Bankei on koans

https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/BankeiHaskel.pdf Introduction (by Peter Haskel)

As Bankei saw it, the whole approach of koan Zen was hopelessly contrived. He rejected the need for familiarity with classical Chinese as an unnecessary encumbrance, and rejected the koan itself as an artificial technique. The original koans, he argued, were not "models," but actual living events. The old masters had simply responded to particular situations that confronted them, naturally accommodating themselves to the needs of the students involved. That was the business of any Zen teacher, to meet each situation on its own terms. There was no need to make people study the words of ancient Chinese monks when you could simply have them look at their own "cases," the way in which the Unborn was at work here and now in the actual circumstances of their lives.

This was what Bankei called his "direct" teaching, as opposed to koan practice, which he referred to disparagingly as "studying old waste paper." The koan, said Bankei, was merely a device, and teachers who relied on it, or on any other technique, were practicing "devices Zen." Why rely on a device, he argued, when you could have the thing itself?

Submitted May 02, 2019 at 09:42PM by UhExistence http://bit.ly/2JanQap