Bankei Yōtaku

Bankei Yōtaku
School	Rinzai
Personal
Born	1622 Harima Province, Japan
Died	1693
Senior posting
Title	Zen master
Predecessor	Dosha Chogen
Religious career
Teacher	Umpo Zenjo

Bankei Yōtaku (盤珪永琢^?, 1622-1693) was a Japanese Rinzai Zen master, and the abbot of the Ryōmon-ji and Nyohō-ji. He is best known for his talks on the Unborn as he called it. According to D. T. Suzuki, Bankei, together with Dogen and Hakuin, is one of the most important Japanese Zen masters and his Unborn Zen is one of the most original developments in the entire history of Zen thought.

Bankei Yōtaku was born in 1622, in Harima Province to a samurai turned medicine man named Suga Dosetsu. His boyhood name was Muchi. Bankei's mother bore the last name of Noguchi, and little more is known of her, other than that the society of the time extolled her as 'Maya who begot three Buddhas,' - Maya being the mother of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni. Bankei had four brothers and four sisters. His eldest brother, Masayasu, was a skilled physician and his second eldest brother was a practitioner of the Pure Land school of Buddhism. Hence Bankei's mother was likened to Maya, Masayasu to Yakushi - the Buddha of healing, his second eldest brother to the Buddha Amida, and Bankei himself to Shakyamuni Buddha. Bankei was a rebellious and mischievous child, though he showed remarkable intelligence. When Bankei was 11, his father died, and in the following year he entered school.

Here he was taught many of the Confucian texts. At this time, Bankei was young and full of questions and the Confucian classics he was being taught confused him greatly. One day, the teacher read the first line from 'Great Learning': "The way of great learning lies in clarifying bright virtue." Bankei entered a heated exchange with his teacher imploring them for the meaning of this. Bankei felt no satisfactory answers were given.

This gap in Bankei's understanding gave birth to many doubts and questions, and so he seized most every chance to question others on their knowledge. He would implore Confucian and Buddhist scholars and attend various religious gatherings in search of answers. All of this, however, proved futile for him. He became so distraught in his need to find answers that school was no longer a priority for him, and in 1633 he was kicked out of his family home. A friend of his family, Yūkan Nakahori, allowed Bankei to stay in a small hut nearby. Being a bit eccentric, Bankei etched into a slat of wood "Practice hermitage" and placed it outside of his little hut.

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