BANKEI ZEN Translations from the Record ofBankei by PETER HASKEL Yoshito Hakeda, Editor Foreword by Mary Farkas GROVE PRESS, INC. /NEW YORK 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, stored in a retrieval sys- tem, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including me- chanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. First Evergreen Edition 1984 First Printing 1984 ISBN: 0-394-6249S-9 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-81372 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bankei, 1622-169B. Bankei Zen. Translated from the Japanese. 1. Zen Buddhism—Doctrines—Early works to 1800. I. Hakeda, Yoshito S. II. Haskel, Peter. III. Title. BQ9399.E573E5 1984 294.3'927 83-81372 ISBN 0- 394-53524-3 (hard) ISBN 0-394-62493-9 (pbk.) Manufactured in the United States of America GROVE PRESS, INC., 196 West Houston Street, New York, N.Y., 10014 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, am- bition, 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 consulta- tion 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 centu- ries, 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 XI x ii •F o re w ord 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 sev- enteenth-century metaphors and logic can be used or dis- carded 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, hop- ing to study the history of Japanese Rinzai Zen, but my general coursework and the extreme difficulties of master- ing written Japanese had left me time for little else. Now that I was finally to begin my own research, all that re- mained was to choose a suitable topic. Brimming with confidence and armed with a list of high-sounding propos- als, 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 mas- ter Bankei. My disappointment must have shown. Al- though 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, dis- pensed 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 xin x iv • P refa ce 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 un- like anything I had ever imagined. Here was a living per- son addressing an audience of actual men and women, speaking to them in plain language about the most inti- mate, ordinary and persistent human problems. He an- swered 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 fusho 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 Profes- sor 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 Amer- ica, deserves particular mention. She has generously given her time and attention to reviewing the manuscript at every Preface • xv 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 Ryuichi Abe1, 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. Per- mission to use photographs included in the illustrations was graciously extended by the Tokyo publishing firms Daizo shuppan and Shunjusha and by Mrs. Hiroko Akao of Aboshi, Japan. Finally, I would like to express my ap- preciation 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 par- ticularly on selections from the Sermons and the Hogo (Instruction), for, although a certain amount of repetition occurs in these works, they are our most vivid and authen- tic 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. Respon- sibility 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 bunko series, has been largely superseded by two more recent editions that serve as the basis for the present translations. These are the Bankei zenji zenshu (Daizo shuppan, Tokyo, 1970), edited by the x v z •P r e fa c e Japanese scholar Akao Ryuji, and the Bankei zenji hogoshu (Shunjusha, Tokyo, 1971), edited by Fujimoto Tsuchi- shige.