"Caught up in the suffering of attaching to your illness, you start thinking one thing and another: 'I ought to be well by now. Maybe the medicine's not right; perhaps the doctor's no good . . .'

"I tell my students and those of you coming regularly here to the temple: 'Be stupid!' Because you've got the dynamic function of the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind, even if you get rid of discriminative understanding, you won't be foolish. So, all of you, from here on, be stupid! Even if you're stupid, when you're hungry, you'll ask for something to eat, when you're thirsty, you'll ask for some tea; when it gets warm, you'll put on thin, light clothes, and when it's cold, you'll put on more clothes. As far as your activities of today are concerned, you're not lacking a thing!

"With people who are clever, there are sure to be a great many shortcomings. To have transcended those clever people whom all the world holds in great esteem is what's meant by 'stupidity.' There's really nothing wrong with being a blockhead!

"When people say that someone is a clever fellow, I ask to meet him, and when I do and we have a chance to talk, it looks to me as if people in the world are praising an awful lot of foolishness. The fact is that those clever people acclaimed by the world are, from the start, deluded by their own cleverness. They distort the Buddha Mind and obscure its marvelously illuminating [dynamic function], considering other people as of no account, contradicting whatever they say, slighting and insulting them. Of course, since those they're insulting are also amply endowed with the marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind, they aren't going to let themselves be slighted like that, so they get angry and answer right back, heedlessly pouring forth abuse. The true man's ideal is to show kindness to those who are foolish and help those who are evil. To be recognized as a good man by the people of the world is precisely what makes being born a human being worthwhile. How can it be any good to earn yourself the reputation of a wicked person?

"So when you go back to your homes and meet your old acquaintances, you should have them wondering about you all: 'How did Bankei teach them Buddhism, anyway? Why, they've come back even more stupid than before they left!' "What I'm talking about isn't the stupidity of stupidity and understanding. That which transcends stupidity and understanding is what I mean by stupidity!"

~Bankei

Submitted January 29, 2019 at 01:54AM by Bingo_Maru http://bit.ly/2Wr6Von