way for be rebirth into that realm. You're already readying yourself for a post mortem fall into a hungry ghost existent it's a foregone conclusion, you'll surely end up there owing to selfish thoughts and aims, you dwell on one thought after another fretting senselessly over things that can get you nowhere. Continuing on like that, unable to stop, you turn the buddha mind into ignorance. Ignorance causes you to be reborn as an animal. It's clear even now, while you're alive and busy creating this cause of such a wretched fate, that when you die, you'll enter that existence. I see people unaware of this, dedicating their lives to carefully fashioning the very causes of the rebirth into the three elbow evil realms. It's pitiful. I think it's something that Milarepa said about, about most of us hurtling towards the very opposite of what we weren't hurtling towards pain and suffering and through our actions and foregoing joy and, and realization

it's pitiful, they're reserving seats for the passage, say, seats on the on the bus to to suffering

but when you don't change your buddha mind into a fighting spirit, hungry ghost or animal, you can't avoid dwelling naturally in the buddha mind. It's obvious isn't it? laywoman says yes, of course it's true

we can we can translate what what Ivanka is saying here about these different realms, into how we understand things have learned how we understand psychology and and the way the brain works we know more and more about this and we we strengthen our habits in the direction of anger or jealousy or craving we

set ourselves up for more suffering through this there's that saying in New York psychology, what fires together wires together fires together our repeated return to to angry thoughts or impatience or greed whatever our flavor of the week is, then we we strengthen those habit forces.

Now as one last question and answer. Monk, you're always teaching people that they should live in the unborn. To me that seems like telling them to live purposely lessly without any aim. Bank as you call dwelling in the unborn buddha mind being without purpose. You don't stay in the unborn buddha mind yourself. Instead, you're always working at Susy plastically at other things, doing this doing that, spending all your time transforming your buddha mind into something else. What could be more purposeless than that? The monk made no reply. Banchi live in the unborn, it's certainly not purposeless. And we'll stop here and recite the four vows.

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