So Bankei, how do I become a buddha?
Rather than trying to become a buddha, nothing could be simpler than taking the shortcut of remaining a buddha.
A privileged starting point. But it doesn't feel like I am a buddha. What did I miss?
Originally, at birth, you were all without any sort of delusion. But, because of your bad upbringing, you turned the innate Buddha Mind into a first-rate unenlightened being, imitating and taking on all the delusions you saw around you and forming bad habits, so that you ended up becoming regular experts at delusion!
What exactly are these delusions I am taking on?
Delusions means the anguish of thought feeding on thought. What foolishness it is to create the anguish of delusion by changing the precious Buddha Mind, pondering over this and that, mulling over things of no worth!
Okay I get that, but why is there such a strong tendency to create this anguish? I am surely not doing it as some form of self-punishment?
All delusions, without exception, are created as a result of self-centeredness. When you’re free from self-centeredness, delusions won’t be produced.
Alright, but then I have to ask you where this self-centeredness comes from...
When your parents gave you life, there wasn't a trace of selfish desire, bad habits or self-centeredness. But from the age of four or five you picked up the mean things you saw other people do and the bad things you heard them say, so that gradually as you matured, growing up badly, you developed selfish desire, which in turn produced self-centeredness. Deluded by this self-centeredness, you then proceeded to create every sort of evil. If it weren't for being centered on yourself, delusions wouldn't arise. When they don't arise, that's none other than abiding in the Unborn Buddha Mind. Apart from this, there's no buddha.
That's helpful. Tell me more about these self-centered delusions and how they arise so I can arrest them at the root and attain enlightenment...or remain there as you say.
Thoughts are the source of delusion. When thoughts are gone, delusion vanishes too. And once you've stopped being deluded, talking about wanting to attain 'enlightenment' certainly is useless, don't you agree?
Sure but it's still all part of my mind, isn't it? So this 'original mind' I keep reading about is there albeit not realised for all this delusion, but if all these thoughts are part of myself, why are they not included in my Buddhahood? Where's the separation?
Apart from the one who's asking me at this moment, there is no original mind. This original mind transcends thought, clearly distinguishing all things.
So the original mind comes before thought?
Just have faith that thoughts don’t originally exist, but only arise and cease temporarily in response to what you see and hear, without any actual substance of their own.
Sorry I have a hard time 'just having faith' in things. There must be a way to understand why this original mind has these selfish tendencies and produces thoughts, but at the same time this functioning of the mind is somehow to be dismissed from a sort of 'higher vantage point' I can't quite grasp?
Since the Unborn Buddha Mind is marvellously illuminating, it hasn't so much as a hair's breadth of any selfish bias, so it adapts itself freely, and, as it encounters different sorts of circumstances, thoughts sporadically pop up. It's all right so long as you simply don't get involved with them, but if you do get involved with thoughts and go on developing them, you won't be able to stop, and then you'll obscure the marvellously illuminating function of the Buddha Mind and create delusions.
Gotcha, the initially popping up of thoughts are part of its function, but then taking them and going down the rabbit hole of a chemical runaway reaction of thought spiralling will bury the responsive clarity of this unbiased mind. Externally adopted, thought-fuelled self-centeredness then takes me further away from knowing this mind. Now I get how some of these old Buddhist practices try to instil certain behaviours that are designed counter the basis of some of these afflictions, though it seems like they became their own runaway issue. Why not just explain it like you did so everyone can just stop thought to banish these damn delusions and lay bare this original mind?
When you hate and loathe those deluded thoughts that come up and try to stop them, you get caught up in stopping them and create a duality between the one who is doing the stopping and that which is being stopped. If you try to stop thought with thought, there will never be an end to it.
So I don't stop them?
So if they’re reflected, just let them be reflected; if they arise, just let them arise; if they stop, just let them stop. As long as you’re not attaching to these reflected traces, delusions won’t be produced.
Makes sense. Not attaching sounds like a momentous task after all this conditioning to the opposite! It is now obvious how this can't be in intellectual understanding but is to be experienced. One more thing, this topic of birth and death, where is the immortality among all of this?
What I call a man who's free in birth and death is one who dies unconcerned with birth and death. A man who's free in birth and death is one who always remains unconcerned with birth and death, knowing that so long as we're allowed to live, we live, and when the time comes to die - even if death comes right now - we just die, realizing that when we die isn't of great importance. From the place of the Unborn, birth and death and nirvana too are just a lot of empty speculation.
I am part disappointed and part relieved, and I even see the self-centered motivation in my thoughts on this. Ha. So after hearing your advice and having understood how to proceed, is there still any benefit in poring over all these convoluted Buddhist sutras and enigmatic Zen Master records full of fodder for such speculation and detours?
It all depends. If you rely on the principles contained in the sutras and records, when you read them, you'll be blinding your own eyes. On the other hand, when the time comes that you can dismiss principles, if you read such things, you'll find the proof of your own realisation.
Hundreds of millions of Buddhists in the world, why can't people manage to overcome self-deception and dismiss external principles despite all this talk and energy spent?
When you come right down to it, it's because the desire to realise the great truth of Buddhism is weak.
Thanks Bankei.
Bankei Zen: Translations from The Record of Bankei. Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition
Submitted April 23, 2021 at 06:53AM by Coinionaire https://ift.tt/3awczOw
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