Sunday, 27 January 2019

Bankei’s Song of Original Mind

It’s also known as the Rain Song as there’s a tradition that after a drought it was sung by all the villagers and a plentiful rain followed.

There’s not much for me to say about it. It’s like Buddha holding up a flower. Nothing to do but smile.

Unborn and imperishable

Is the original mind

Earth, water, fire and wind

A temporary lodging for the night

Attached to this

Ephemeral burning house

You yourselves light the fire, kindle the flames

In which you’re consumed

Search back

To the time

When you were born

You can’t remember a thing at all!

Keep your mind as it was

When you came into the world

And instantly this very self

Is a living “thus-come” one

Ideas of

What’s good, what’s bad

All due to

This self of yours

In winter, a bonfire

Spells delight

But when summertime arrives

What a nuisance it becomes!

And the breezes

You loved in summer

Even before autumn’s gone

Already have become a bother

When you’ve got money

You despise the poor

But have you forgotten how it was

Back when you were poor yourself?

The money you amassed in life

Amassed with a demonic heart

You’ll watch with horror and alarm

Seized upon by hungry ghosts

Throwing your whole life away

Sacrificed to the thirst for gold

But when you saw your life was through

All your money was no use

Clinging, craving and the like

I don’t have them on my mind

That’s why nowadays I can say

The whole world is truly mine!

Your longing for the one you love

Is for the present time alone

It only exists by reason of

The past before she’d come along

To recall someone

Means you can’t forget

Not to recall them

That you never had forgot

Thinking back over the past

You find it was an evening’s dream

Realize that, and you’ll see

Everything is just a lie

Those who feel embittered by

Life in this floating world of grief

Anguish themselves, distress their minds

Brooding over empty dreams

Since, after all, this floating world

Is unreal

Instead of holding onto things in

Your mind, go and sing!

Only original mind exists

In the past and in the future too

Instead of holding onto things in

Your mind, let them go!

When you don’t attach to things

The floating world will cease to be

Nothing is left, nothing at all

That’s what “living tathagata” means

Having created

The demon mind yourself

When it torments you mercilessly

You’re to blame and no one else

When you do wrong

Your mind’s the demon

There’s no hell

To be found outside

Abominating hell

Longing for heaven

You make yourself suffer

In a joyful world

You think that good

Means hating what is bad

What’s bad is

The hating mind itself

Good, you say,

Means doing good

Bad indeed

The mind that says so!

Good and bad alike

Roll them both into one ball

Wrap it up in paper and then

Toss it out—forget it all!

Mysteries and miracles—

There are no such things!

But when you fail to understand

The world’s full of weird happenings

This is the phantom

Who deceives

Who makes us take the false world

To be real

Fame, wealth, eating and drinking, sleep and sensual delight—

Once you’ve learned the

Five

Desires

They become

Your guide in life

Notions of what one should do

Never existed from the start

Fighting about what’s right, what’s wrong

That’s the doing of the I

When your study

Of Buddhism is through

You find

You haven’t anything new

Enlightenment and delusion too

Never existed at the start

They’re ideas that you picked up

Things your parents never taught

If you think the mind

That attains enlightenment

Is “mine”

Your thoughts will wrestle, one with the other

These days I’m not bothering about

Getting enlightenment all the time

And the result is that

I wake up in the morning feeling fine!

Praying for salvation in the world to come

Praying for your own selfish ends

Is only piling on more and more

Self-centeredness and arrogance

Nowadays I’m tired of

Praying for salvation too

I just move along at my ease

Letting the breath come and go

Die—then live

Day and night within the world

Once you’ve done this, then you can

Hold the world right in your hand!

It’s the buddhas

I feel sorry for:

With all those ornaments they wear

They must be Dazzled by the glare!

Still too soon for you to be

A buddha in the temple shrine

Make yourself a Deva King

Standing at the gate outside!

If you search for the Pure Land

Bent upon your own reward

You’ll only find yourself despised

By the Buddha after all!

People have no enemies

None at all right from the start

You create them all yourself

Fighting over right and wrong

Clear are the workings of cause and effect

You become deluded, but don’t know

It’s something that you’ve done yourself

That’s what’s called self-centeredness

Grown used to the conditioned world

Grown used to the world of transience

When you become deluded like this

You’re the one who’s losing out!

The mind that’s not conditioned

Is originally unborn

What is conditioned doesn’t exist

That is why there’s no delusion

Though the years may creep ahead

Mind itself can never age

This mind that’s

Always just the same

Wonderful! Marvelous!

When you’ve searched and found at last

The one who never will grow old

—“ I alone!”

The Pure Land

Where one communes at peace

Is here and now, it’s not remote

Millions and millions of leagues away

When someone tosses you a tea bowl

—Catch it!

Catch it nimbly with soft cotton

With the cotton of your skillful mind!



Submitted January 28, 2019 at 12:22AM by Pistaf http://bit.ly/2RQkX4e

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