As Thurman points out Zen Buddhism refers to itself as the 'sutra-less tradition' and yet it looks to the Prajnaparamita as its main, text of teaching. This is opposed to other schools like Pure Land school which refers to the Land of Bliss Sutra and the Hua Yen school, based on the Garland Sutra. This is because the Frajnaparamita is known as the 'teaching that is no teaching', and this fits very well with the internal workings of Zen logic(18).
Bankei is an example of a Zen master who didn't use koans, and didn't follow the precepts of either of the main Zen traditions in Japan. Often Zen disciples would push themselves to the limits of exhaustion in order to gain a sense of objectivity, or enlightenment. The Zen master Bankei did this, but often said others did not have to. Bankei was something of a renegade in Japanese Zen tradition and was in his prime several centuries after Zen first arrived in Japan. Once a monk put to him, "All the same, there's just one thing. Suppose, for example, someone wants to go out of the city and across the river: without using a boat, much less even taking a step, he'll never get anywhere". Bankei said, "As you are, right here at this moment, is it. There's no getting anywhere or not getting anywhere. This is what's meant by the teaching of sudden enlightenment. Hesitate and it's lost; waver and it draws further and further away"(19).
Bankei didn't follow the traditional methods of Japanese zen in that he thought little of attaining enlightenment through the use of koans. He considered them old, stale and overly couched in obscurity. Once he said, "Understanding one phrase, puzzling over another [and so on for] ten million words - there's never an end to it. If you truly realise what I'm teaching, then from your own mouth wonderful words and marvelous phrases will come fourth. Otherwise, what use are such things in [studying] the Way?(20) Bankei taught and often repeated that everyone has the Innate Buddha Mind (or the Unborn Mind) and that the challenge was to properly realise this. He would often use the example of; while giving his lectures, dogs, birds or peasants would be making noise outside the building. The lecture's audience may be concentrating on what Bankei was saying, yet they still heard the external noises and recognised them for what they were - and that it was the Unborn Mind which heard and knew these things(21) In present Western thinking this maybe labelled as the unconscious mind in action, yet from a Zen point of view, this also would be wrong because the Unborn Mind is a unified whole and cannot be pulled apart and categorised into conscious and unconscious(22).
Apart from giving these sermons and teaching what he knew there seemed to be little else that Bankei could do to enable others to realise the Buddha Mind/reach satori. It was up to each person to take the knowledge gained and travel their own path toward that point of understanding. The end message regarding logic, Zen and Zen-logic is that Zen suggests to us to free ourselves from the slavery of dualistic logic. There was one school of Zen swordsmanship in Japan named the 'Sword of No-abiding Mind', where 'no-abode' or no-abiding' is a Buddhist term that is the equivalent of emptiness (or sunyata) or 'non-attachment'. It meant 'not to have any home where one may settle down', but also a kind of opposite meaning of, 'to settle down where there is no settling down', which again is a return to the situation of a negative and positive statement complimenting each other(23).
Logic starts from the division of subject and object and distinguishes between what is seen and not seen; it is this infinite categorisation that Zen would like to see us break through.
Zen Buddhism shows us that there is more to life than logic and that the practice of bending of life and nature to accommodate logic is completely topsy-turvy. Logic is a human construct which came into the scene long after nature, and long after Zen. This is what Western philosophers would call absurd, but it is said that when a person fully realises that the living of life comes first, and logic a very distant second, then they have achieved the goal of "abiding where there is no abiding"(24).
1 From the Prajnaparamita-Hridaya
Sutra: "Thus, Sariputra, all things have the character of
emptiness, they have no beginning, no end, they are faultless and not
faultless, they are not perfect and not imperfect. Therefore, O
Sariputra, here in this emptiness there is no form, no perception, no
name, no concepts, no knowledge. No eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind. No form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no
objects . . . There is no knowledge, no ignorance, no destruction of
ignorance ... There is no decay nor death; there are no four truths,
viz. There is no pain, no origin of pain, no stoppage of pain and no
path to the stoppage of pain. There is no knowledge of Nirvana, no
obtaining of it, no not-obtaining of it. Therefore, O Sariputra, as
there is no obtaining of Nirvana, a man who has approached the
Frajnaparamita of the Bodhisattvas dwells unimpeded in consciousness.
When the impediments of consciousness are annihilated, then he
becomes free of all fear, is beyond the reach of change, enjoying
final Nirvana."
Suzuki, 1974, p-51
2 Suzuki, 1974
3 Suzuki, 1974
4 Suzuki, 1974, p-53
5 Suzuki, 1974, p-50
6 Winters, 1994
7 Suzuki, 1974
8 Kim, 1985
9 Suzuki, 1974
10 Suzuki, 1974
11 Kasulis, 1981
12 Kasulis, 1981, p-21, 22
13 Kasulis, 1981
14 Thurman, 1993, p-3
15 Thurman, 1993
16 Suzuki, 1959
17 Thurman, 1993
18 Thurman, 1993
19 Haskel, 1984, p-158
20 Haskel, 1984, p-148
21 Haskel, 1984
22 Suzuki, 1974
23 Suzuki, 1959
24 Suzuki, 1959
References
Haskel, P., 1984, Bankei Zen, Ed. Yoshito Hakeda, Grove
Weidenfeild, New York
Kasulis, T., P., 1981, Zen Action, Zen Person, University of Hawaii
Press, Honolulu
Kim, H., J., 1985 'The Reason of Words and Letters: Dogen and Koan
Language' from Studies in East Asian Buddhism No.2: Dogen Studies
Ed. William LaFleur, Kuroda Institute, USA
Suzuki, D. T., 1959, Zen and Japanese Culture, Princeton University
Press, Princeton, N.J.
Suzuki, D., T., 1974, Introduction to Zen Buddhism, Causeway Books,
New York
Thurman, R., 1993, Forward from Mother of the Buddhas: Meditation
on the Prainaparamita Sutra Quest Books: The Theosophical
Publishing House, Wheaton
Winters, J., 1994, 'Thinking in Buddhism: Nagarjuna's Middle Way'
from:
[viewed 19/10/02]
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