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  BANKEI ZEN

  Translations from the Record of Bankei

  Portrait of Bankei, said to be a self-portrait. Property of the Yakushi-in, Kawasaki. (Courtesy Daizō shuppan)

  BANKEI ZEN

  Translations from the Record of Bankei

  by PETER HASKEL

  Yoshito Hakeda, Editor

  Foreword by Mary Farkas

  The author wishes to acknowledge the cooperation of the First Zen Institute of America, New York.

  Copyright © 1984 by Peter Haskel and Yoshito Hakeda

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or [email protected].

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bankei, 1622–1693.

  Bankei Zen.

  Translated from the Japanese.

  1. Zen Buddhism—Doctrines—Early works to 1800.

  1. Hakeda, Yoshito S. II. Haskel, Peter, III. Title.

  BQ9399.E573E5 1984 294.3′927 83–81372

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9696-5

  Grove Press

  an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  www.groveatlantic.com

  TO MY TEACHER, YOSHITO HAKEDA, who spoke directly with the masters of long ago and taught me to listen, this book is gratefully dedicated.

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  Foreword

  Preface

  Introduction

  SERMONS

  Part I

  Opening of the sermons

  Listen carefully

  Precepts

  The same old thing

  I don’t talk about Buddhism

  Meeting masters: Dōsha and Ingen

  I’m ready to be your witness!

  Growing up deluded

  Thirty days in the Unborn

  Ask me and I’ll tell you

  “The Kappa”

  Don’t beat sleeping monks

  Mind reading

  Moving ahead/sliding back

  Old wastepaper

  Self-centered-ness

  Bankei’s Kannon

  Getting sidetracked

  Self-power/other-power

  Dreams

  Everybody has the Buddha Mind

  Being living buddhas

  Servants, samurai, husbands and wives

  “Buddha” Magoemon

  Like little children of three or four

  Getting angry

  Blindness and the Unborn

  Part II

  Now I’m going to talk to the women

  The old nurse from Sanuki

  Nothing to do with rules

  Devices

  Plain speaking

  Illness and the Buddha Mind

  Being free in birth and death

  The original face

  Entrances

  To practice is hard

  The crow and the cormorant

  Let it be

  The lawsuit

  Mu

  The crows go kaa-kaa, the sparrows, chuu-chuu

  Two thirds is with the Unborn

  Looking for enlightenment

  No delusion, no enlightenment

  Water and ice

  Stopping thoughts

  The mirror

  Fire is hot

  Be stupid!

  Smoking

  No such thing as enlightenment

  Abide in the Buddha Mind

  When thoughts arise

  Letting things take care of themselves

  HŌGO (Instruction)

  Duality

  The dog and the chicken

  Farming with the Buddha Mind

  The travelers

  Parents

  Becoming an expert at delusion

  The living Buddha Mind

  The “teetotaler”

  Suppression is delusion too

  Right now

  Sleeping and waking

  Sendai

  The place of the Unborn

  Letting go

  Just as you are

  Not even a trace

  Kantarō’s question

  Jōsen

  The gambler

  Miracles

  A visiting monk

  Being/non-being

  Why are we born?

  The one who sees and hears

  The woman afraid of thunder

  Bereavement

  Blinding your eyes

  Everything is smoothly managed

  Where do you go?

  The golden ball

  Thinking

  Women

  The merchant’s dream

  It’s fine just to feel that way

  Using the three inches

  Koans

  The great doubt

  Is this buddha?

  Layman Chōzen

  The craftsman’s dilemma

  The angry abbot

  When I first began to search

  All the difference of heaven and earth

  Watch where you’re going

  The proof

  True acceptance

  My old illness

  Seven out of ten

  The monk Zeshin

  FROM THE GYŌGŌ RYAKKI

  Suspicion

  Handling delinquents

  The missing paper

  POEMS

  Chinese Poems

  Japanese Poems

  LETTERS

  Letter from Umpo and Bankei’s reply

  Letter to Sasaki Nobutsugu

  Letter to Yōsen

  Letter to Rintei

  Letter to Lady Naga

  Instruction for the Layman Gesso

  “WORDS AND DEEDS” (Miscellaneous Materials)

  Bankei’s childhood

  The priest’s Fudō

  At the post station

  Bankei faces death

  Among the beggars

  The missing coins

  The Confucians

  The rich man’s wife

  The wolf

  The steward’s invitation

  Heaven and hell

  From your own mouth

  Genshin’s thousand buddhas

  Offerings

  Counting

  Soen’s special teaching

  Positive and negative

  Layman Gessō’s runny nose

  The thief

  Bankei and the stingy monk

  The samurai’s fan

  Bankei’s “no rules”

  Chōkei’s seven cushions

  The fencing master

  Nanryū’s place

  The rays of light

  As you are is it!

  Settei’s medicine

  Shopping for the best

  The Confucian’s question

  Waste paper/clean paper

  Bankei’s natural method

  Bankei’s night sermon

  The old tree

  Ba
nkei and the blind man

  Hachiroemon

  NOTES

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  Portrait of Bankei

  Frontispiece

  Following page

  Bodhidharma, painted by Bankei

  “The Unborn,” calligraphy by Bankei

  Medicines and medicine box used by Bankei’s father and elder brother / Bankei’s meditation rock / Portrait of Tao-che

  Portrait of Bankei by Yamamoto Soken

  Views of the Ryōmonji

  Statue of Umpo / Statuette of Śākyamuni

  Calligraphy by Bankei

  Street scene, from a seventeenth-century wood-block print

  Main gate of the Hōshinji

  FOREWORD

  These days many people travel hundreds or thousands of miles to see or hear Zen masters. Some meet them. Some study with them. Few have a chance to ask them: What shall I do with my anger, jealousy, hate, fear, sorrow, ambition, delusions—all the problems that occupy human minds? And how shall I deal with my work, my mother and father, my children, my husband or wife, my servants, my employers—the relations that make up human life? Can Zen help me?

  If the Zen Master Bankei were available for consultation at a nearby street corner today, he’d be saying much the same things he did to comfort and enlighten the parade of housewives, merchants, soldiers, officials, monks and thieves who sought guidance from him three centuries ago.

  Bankei, the enlightened human being, shares his own experience with us as a real person, speaking his own real words. The advice he gives strikes right to the heart. It is highly personal, not theoretical or abstract. The nature of human beings has changed very little through the centuries, despite numerous efforts to change it. Nor does it seem likely to be less full of passion, jealousy and hate in the next thousand years, here or in outer space.

  When Bankei had completed his spiritual training and monastic career, which included the founding of a number of temples and the training of innumerable monks and priests, his true concern was with the problems of ordinary people. He had wanted to share what he had discovered with his mother, his first audience, and, I believe, was finally able to do so before she died, a very old lady. He wants us to have it too.

  Peter Haskel has found Bankei’s real voice. In this fine work by a young translator who has lived intimately with Bankei for the last ten years and knows him through and through, we are brought smack into Bankei’s world. It seems to be no translation at all. Although all the tools of scholarship have been meticulously used, no traces of them mar the polish.

  No one needs to explain what Bankei means. His seventeenth-century metaphors and logic can be used or discarded without disturbing the substance of his teaching. What comes through is often just good hard common sense. Except for one thing: the Unborn Buddha Mind. Whether called by this name or any other, it is the heart of Zen as well as the core of Bankei’s teaching. Bankei’s approach shows that there is no need to be Japanese or imitate the Japanese to appreciate or acquire it.

  MARY FARKAS

  First Zen Institute of America

  New York City, April 1983

  PREFACE

  My first encounter with Bankei was in the fall of 1972. I had arrived at Columbia University two years earlier, hoping to study the history of Japanese Rinzai Zen, but my general coursework and the extreme difficulties of mastering written Japanese had left me time for little else. Now that I was finally to begin my own research, all that remained was to choose a suitable topic. Brimming with confidence and armed with a list of high-sounding proposals, I went to see my advisor, Professor Yoshito Hakeda. He listened patiently, nodded his head, and then, ignoring all my carefully prepared suggestions, asked me if I had considered working on the seventeenth-century Zen master Bankei. My disappointment must have shown. Although I had never actually read Bankei, I had a vague impression of him as a kind of subversive in the world of Zen, a heretical figure who didn’t believe in rules, dispensed with koans and tried to popularize and simplify the deadly serious business of enlightenment. I was hoping to deal with a Zen master closer to the “orthodox” tradition, I tried to explain, perhaps one of the great teachers of the Middle Ages. “Take a look at Bankei’s sermons if you have a chance,” Professor Hakeda urged, “you may find them interesting.” My skepticism remained, however, and I did nothing further about Bankei, determined to find a more “respectable” topic of my own choosing.

  The following year, Professor Hakeda raised the subject of Bankei again, and, in spite of my obvious reluctance, pressed on me a small volume of Bankei’s sermons. “Try reading a few,” he said.

  Courtesy required that I at least glance over the text, and late that evening I turned to the first sermon and slowly began to read it through. What I found took me completely by surprise. Bankei’s approach to Zen was unlike anything I had ever imagined. Here was a living person addressing an audience of actual men and women, speaking to them in plain language about the most intimate, ordinary and persistent human problems. He answered their questions, listened to their stories, offered the most surprising advice. He told them about his own life as well—the mistakes he’d made, the troubles he’d had, the people whom he’d met. There was something refreshingly original and direct about Bankei’s fushō zen, his teaching of the “Unborn.” “Here it is,” Bankei seemed to say, “it really works! I did it, and you can too.”

  The further I read, the more entranced I became. The next three nights, I could barely sleep. When I returned to Professor Hakeda’s office, I told him about my experience. “You see,” he said, laughing, “I knew that Bankei was for you!”

  On my next visit, I arrived with a partial translation of the first sermon and began to read through the text, with Professor Hakeda making comments and corrections as I proceeded. This was the first of many such meetings which continued for nearly ten years and of which this book is the result. The work is, in a real sense, a tribute to Professor Hakeda. Without his assistance, his unfailing patience, wisdom and encouragement, it would never have come into being.

  Among the others who contributed to the present work, Mary Farkas, Director of the First Zen Institute of America, deserves particular mention. She has generously given her time and attention to reviewing the manuscript at every stage, offering countless valuable suggestions. I am also deeply grateful to Professor Philip Yampolsky and the staff of Columbia’s East Asian Library for their expert assistance over the years, and to my colleague Ryūichi Abé, who participated in many of the translation sessions. Special thanks are due to Maria Collora, who kindly helped me in editing the English translation, and to Sandy Hackney and John Storm, who read through the completed text. Permission to use photographs included in the illustrations was graciously extended by the Tokyo publishing firms Daizō shuppan and Shunjūsha and by Mrs. Hiroko Akao of Aboshi, Japan. Finally, I would like to express my appreciation to Hannelore Rosset, my editor at Grove, for the extraordinary care she has lavished on the manuscript.

  I have tried to offer Western readers a glimpse into Bankei’s singular world, using his own words and those of his disciples and descendants. The translations focus particularly on selections from the Sermons and the Hōgo (Instruction), for, although a certain amount of repetition occurs in these works, they are our most vivid and authentic records of Bankei’s teaching. Also included are a series of Bankei’s letters, examples of his poetry, and a sampling of materials from various anthologies composed in Chinese after his death. The criteria that guided my selection in each area were purely subjective: I chose those items that seemed to me most interesting and colorful, those that illumined certain aspects of Bankei’s character and times or were otherwise simply charming in themselves. Responsibility for any oversight or errors, here and elsewhere in the book, is wholly my own.

  The earliest modern collection of Bankei’s teachings, the Bankei zenji goroku (Tokyo, 1942), edited by D. T. Suzuki in the Iwanami bunkō series, h
as been largely superseded by two more recent editions that serve as the basis for the present translations. These are the Bankei zenji zenshū (Daizō shuppan, Tokyo, 1970), edited by the Japanese scholar Akao Ryūji, and the Bankei zenji hōgoshū (Shunjūsha, Tokyo, 1971), edited by Fujimoto Tsuchishige. Fujimoto, a native of Bankei’s hometown of Aboshi, devoted a lifetime to collecting and publishing materials related to the Master and his teachings. All modern students of Bankei owe him a great debt.

  Shortly before this book was to go to press, Professor Hakeda passed away after a long and courageous bout with cancer. It was his lifelong desire to revive the true teaching of Buddhism in both East and West, and his entire career was a selfless testament to that endeavor. All of us who knew him will miss him sorely and will always treasure his memory.

  PETER HASKEL

  New York City

  September 1983

  SERMONS of the Zen Master BANKEI

  PART I

  Opening of the Sermons

  When the Zen Master Bankei Butchi Kōsai,1 founder of the Ryōmonji2 at Aboshi in Banshū, was at the Great Training Period3 [held] at the Ryōmonji in the winter of the third year of Genroku,4 there were 1,683 monks listed in the temple register.5 Those who attended included not only Sōtō and Rinzai6 followers but members of the Ritsu, Shingon, Tendai, Pure Land, True Pure Land and Nichiren Schools,7 with laymen and monks mingled together, thronging round the lecture seat.8 One sensed the Master was truly the Teacher of Men and Devas9 for the present age.

  At that time, the Master mounted the lecture seat and addressed the assembly of monks and laymen, saying: “We’ve got a big crowd of both monks and laymen here at this meeting, and I thought I’d tell you about how, when I was young, I struck on the realization that the mind is unborn. This part about ‘the mind,’ [though,] is something secondary. You monks, when you abide only in the Unborn, [will find that] in the Unborn, there’s nothing anyone needs to tell you, nothing you need to hear. Because the Buddha Mind is unborn and marvelously illuminating, it gets easily turned into whatever comes along. So, as long as I’m telling the lay people here not to change themselves into these different things that come their way and trade their Buddha Mind for thoughts, you monks may as well listen too!”