by Peter Holleran

   The life of Zen Master Bankei Yotaku (1622-1693), considered by D.T.Suzuki to have been one of the greatest of all Zen Masters, illustrates the depths of liberating despair that often precedes an awakening. Further, we will see that, contrary to many popular notions, such awakening is often the beginning of true practice, and not the end. Bankei never tired of emphasizing to his own students, however, that much of his difficult personal ordeal would have been unnecessary had he been able to meet an enlightened teacher early in his practise. He exhorted them in the strongest terms to make the best use of his company, and to realize how fortunate they were, and said repeatedly that they themselves could realize without great struggle - so long as a true desire for enlightenment was present. His “Unborn Zen” was a refreshment of the tradition in which he employed none of the classic methods of his antecedents, but dealt with aspirants directly as he found them. Somewhat like the Buddha in the Lankavatara Sutra, he cut through all limited doctrines and spoke only of the already realized “Unborn” mind.

   Bankei was very devoted to his mother, and once confessed to her that more than anything else it was his desire to communicate the Truth to her which motivated his pursuit of Enlightenment. His childhood schooling consisted of little more than rote memorization of a Confucian classic entitled The Great Learning. Bankei was struck by the opening words of the book: “The way of Great Learning lies in illuminating the Bright Virtue.” He searched and searched but could find no one to satisfactorily explain this verse to him. His family, his teacher, and the local priest confessed their ignorance, and one day, his great heart-need unsatisfied, Bankei simply left school. He was obsessed with finding out what “Bright Virtue” meant, and he knew at the very least that he would find no answers there. His action, however, would never be acceptable to his elder brother, the head of the household, and knowing this Bankei decided to kill himself. His method of achieving this was to eat a handful of “poisonous” spiders, but to his great disappointment he did not die. When he refused to attend school his brother expelled him from the house, and at the age of eleven Bankei began a life of wandering, meditating and visiting spiritual teachers in search of the Bright Virtue.

   For fourteen years he moved about, practising harsh austerities and paying scant attention to the needs of food and shelter. At one point he decided to find the answer within himself, and he built a tiny hut for meditation, leaving only a small hole through which food could be brought to him. He sat until the flesh on his buttocks was flayed and his health broke down. The wall of his hut was marked by gobs of thick black phlegm he would spit up. Finally, Bankei realized that he was dying, and in his despair he experienced a fundamental breakthrough:

   “The master, frustrated in 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 sputem. He grew steadily worse, until death seemed imminent. He said to himself, “Everyone has to die. I’m not concerned about that. My regret is dying with the 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 breast heaved violently. It seemed his ribs would burst. Then, just at that moment, enlightenment came to him - like a bottom falling out of a bucket. Immediately, his health began to return, but still he was 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 the morning air reached his nostrils. At that instant, all attachments and obstacles were swept from his mind once and for all. The doubts that had been plaguing him ceased to exist.” (1)

   Bankei’s satoris could be said to represent a transcendance of unconscious identification with the ego, and the realization of consciousness or Mind as the substrate of all experience, that became the basis for his further practise. It was the Buddhist “seed of enlightenment”, a profound glimpse, not the final achievement, but which nevertheless wiped doubt and uncertainty from his mind.

   “For about thirty years I wandered searching for the real Tao everywhere.. But at this moment, seeing the plum blossoms, I am suddenly enlightened, and have no more doubts.” (2)

   Bankei had a deepening of his realization three years later under the guidance of a Chinese priest, who confirmed that he had indeed penetrated to the Self-essence but still needed to clarify the “matter beyond”, “discriminating wisdom”, or "the practise after Enlightenment".

   Master Po Shan similarly discoursed:

   “Therefore the proverb says, after enlightenment one should visit the Zen Masters.” The sages of the past demonstrated the wisdom of this when, after their enlightenment, they visited the Zen Masters and improved themselves greatly. One who clings to his realization and is unwilling to visit the Masters, who can pull out his nails and spikes, is a man who cheats himself.” (3)

   Garma C.C. Chang brings to our awareness the recognized distinction made in Zen and Ch’an Buddhism between the awakening to prajna-truth (or the immediate awakening to transcendental wisdom or selflessness) and Cheng-teng-cheuh (sabyaksambodhi), which is the final, perfect, complete enlightenment of Buddhahood:

   “A great deal of work is needed to cultivate this vast and bottomless Prajna-mind before it will blossom fully. It takes a long time, before perfection is reached, to remove the dualistic, selfish, and deeply rooted habitual thoughts arising from the passions. This is very clearly shown in many Zen stories, and in the following Zen proverb, for example: “The truth should be understood through sudden Enlightenment, but the fact (the complete realization) must be cultivated step by step.” (4)

   A similar progression can be seen in the enlightenment story of Hakuin, perhaps the greatest of the Rinzai teachers, who had his first experience of satori after meditating on the koan ‘Mu’ for four years:

   “He shouted: ‘Why, the world is not something to be avoided, nor is Nirvana something to be sought after!’ This realization he presented to the Abbot and some fellow disciples but they did not give their unqualified assent to it. He however burned with absolute conviction, and thought to himself that surely for centuries no one had known such a joy as was his. He was then twenty-four. In his autobiographical writings, Hakuin warns Zen students with peculiar earnestness against this pride of assurance.” (5)

   After this he endured three years of merciless hammering by the Master Shoju, who “utterly smashed his self-satisfaction.” He had another satori, which he classified as a ‘great satori’, and which his teacher confirmed by saying, “You are through.” Nevertheless, Shoju admonished him not to be content with such a small thing but to perform the ‘practise after satori.’ This is known as the “downward” practise, where one ‘descends from the mountaintop’ to become the Great Fool, highly revered in the Zen tradition. It was not until more than ten years later, and much meditation under extremely austere conditions, that Hakuin penetrated to the depths of the Lotus Sutra, and gained a most fundamental awakening:

   “The meaning of the ordinary life of his teacher Shoju was revealed, and he saw that he had been mistaken over his great satori realizations. This time there was no great reaction in the body-mind instrument.” (6)

   Paul Brunton similarly writes:

   “The glimpse, because it is situated between the mental conditions which exist before and afterwards, necessarily involves striking - even dramatic - contrast with their ordinariness. It seems to open onto the ultimate light-bathed height of human existence. But this experience necessarily provokes a human reaction to it, which is incorporated into the glimpse itself, becomes part of it. The permanent and truly ultimate enlightenment is pure, free from any admixture of reaction, since it is calm, balanced, and informed.” (7)

   The great Lankavatara Sutra speaks not only of a fundamental "turnabout in the deep seat of understanding" (prajna), but says that in "the perfect self-realisation of Noble Wisdom that follows the inconceivable transformation death of the Bodhisattva's individualised will-control, he no longer lives unto himself, but the life that he lives thereafter is the Tathagata's universalised life as manifested in its transformations." (excerpted from Dwight Goddard, ed., A Buddhist Bible) This is far beyond anything resembling a "personal enlightenment". PB described this as the ego of the sage being "pressed into" the World-Idea. Bankei many years later confessed:

   "When it comes to the truth I uncovered when I was twenty-six and living in retreat at the village of Nonaka in Ako in Harima - the truth for which I went to see Dosha and obtained his confirmation - so far as the truth is concerned, between that time and this, from beginning to end, there hasn't been a shred of difference. However, so far as penetrating the great truth of Buddhism with the perfect clarity of the Dharma Eye and realizing absolute freedom, between the time I met Dosha and today, there's all the difference of heaven and earth!" (8)

   The essence of this story can be summed up by an old Tibetan saying, "don't mistake understanding for realization, and don't mistake realization for liberation."

For more on Zen Master Bankei, see the excellent on-line A Life of Bankei, by John M Evans. Part of the Zen Masters Series.

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(1) Norman Waddell, trans., The Unborn: The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei 1622-1693 (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1984), book jacket
(2) Ryuji Akao, Bankei zenji zenshu (Complete records of Zen Master Bankei) (Tokyo: Daizo Shuppan, 1976), Ryakuroku, p. 349 (quoted in Waddell, op. cit)
(3) Garma C.C. Chang, The Practise of Zen (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1959 (1970), p. 104
(4) Ibid, p. 162-163
(5) Trevor Leggett, A Second Zen Reader (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1988), pp. 130-131
(6) Ibid, p. 132
(7) The Notebooks of Paul Brunton (Burdett, New York: Larson Publications, 1988), Vol. 16, 2.27
(8) Peter Haskel, Bankei Zen (New York, N.Y.: Grove Press, 1984, p. 113