Always Present

Always Present

According to an eight-page biography of Bankei Yotaku (1622-93), in The Roaring Stream, this son of a samurai began Zen study at age 16, and was enlightened at age 25. He seriously began teaching Zen ten years later; and fifteen years after that, he became abbot of a monastery. By age 55, he was being sought out, by both male and female seekers of the Dharma, from all over Japan—and even from Okinawa. The reason apparently had much to do with the fact that he was not “practice” oriented. Though he didn’t like his talks to be transcribed, some were preserved by followers. Here then are various of his points (as given in the book). What he calls the “Unborn” and “buddha-mind” are alternate terms. He is speaking of the pre-cognitive “wisdom” that is innate in each human organism which is born; it is prior to our acquiring discursive thought. His purpose is to remind listeners that there is not something which they must do in order for this buddha-mind to “come into existence,” or be present.

“Just stop and look back to the origin of this self of yours. When you were born, your parents didn’t give you any happy, evil, or bitter thoughts. There was only your buddha-mind…What I teach everyone in these talks of mine is the unborn buddha-mind of illuminative wisdom, nothing else. Everyone is endowed with this buddha-mind, only they don’t know it. My reason for coming and speaking to you like this is to make it known to you.”

He means our perception which does not distinguish, in terms of the “self”; it senses the world which the body experiences, without qualifying, or critiquing, whatever is sensed. It is the facility by which we walk, without having to think about taking steps. Our actions can be performed without the need to have any ideas about how they are to be performed: without thinking that “I am a man,” it is a man acting; without the need to think “I am a woman,” there is a woman moving.

“That you see and hear and smell in this way, without giving rise to the thought that you will, is the proof that this inherent buddha-mind is unborn and possessed of a wonderful illuminative wisdom… When you’re walking along naturally, you’re walking in the harmony of the Unborn…The place in which there’s no difference in the hearing of sounds is the Unborn, the buddha-mind, and it’s perfectly equal and absolutely the same in each one of you. When we say ‘This is a man’, or ‘This is a woman’, those are designations that result from the arising of thought; they come afterward. At the place of the Unborn, before the thought arises, attributes such as ‘man’ or ‘woman’ don’t even exist.”

The Unborn buddha-mind did not originate at some point when we began giving attention to it. We were born into the presence of the buddha-mind. Nor is it something which we can lose or vacate. Qualitative, or discriminatory, thoughts which occur to us (“I am a woman”) are superimposed upon the underlying, or innate, buddha-mind. The buddha-mind is ever-present; qualitative thoughts, defining “attributes,” are sometimes also present as well.

“The reason I say it’s in the ‘Unborn’ that you see and hear, in this way, is because the mind doesn’t give ‘birth’ to any thought or inclination to see or hear. Therefore it is un-born. Being Unborn, it’s also undying: it’s not possible for what is not born to perish. This is the sense in which I say that all people have an unborn buddha-mind…You see, you are always unborn: you go along living in the buddha-mind quite unconscious of being a man or woman. But while you are doing that, perhaps you’ll happen to see or hear something that bothers you; perhaps someone will make a nasty remark about you, saying they don’t like you, or whatever. You let your mind fasten onto that, you begin to fret over it, and thoughts crowd into your mind.”

Should we, then, follow a discipline for stilling this mind, or emptying the mind of its contents?

“I won’t tell you that you have to practice such and such, that you have to uphold certain rules or precepts, or read certain sutras or other Zen writings, or that you have to do zazen…You can grasp your buddha-mind very easily, right where you sit, without that long, painstaking practice.”

His teaching was carefully explained, to a listener who stated: “Someone like me, who hasn’t engaged in any practice or arrived at any enlightenment, couldn’t possibly achieve true peace of mind simply by perceiving the necessity of living in the unborn buddha-mind, and staying just as I am.” Bankei:

“It’s like this. A group of travelers, climbing through a stretch of high mountains, gets thirsty; and one of

them strikes out and makes his way far down into the valley to fetch water. It’s not easy, but he finally finds some, and brings it back and gives his companions a drink. Don’t those who drink, without having exerted themselves, quench their thirst the same as the one who did? Now, if a person refused to drink the water because he felt that doing it was wrong, there wouldn’t be any way to quench his thirst.”

“My own struggle was undertaken mistakenly, because I didn’t happen to meet up with a clear-eyed master: Eventually, though, I discovered the buddha-mind for myself; ever since, I have been telling others about theirs, so they’ll know about it without going through that ordeal; just as those people drink water and quench their thirst, without having to go and find it for themselves.”

Yes, but aren’t the thoughts of some people “deluded”? Deluded thoughts could only be the product of, or consequence of, not recognizing that all discursive thoughts are merely appearances in the presence of the Unborn buddha-mind. Deluded, or illusory, thoughts are simply one, of the number of varieties, of discursive thoughts. A disciple: “I don’t question that there are no illusory thoughts in the primary mind; but just the same, there’s no let-up to the thoughts that keep coming into my mind. I find it impossible to stay in the Unborn.” Bankei:

“Although you arrived in the world with nothing but the unborn buddha-mind, you fell into your present deluded ways as you were growing up, by watching and listening to other people in their delusion. You

picked all this up gradually, over a long period of time, habituating your mind to it, until now your deluded mind has taken over completely and works its delusion, unchecked. But none of those deluded thoughts of yours was inborn. They weren’t there from the start. They came to exist in a mind that’s originally the Unborn.”

What is one to do, if delusive thoughts are recognized to exist?

A monk:

“I have a great difficulty subduing all the desires, and deluded thoughts, in my mind. What should I do?” Bankei: “The idea to subdue deluded thoughts is a deluded thought itself. None of those thoughts exist from the start. You conjure them up out of your own discriminations.”

Typically, a deluded thought would be to conclude that you need to concern yourself about some particular variety of thought which occurs in the presence of the Unborn buddha-mind—or, additionally, fret about whether or not there are deluded thoughts that may occur elsewhere in the human population. Such are worries that you conjure up “out of your own discriminations.” The Unborn buddhamind is not affected by such self-concerns. To a follower, he said: “Illusory thoughts are no different. If you just let them come and let them go away, and don’t put them to work or try to avoid them, then one day you’ll find that they’ve vanished completely into the Unborn mind.” So, need you stew over the nature of your thoughts?

A disciple: “Every time I clear a thought from my mind, another appears right away. Thoughts keep appearing like that, without end. What can I do about them?” Bankei:

“Clearing thoughts from the mind as they arise is like washing away blood in blood…Since you don’t know that your mind is originally Unborn (and undying and free of illusion) you think that your thoughts really exist.…You have to realize that your thoughts are ephemeral and unreal and, without either clutching at them or rejecting them, just let them come and go of themselves.”

Bankei taught that “the marvelous illumination of the Unborn buddha-mind deals perfectly with every possible situation,” which must include vagrant thoughts. The Unborn buddha-mind does not declare that some development ought to go “this way,” and not “that way.” And considering that everyone who sees, hears, smells or walks is engaged in the buddha-mind, one who recognizes this does not presume that some particular activity brings a person closer to it, or that some lack of activity takes a person further away from it. The Unborn buddha-mind is not some special state which one acquires by means of one’s desire to do so; it is unavoidable, in that we are born into it. Bankei emphasizes this repeatedly. Some are aware that their thoughts and activities arise within a sphere of innate and pre-cognitive wisdom, and some are not aware. Those abiding in the Unborn mind have no reason to be disturbed about the outcome either way; abiding means to “go on being,” without categorizing—aware that “All things are perfectly resolved in the Unborn.”