In 1633, at the age of eleven, Bankei Yotaku was banished from his family's home because of his consuming engagement with the Confucian texts that all schoolboys were required to copy and recite. Using a hut in the nearby hills, he wrote the word Shugyo-an, or "practice hermitage," on a plank of wood, propped it up beside the entrance, and settled down to devote himself to his own clarification of "bright virtue." He finally would turn to Zen and, for fourteen years of severe hardship, achieved a decisive enlightenment, whereupon the Rinzai priest traveled nonstop to the temples and monasteries of Japan, sharing what he had learned. "What I teach in these talks of mine is the Unborn Buddha-mind of illuminative wisdom, nothing else. Everyone is endowed with this Buddha-mind, only they don't know it." Bankei casted aside the traditional aristocratic style of his contemporaries. He offered his teachings in the common language of the people he spoke to at that particular time. Bankei's style actually reminds one a lot of some of the ingenius Chinese Zen Masters of the T'ang Dynasty.This Zen Master / Rinzai Priest Bankei left no actual written exposition of his Zen teaching. But as we have in some practices to this very day, sometimes Bankei's students would write down what he would say in a talk. One particular woman kept a very extensive diary on Bankei's speeches. If it were not for her work-we may not even care much about Bankei frankly. If you are interested in reading more about Zen Master Bankei, be sure to pick up the book The Unborn : The Life and Teachings of Zen Master Bankei. Always in stock at Amazon.com!
