Reflections on Bankei's 'Song of the Mind' Verses 33-35

“Praying for salvation in the world to come

Praying for your own selfish ends

Is only piling on more and more

Self-centeredness and arrogance

Nowadays I'm tired of

Praying for salvation too

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!”

Bankei Yotaku (1622-1693) was an uncompromising Zen master. Now, many readers will be familiar with the uncompromising Zen masters in the texts, especially the ones from Tang Dynasty China such as Mazu, Huangbo, and Linji. Bankei was different from these masters, however, in that he did not usually, if ever, shout or hit his disciples to shock them into awakening to the Dharma. Instead, Bankei used words, often reminding his students that the only tool he had was his tongue (for speaking with, that is). Moreover, he used words to direct his listeners back to that which was listening, often specifically referencing the act of hearing in an attempt to help arouse enlightenment. As can be seen below, he did not support those practices that he saw as unhelpful to awakening.

“Praying for salvation in the world to come

Praying for your own selfish ends

Is only piling on more and more

Self-centeredness and arrogance”

The phrase “Praying for salvation in the world to come” may sound like it was directed at Christians, Muslims, or other such theistic religionists, but it was probably aimed at Japanese Buddhists, as there is a strong salvation-based tradition in the East known as Pure Land Buddhism. Most Pure Land devotees practice with the intent of being reborn in Amitabha Buddha’s heavenly realm, or pure land, where they can then achieve enlightenment. Bankei, however, clearly didn’t see this as a useful use of one’s time, and even condemned it as “Praying for your own selfish ends,” and “Self-centredness and arrogance.” Wow, he really was uncompromising!

If we practice simply for our own salvation or enlightenment, we are being self-centred, are we not? What about everyone else; don’t we wish to help them awaken, too? Here, Bankei is getting at the sense of being a separate egoistic self, and encouraging us to have a broader perspective when it comes to spiritual awakening. If we put off any serious attempt at realizing enlightenment in this life, for whatever selfish reasons we may have, we deny all those other people that we might have helped if we had achieved a high level of awakening in this life. And, it’s useful to know that devotional religions like Pure Land Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, et cetera, all have mystical traditions that encourage both compassion and awakening right now, rather than at some undisclosed point in the future.

“Nowadays I'm tired of

Praying for salvation too

I just move along at my ease

Letting the breath come and go”

In this verse, Bankei gives precedence to “Letting the breath come and go” over “Praying for salvation.” This can be taken two ways, and it’s highly probable that Bankei wished it so, being the shrewd old Zen master that he was. Firstly, “Letting the breath come and go” can refer to simply living life spontaneously, allowing things to arise and dissolve as they may. Very Zennish and typical of the post-enlightenment verse and sayings produced by many a Zen master.

The second interpretation of this term, “Letting the breath come and go” is that it alludes to anapanasati, or ‘in-out-breath meditation,’ which is the main from of meditation taught by the Buddha in the Pali Canon. Although Zen Buddism is famous for its zazen style meditation, where the sitter either focuses on a Zen riddle (koan in Japanese), or just sits with a quiet, alert mind, in also makes use of breath meditation. In Japanese Zen monasteries today, a new meditator will often be given a form of breath meditation to begin with. Anyway, it’s clear from the above verse that Bankei does not give much credence to praying for salvation, which leaves us with the rather radical words below to deal with:

“Die - then live

Day and night within the world

Once you've done this, then you can

Hold the world right in your hand!”

Is Bankei asking us to really die, and then be born again? Well, he writes about dying and then living, but then puts them in the context of “Day and night within the world.” He clearly isn’t referring to actual physical death and rebirth – so what kind of death is he promoting here? He is calling our attention to the death of the self – or at least the death of the delusion of being a self. Bankei is challenging us to see our true nature, which lies beyond the everyday notion of selfhood and the limitations that go with it. This is the spiritual death and rebirth that is found in the literature of such awakened masters as Rumi, Eckhart, and Dogen. As it’s said in some movie, “It’s a good day to die!”

The last line in this verse is just so Zen: “Hold the world right in your hand!” We could take this to be symbolic language, that is, when one is enlightened, it is like one is able to hold the world in one’s hand. But, this sounds somewhat contrived, and makes Bankei out to be a peddler of hyperbole. Is it, in some way, literal, then? Well, we can only truly test this hypothesis if we were actually enlightened in the first place, and thereby able to answer this query. Is this possible, then, to taste enlightenment right now, and then see if the world fits in one’s hand? Let’s try an experiment together and see what occurs...

Listen to the sounds that you can presently hear. Take a few seconds to recognise and label each sound, working through them one by one, until you cannot identify any new ones. (You may be surprised by the number of different sounds that you can detect – we are so often caught up in our own little world that we fail to notice the actual world around us.) Next, turn your attention around from those sounds to that which is aware of them. Does this have a sound associated with it, or is it soundless? Surely sounds arise in that which is absent of sound, which is to say, there must be a space for objects to exist in. Where is this space right now? Is it located somewhere in front of you or behind you, or is it found to your left, or right, above, or below you? Surely not. Is it not the case that all the sounds that you can hear occur in a spacious silence that is where you previously thought ‘you’ were? (Similar enquiries can be done with the other senses, as well as the mind itself, showing that this is a universal truth that lies at the heart of whichever sense-base we choose to investigate.)

Now, we conducted the above experiment in the hope that we might discover the enlightened state, from which we might see if we can really hold the world in one hand. If, and it’s up to each of us to decide on this matter, we consider experiencing the silence that contains the world of sounds to be enlightenment, then we are now in a position to see where the world is, right now. As we discovered above, the world of sound exists in this silence. We can therefore reckon that the world of sight exists in the silence (which equals the invisible) here, too. Looking now, we can see the world in this silent, invisible awareness, without any division between them. The world is me, I am the world. The world is contained in this hand in the sense that it is this hand; world, hand, and awareness are unified, and Bankei sits laughing in the corner, “You have died, but now live! You have died, but now live!”