Bankei's entire teaching can be reduced to the single admonition "Abide in the Unborn!" This was Bankei's constant refrain. The term "Unborn" itself is a common one in classical Buddhism, where it generally signifies that which is intrinsic, original, uncreated. Bankei, however, was the first to use this term as the crux of his teaching. Rather than obtaining or practicing the Unborn, he says, one should simply abide in it, because the Unborn is not a state that has to be created, but is already there, perfect and complete, the mind just as it is.
There isn't any special method for realizing the Unborn other than to be yourself, to be totally natural and spontaneous in everything you do. This means "letting thoughts arise or cease just as they will," and doing the same in regard to physical sensations, as Bankei indicates in his advice on illness (pp. 61-63) and in his instructions on the art of the lance (pp. 138-39).
The mind, as Bankei describes it, is a dynamic mechanism, reflecting, recording and recalling our impressions of the world, a kind of living mirror that is always in motion, never the same from one instant to the next. Within this mirror mind, thoughts and feelings come and go, appearing, vanishing and reappearing in response to circumstances, neither good nor bad in themselves.
Unlike the man of the Unborn, however, the impulsive person suffers from attachment. He is never natural because he is a slave to his responses, which he fails to realize are only passing reflections. As a result, he is continually "hung up," entangled in particular thoughts and sensations, obstructing the free flow of the mind. Everything will operate smoothly, Bankei insists, if we only step aside and let it do so.
He illustrates this to the members of his audience by pointing out that, even while engrossed in listening to his talk, they automatically register and identify everything else around them—the calls of crows and sparrows, the various colors and aromas, the different sorts of people in the room. No one is deliberately trying to do this; it simply happens. That, Bankei says, is how the Unborn functions.
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For Bankei, the important thing is letting go, breaking the mold of our self-centeredness (mi no hiiki) and badhabits (kiguse). These are familiar Japanese terms that Bankei used to describe the chief components of delusion.
Self-centeredness is the basis of the false self. It is "ego" in the pejorative sense, the reflex that leads us to judge everything from a narrowly selfish viewpoint. What fuels and informs this attitude is bad habits, character flaws that, like self-centeredness, are the result of conditioning. We grow up imitating the people around us, Bankei says, and in the process acquire certain failings which finally become so ingrained that we mistake them for our real selves.
Unlike the Unborn Buddha Mind, however, neither bad habits nor self-centeredness is innate; both are assimilated from outside after birth. When we become deluded, we temporarily forfeit the Buddha Mind we started out with, exchanging it for these learned responses. The moment this occurs, duality intervenes and we leave the original one-ness of the Unborn to be "born" into particular states of being—as hungry ghosts, fighting demons, beasts or hell-dwellers—passing fitfully from one to the next, trapped in incessant transmigration. The only way out of this dilemma, Bankei maintains, is to go back the way we came, to return to the unconditioned, the uncreated, the un-born.
Submitted May 02, 2019 at 12:56AM by UhExistence http://bit.ly/2DLiEX7
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