2023-01-07 The Life and Teachings of Master Bankei 1

10:37PM Jan 30, 2023

Speakers:

Sensei Amala Wrightson

Richard von Sturmer

Keywords:

zen

bank

paul

teacher

temple

doubts

enlightenment

practice

virtue

filial piety

lived

hermitage

master

felt

life

offer

wall

records

story

years

Today is the first day of our 2023 Summer seven day sesshin. It's the seventh of January. And for the first few days of the sesshin we're going to be reading from "The Unborn: The Life and Teaching of Zen Master Bankei." This is translated and with an introduction by Norman Wadell. We're going to start off with biographical material - have a little bit more of this than we often do for the Chinese masters. Bankei, of course, is more recent Japanese master. So we'll probably not get through all the material in one teisho.

Bankei Yotaku was born in 1622. So he's about 100 years roughly earlier than Master Hakuin. His father, Sugawara Dorsetsu, who was originally from the island of Shikoku, and for generations, the family ancestors had been physicians of samurai rank in the service of the ruling Awa(?) clan. For reasons now not known, Dorsetsu resigned his post and as a masterless samurai, or ronin, crossed over the Inland Sea to the province of Bitchu (?), where he married. After moving twice more, he settled finally in Hamada, where he presumably gained a livelihood through the practice of medicine.

Bankei was one of the nine children born to the fourth of five sons. His boyhood name was Moochie, which translates roughly as don't fall behind. When Bankei was 10, his father died, leaving the duty of raising him and the other children to his wife and his eldest son, Masa Yasu, who continued the family tradition as a practitioner of Chinese medicine.

The records of Bankei's life revealed that he was an intelligent, highly sensitive child, but at the same time rather unruly and uncommonly strong willed. His mother told him that even from the young age of two or three, he showed an aversion to death. The family found that by talking about death, or pretending to be dead, they could stop his crying. Not stopping it, not because he would be happy about it because of because he would be shocked.

Later, when he made a nuisance of himself by leading the neighborhood children in Mischeif, the same methods were used to bring them into line. Every year, on the fifth day of the fifth month, the occasion of the boys Festival, the village youth took part in stone throwing contests, dividing into two sides, and hurling small stones at one another from opposite sides of a nearby river. This annual event had been held in the district for over 500 years since the Heian period, in order to inculcate the manly virtues in the young boys. We are told that whichever side Bankai was on invariably one because he would never retreat, no matter how hard the stones rain down on him. Get a little bit of a like a vignette of patriarch will Japan with the story match Oh proud As, and certainly not all of us may may relate to this story. And it's important to understand that it's, it's, it's point, the fact that bunk a was would never retreat. There are many other ways of never retreating and never giving up. That can. If we have these traits in our personality, they can be helpful, but it doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be good good at stone throwing fights.

At the age of 11, less than a year after his father's death, he was sent to the Village School, where he took an immediate interest in his studies. But the calligraphy lessons held after school at a temple in a neighboring village were a different matter. For these he harbored an intense dislike, to avoid the tedious monotony of copying and re copying Chinese characters from the teachers copybook. He made a practice of always returning home well before the class was over. Although Massa Yasu took his young brother to task repeatedly for this, his scolding had apparently little effect. In returning home Bankai had to cross a river that his brother instructed the ferryman not to allow him to board if he should come along early. You can sort of sense this elder brothers desperation and trying to rein in his his younger brother here. Pancake was not easily deterred, however, the ground must continue under the water he declared, and he strode right into the stream struggling along over the bottom until he merged breathless at the far bank. Very stubborn boy. But wanting to avoid further conflict with his brother Bonnke thought of committing suicide. He had heard that eating poisonous spiders was fatal. So he swallowed a mouthful of them and shut himself up inside a small Buddhist trying to await the end. Many hours later, seeing that he was still alive, he abandoned the attempt and went home. I guess we can be thankful that the that the spiders didn't kill him. But we'll see in the story, the intensity of the conflict that that had developed between him and his his older brother, which would have been especially painful to young men immersed in Confucian teachings with filial piety is so incredibly important and central most of us don't contemplate suicide as small children or as children, but just reading this now I had had a flash of memory of around the same age leaving home deciding I was going to leave home and actually just going up into some bushes just on the side of the my parents house driveway. But it just gives us a sense from the memory gives me a sense of how how intense and and

all encompassing these conflicts can feel to it to a small child.

At the village school Bank A was subjected to the same curriculum given to all Tokugawa schoolboys. The recitation of Confucian texts repeated over and over until they came automatically to the Lopes. One day the class was taking up the great learning. This is one of the four books of Confucianism. And the teacher came to the central words, the way of great learning lies in clarifying bright verse, you say that again, the way of great learning lies In clarifying bright virtue by UNK interrupted the teacher, what is bright virtue? He asked. The teacher repeating the glosses given in one of the traditional commentaries answered the intrinsic nature of good in each person. It's a little bit like the quite well known teaching of shog, young Trungpa, who, who talked about putting trust in our basic sanity, our basic goodness or an intrinsic health. Bank, he then asked what the intrinsic nature of man was, and was told it's his fundamental nature. So pretty circular answer there. Then what is that? He persisted? The ultimate truth of heaven, replied the teacher. None of these answers set a phosphide Bank A, a deeper explanation was needed. And even say there wasn't an explanation that it was needed, but but the thing itself, that he was searching for, not satisfied with these various descriptions that he was being given. He wanted to know what right virtue really meant in terms of his own practical experience. This questioning marks the awakening of religious doubt in his consciousness, which was most likely already disposed in that direction, because of the recent loss of his father. Bonnke himself spoke of this critical juncture 6060 years later, as the beginning of his search to discover the buddha mind. In any case, his questioning of bright virtue soon grew into an all consuming passion, fired by unquenchable doubts, he now embarked upon an urgent and relentless religious quest that would occupy the next 14 years and determine the future of his entire life.

At the beginning, he took every opportunity that presented itself to ask others for help. A group of Confucian scholars who may be pressed for an answer, they were at a loss to give, offered the advice that he might try try the Zen priests because quotes they know about such knotty problems and quote, but there were no Zen temples in the immediate vicinity. So he was unable to follow their advice. And we should remember here that he was still a child with 10 or 11. Bonnke had to consent content himself with questioning more Confucius and such Buddhist priest as he found in temples nearby. In addition, he attended every sermon, lecture meeting and other religious gathering that came to his intention, attention. Afterward, he would run home and tell his mother what had been said. And as a, as a footnote here about his mother that she spent, she spent the latter half of her life as a Buddhist nun. So presumably after all her children were grown up, living in a small temple, which vancare was found time to go to to visit her. She lived to the age of 90, dying in his son's arms in 16. At this extent of bonkers devotion to his mother, and his deep commitment to the principles of filial piety, or be it from his own Zen standpoint, can be felt throughout his TV shows. In an entry in the yo girl key, we read, bank a one spoke in a sermon of the sense of filial piety that he felt as a boy, which was responsible, he said for his entry into religious life in the first place, and for his subsequent achievement of enlightenment. Real filial devotion, he said, should not stop at merely caring for one's parents. A truly filial child. should clarify the way of deliverance, so as to be able to make his parents realize it to this, this is a way of integrating this, this deep teaching of filial piety that is so important in in Asian countries and the way of the bodhisattva. Seeing that they then not to

we can also imagine that that bunk a running home to tell his mother about his latest lecture that he's been to, may have been a factor in our own decision to become a nun later in life.

But such inquiries bought him no glimpse of understanding. He was unable to find a single person who could offer him any good guidance in the right direction. Thoroughly discouraged, he wandered about like astray mountain lamb, aimlessly and alone in some quotes from his own teaching. Now, even his schoolwork lost all interest for him, a development so displeasing to his already long suffering brother, that bond K was finally banished from the family house for good. Still, only 11 years old Bankai was thrown solely on his own resources. Fortunately, a close friend of the family, taking pity on him, stepped forward and offered him the use of a small hut in the hills behind his house. And we can imagine that but possibly this was an arrangement between the brother and the family. Friend, thinking oh, well, we'll we'll humor the boy and then he'll he'll, he'll come right you give him give him a bit of leeway. But he'll grow sick of the harsh life that he was going to have to live in order to undertake his search. But he didn't give up. As the tail shows us we continue.

Bank A if the records are built to be to be believed, does not seem to have been unduly troubled by this turn of events. On the contrary, he seems to have welcomed it as a chance to devote himself to his problem, secure from all outside distraction, accepting the neighbor's offer. He wrote the words, shook your hand or practice Hermitage, on a plank of wood, propped it up outside the entrance and settle down in earnest to devote himself to his own clarification of bright virtue. And we can perhaps assume also that this this friend family friend would have been taking food to him in his hermitage.

The records are morally silent regarding the next several years. At one point, it seems he spent time at a temple of the shin sect located close by there, he must have learned about that schools practice of the nembutsu the calling of the name of Amida Buddha Namu that has Namo Amida Butsu Namu Amida Butsu Namo Amida Butsu Banchi lived for a while. He says a reference in his TV shows two long sessions devoted to the constant practice of the nembutsu days on end and a number to Samadhi perhaps belongs to this this period. In his 15 year bank, he lived for a while in a Shingon temple, where he presumably familiarized himself to some extent with the teachings and practices of Esoteric Buddhism. The head priest of this temple, impressed by the young boys resolution tried to induce him to stay on as his disciple Bonnke refused the offer. Neither the shin nor the Shingon seats were to his liking. As the urge to stay on and become a disciple was, is a motif you could say that appears in the story of the Buddha to where the two different teachers that he trained under both invited him to stay, seeing his seeing his qualities and his potential. The next year, having turned 16 He walked the 20 miles that separated Hamada from the city of our call to visit the zoo Yoji, a temple of the Zen set that had been built 22 years before for the incumbent habit, on pause in jaw on Paul belong to the Rinzai tradition. His specific affiliation being the mainstream of that school, which traced its descent from the great Zen masters of the Kamakura Period dial and de tal. 70 years old Winbond K visited him in 1638, on port and wide reputation as a stern taskmaster, who demanded total dedication from his monks. A biographical notice of UNPO included in bond case records tell us that few were bold hearted enough to enter his chambers, and they usually flared before too long, so not so surprising really. This is pretty much the mold of her upper Rinzai master fears.

Right off bank a total overhaul of the difficulty he was having, in trying to come to terms with bright virtue. On Paul replied, that if he wanted to discover what it meant, he would have to practice as in seated meditation. There must have been something about home Paul and the Zen Teachings and practice he embodied that struck a responsive chord and bunkie because then in there, he asked on Paul to give him ordination as a Buddhist monk, on Paul, no doubt pleased to grant this request coming as it did from such an obviously determined young man, immediately shaved bunkies head, he gave him the religious name your taboo, which means long polishing, implied in this long polishing of the Mind Gem, the jewel of mind. Bank A the name by which he is best known, he required in his early 30s when he served as a term as a teacher in the trading halls halls of NIOSH Gingy and Kyoto. The this immediate ordination wouldn't be the normal practice, but clearly on, on Paul was

making an exception because of the quality the qualities that he could see in bank he has his already highly developed devotion to inquiry. How did the Tibetan teacher we talked off yesterday but carefully looking into the naked essence of one's own mind.

Although we have no specific information about the way in which oboe instructed Bank A, we can reasonably assume that bank A was subjected to a demanding training program. During the three years he was under Olympos guidance. So Zen was of course the chief ingredient of training bank, he probably did some work on koans as well, although no clear evidence reveals this, and there is some indication that homepod may not have laid the same stress on koans as his contemporaries did. At 19, after three years at Zoo yorgi van Kaye set out heading east on an extended journey around the country that eventually took him throughout the Kyoto, Kyoto, Kyoto, Osaka area, and as far west as the island of Kyushu. Once he took leave on Paul, he had enough no fixed address. He stayed in temples, but more often he lived a solitary live in rude self made huts, or frequently to judge from his records, he merely slipped in the open. The privations of this life were great, but he faced them with a more than spat and disdain for hunger and extremes of season and temperature. He is reported to have lived among beggars for several years, first under the Gojo bridge in Kyoto, and later beside Tenmangu shrine in Osaka, where he slept with nothing but reads for a covering. The one of the great teachers mentioned earlier for the Rinzai in Japan, Dido also was said to have lived under a bridge and called Kyoto. So, it again this this element is is could of course, be somewhat mythologized and in line with previous masters, we don't know.

From afar the following account of Bunco himself, we can form a picture of what his life was like at this time. Although the discipled, who recites it is that it tells but 110 1000s of the actual circumstances. So this is somebody reporting what Bunco said. I pressed myself without mercy, draining myself mentally and physically. At times, I practice deep in the mountains, in places completely cut off from all human contact. I fashioned primitive shelters out of paper, pulled that over me and did says in seated inside, sometimes I would make a small lean to by pulling up two walls of thick paper boards, and sit in solitary darkness inside doings as in never lying down to rest, even for a moment. Whenever I heard of some teacher whom I thought might be able to give me advice, I went immediately to visit him. I lived that way for several years. There were few few places in the country, I did not set foot. He then, in 1645, after four years of this very rigorous practice, he returned to to own Paul, he was now 23 And still fell, he was no closer to resolving his doubts about the Brian virtue. He is said to have been weeping in discouragement, as he told on pa Paul, how he had been unable to find a single person in all his travels, who could give him the kind of help he wanted. On pa his reply was, it's your desire to find someone that keeps you from your goal. He was telling Bankai that he would never be able to achieve enlightenment as long as he persisted in searching for an answer outside himself. We many of us have this this orientation that is probably not fully conscious of, of wanting to find some one or some community which, which will fix things. That will give us the key to life, you could say. Of course, as long as this we have any kind of idea in our head about what we're looking for, then that's limited. And if we're looking for it, we won't find the truth because we'll be looking for this concept. We have the truth Somebody in the inside school gave gave me a t shirt which had on meditation, it's not what she think.

The words seem to have had their intended effect. Bank a problem promptly lift again. This time he stayed nearby, building a hermitage in the countryside to the north of a coal castle. As if to underscore his determination to accomplish his end entirely on his own. He now isolated himself completely from contact with the outside, walling himself up within his tiny drilling. He said constantly day and night, dedicating himself to the ever greater with ever greater urgency to as as in resolved just as the Buddha before him had been not to get up until he had found the way through. Eventually, his buttocks and thighs became inflamed and swollen from the constant contact with the bare rock floor. They began to fester. Still, he kept sitting, he gave up eating for weeks at a time, he threw cold water over himself whenever he felt even the slightest approach of the demons of sleep. Here is one of several descriptions we have of life in his heart. And it's interesting for the the practicalities of being ever been sealed up inside a hat. It says the room about 10 feet square resembled nothing so much as a prison cell, there was only one small opening just a large enough for an arm to pass through the door, he placed a shirt with mud, so that no one could enter to bother him. Food was passed as them through the hole in the wall twice each day. After he had finished eating it, he placed the ball outside the opening, once again, a preview was arranged just below the wall so that he could relieve himself from the inside of the room through a small aperture made for that purpose. You'd have to make sure you pretty good aim, I think we'll make that work

the the Zen Lutron Jura is quite full of, of stories like this of the the great links that these masters went to to awaken. And this sealing oneself up in a hermitage is is still practiced in the Tibetan tradition, at least with with Lamas will be in retreat for years. But it's just with just these come with a caveat. They, they can be inspiring and, and they can go to someone to go to, to push our own boundaries. But we shouldn't just copy the outer form and think that somehow if we, if we don't sleep, or if we don't move from our mat, for certainly a period of time, then we're we're proving something this this kind of devotion comes out of the longing for the truth and is a consequence of then that longing rather than necessarily evidence of it.

When I was working on Mu i heard from from a Dharma brother he, he described what he his week, the week that he had leading up to his cancer experience. Of course, he shouldn't have been talking about it because it's not usually not helpful, or pretty much always not helpful to others to hear these things. But I decided to do what she what he had done with not slept for a week for the week of sushi. And at one point, I got a note from one of the monitors, urging me to get some rest and get in and eat and because I was looking so awful. I'm not actually I think it was something I had to do. I had to go through that audit find my own way. But it was also

really only valuable in terms of my my learning that that it wasn't the way that I needed to proceed at that point

so can imagine punk a sealed up inside his his 10 foot square room

the long years of struggle had weakened him both physically and mentally. He contracted tuberculosis. He tells himself in this famous passage from his TV shows my utter neglect of health, and the years of physical punishment, finally took its toll and came to a head in a serious illness, my condition steadily worsened. I grew weaker and weaker by the day, whenever I spared gouts of bloody sputum, as big as thumbnails appeared. Once I spat against a wall, and the globule stuck and slid to the ground in bright red beads, the illness reached a critical stage for a whole week I was unable to swallow anything except some thin rice broth. Then, the property has concerned disciples who were who were feeding him as risebrough through the hole in the in the Hermitage wall called in a doctor and the doctor who examined him as reported to have thrown aside his medicine spoon, in other words, basically conceding defeat that he Bankai was past the point where, where his medicine could be of any help. Bunco was now resigned to dying. But with things at the blackest, his dramatic personal struggle to attain enlightenment came to an end. I felt a strange sensation in my throat. I spat against a wall, a mess of black flim large as a Soapberry rolled down the side. Suddenly, just at that instant, I realized that what was I realized what it was that had escaped me until now. All things are perfectly resolved in the unborn. All things are perfectly resolved in the unborn. After 14 years of critical hardships, he had achieved a decisive enlightenment. his doubts and uncertainties disappearing like a dream. Immediately he felt his strength begin to return, his appetite improved almost miraculously and weathered his health. Again, these these stories of of spontaneous recovery from illness are also peppered through the Zen literature.

course there may have been multiple deaths of practitioners in improper proportion to the number of these spontaneous recoveries, but they are they are a feature of of the stories around Zen practitioners and they don't not so hard to understand when we when we think in terms of body and mind not too

soon after this, according to the accounts given into biographical records, another enlightenment occurred occasion when the fragrant smell of plum blossoms was born to him on a nearby stream. And a little bit more aesthetically pleasing than gobs of bloody sputum falling down the walk go down the wall. One version of the of his biography links these two experiences together. The master frustrated in all his attempts to resolve the feeling of doubt which weighed so heavily on his mind became deeply disheartened. Signs of serious illness appeared, He began to cough up bloody bits of sputum. He screws did We were worse until death seemed imminent. He said to himself, everyone has to die. I'm not concerned about that. My regret is dying with a great matter I've been struggling with all these years since I was a small boy still unresolved. His eyes flushed with hot tears, his breath, breast heaved violently. It seemed his drip, his ribs would burst, thin, and just at that moment, enlightenment came to him, like the bottom falling out of a bucket, immediately herself began to return. But still he seemed unable to express what he had realized. Then, one day, in the early hours of the morning, the scent of plum blossoms carried to him in on the morning ear, reached his nostrils. At that instant, all attachments and obstacles were swept from his mind once and for all, the doubts that have been plaguing him ceased to exist. So, these two experiences changed everything. And he, once he got strong enough, once this health was good enough for him to travel, he made his way back to Zoo Yoji to tell UNPO what had happened. And of course, on Paul was was overjoyed, that is the marrow of Bodhidharma has bones he is said to have cried from now on, no one will anywhere will be able to touch you, he said acknowledging bunkers understanding when he says no one says no one will anywhere will be able to touch you in what he's meaning is that with with this expense experience, bank he has become imperturbable. No matter what might happen. He won't be shaken by it. He told him however, that he should obtain very a cat verification from other masters Gudo Tor Shaku the most highly regarded Rinzai Zen teacher of the day was the man on Paul recommended. Pancake who was now 26 proceeded to the province of meno present Gifu prefecture where gudas Temple dicin G was located. But unfortunately Gudo wasn't there, he spent a good amount of his time traveling around to all his sub temples teaching and he was away in Adel wind bank, he came to visit him. So, bank A then then decided he would try his luck with some of the other Zen teachers in the vicinity. But he was pretty disappointed by them, none of them were able to give him the confirmation that he was after. So, he then spends more time in the Hermitage is done different places around the hills of meno which were forested. And the writer of this introduction says, he applied himself to the important post enlightenment phase of his training. This this is considered very important to, to integrate the insight that one has and an in awakening into one's understanding. And he apparently spent some of his time considering what would he would, how he would teach as he has in the future. To respond to people's needs, and to teach in a way that people could understand and, and make real for themselves. Then in 1651, when he was still engaged in the spirit of affliction, news reached him of a Chinese priest called dosha who had was visiting at the port of Nagasaki and so Ron Paul organized to travel to Nagasaki to see what this Chinese priests might have to offer and whether he could confirm his understanding.

Just might, the question might arise hearing this is why why the need to seek verification? Why did Obama suggest this to Ivanka, and surely the experience itself is is in itself verification. And that is true in a certain sense. But this tradition we are part of emphasizes, being tested by someone with insight. And it has to do with this. The long view of passing down the Dharma from generation to generation, bringing one's insight to others, this is not a private thing. It's this is what the transmission stories about the transmission are all about. It's having this one extra spirit, this experience for oneself, and also being able to demonstrate it. And this this aspect of the tradition helps. It's not it's not perfect, but it helps to guard against incomplete realization. So that the whole tradition doesn't decay. Of course, it does decay at times and we have somebody come along like Master Hakuin, who revives it, but this this importance of it not just being something one proclaims to one's oneself. having had this experience, but it is is confirmed by the teacher will then say well,

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