“A certain priest has said, 'All you do is repeat the same things day after day. You ought to give your listeners a change. Their minds will be more receptive if you throw in some stories about the Zen masters of the past.’ Dull-witted as I am, I think if I put my mind to it, I could probably remember a couple of anecdotes to tell people. But that would be like feeding them poison. I don't want to do that.
I never cite the Buddha's words or the words of Zen patriarchs when I teach. All I do is comment directly on people themselves. That takes care of everything. I don't have to quote other people. So you won't find me saying anything about either the "Buddha Dharma" or the "Zen Dharma." I don't have to, when I can clear everything up for you by commenting directly on you and your personal concerns right here and now.? I've no reason to preach about "Buddhism" or "Zen."
Despite the fact that you arrived in this world with nothing but an unborn Buddha-mind, your partiality for yourselves now makes you want to have things move in your own way. You lose your temper, become contentious, and then you think, "I haven't lost my temper. That fellow won't listen to me. By being so unreasonable he has made me lose it." And so you fix belligerently on his words and end up transforming the valuable Buddha-mind into a fighting spirit. By stewing over this unimportant matter, making the thoughts churn over and over in your mind, you may finally get your way, but then you fail in your ignorance to realize that it was meaningless for you to concern yourself over such a matter. As ignorance causes you to become an animal, what you've done is to leave the vitally important Buddha-mind and make yourself inwardly a first-class animal.
You're all intelligent people here. It's only your ignorance of the Buddha-mind that makes you go on transforming it into a hungry ghost, fighting spirit, or animal. You turn it into this and into that, into all manner of things, and then you be-come those things.
Once you have, once you've become an animal, for example, then even when the truth is spoken to you, it doesn't get through to you. Or, supposing it does; since you didn't retain it even when you were a human being, you certainly won't have the intelligence as an animal to keep it in your mind. So you go from one hell or animal existence to the next or spend countless lifetimes as a hungry ghost. You pass through lives and existences one after another in this way in constant darkness, transmigrating endlessly and suffering untold torment, for thousands of lives and through endless kalpas of time, and during it all, you have no opportunity whatever to rid yourself of the burden of your evil karma. This happens to everyone when, through a single thought, they let the Buddha-mind slip away from them. So you can see that it's a very serious matter indeed.
Therefore, you must thoroughly understand about not transforming the Buddha-mind into other things. As I told you before, not a single one of you in attendance here today is an unenlightened person. You're a gathering of unborn Buddha-minds. If anyone thinks, "No, I'm not. I'm not enlightened," I want him to step forward. Tell me: What is it that makes a person unenlightened?
In fact, there are no unenlightened people here. None-the-less, when you get up and begin to file out of the hall, you might bump into someone in front of you as you cross over the threshold. Or someone behind you might run into you and knock you down. When you go home, your husband, son, daughter-in-law, servant, or someone else may say or do something that displeases you. If something like that happens, and you grasp on to it and begin to fret over it, sending the blood to your head, raising up your horns, and falling into illusion because of your self-partiality, the Buddha-mind turns willy-nilly into a fighting spirit. Until you transform it, you live just as you are in the unborn Buddha-mind; you aren't deluded or unenlightened. The moment you do turn it into something else, you become an ignorant, deluded person. All illusions work the same way. By getting upset and favoring yourself, you turn your Buddha-mind into a fighting spirit— and fall into a deluded existence of your own making.
So whatever anyone else may do or say, whatever happens, leave things as they are. Don't worry yourself over them and don't side with yourself. Just stay as you are, right in the Buddha-mind, and don't change it into anything else. If you do that, illusions don't occur and you live constantly in the unborn mind. You're a living, breathing, firmly established Buddha. Don't you see? You have an incalculable treasure right at hand.”
~ Zen Master Bankei (1622-1693), THE UNBORN
Bankei built himself a hermitage, completely isolated from contact with others and practiced zazen nearly continuously, until he had festering sores on his buttocks and legs. By 1647, malnourished and sleep deprived, he also contracted tuberculosis. A doctor was summoned but could do nothing and Bankei prepared to die, at which point :
I felt a strange sensation in my throat. I spat against a wall. A mass of black phlegm large as a
soapberry rolled down the side. ... Suddenly, just at that moment, it came to me. I realized what it
was that had escaped me until now : All things are perfectly resolved in the Unborn.
''Bankei's main advice, given to everyone from rich aristocrats and menacing samurai to merchants, peasant farmers and children, was quite frequently and simply expressed as: “Abide as the Unborn.” “Don’t get ‘born!’” That is, don’t fall into identification as a “me,” a “Buddhist,” “enlightened,” “unenlightened,” “young,” “old,” etc. For instance, when a woman complained that her gender was a karmic obstacle, he retorted: “From what time did you become a woman?” So he taught the multitudes: let go all selfishness and bad habits—they’re not part of your Original Mind anyway, and just be at great ease in/as the Unborn Buddha-Mind.''
"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! …
Nowadays … 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! …
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!’
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