Huineng tradition
Dialogues · Poems · Sources
The teaching in Bankei’s voice and encounters.
Bankei taught through public sermons and open exchanges with monks, women, farmers, officials, and people in trouble. The record is plain, sharp, compassionate, and often funny.
From the recorded dialogues
Questions brought into the hall.
These are concise renderings of exchanges preserved in English translations. Consult the listed books for the complete texts and translators’ wording.
01
On painful practice
A monk
The masters of old reached enlightenment through difficult practice. How can someone like me realize the Unborn without doing the same?
Bankei
A traveler may cross mountains to find water, while companions drink what he brings back and satisfy the same thirst. I struggled because I did not meet a clear-eyed teacher. You do not have to repeat the search once the water has been brought.
02
On whether the teaching is too easy
A lay woman
If all we do is remain effortlessly in Buddha-mind, is that not too lightweight?
Bankei
You turn Buddha-mind into anger, craving, and foolishness, and call my teaching lightweight. Nothing carries more weight than living without exchanging Buddha-mind for those states.
03
On spent thoughts
A layman
By force of habit, second thoughts keep arising and I find it difficult to accord with the Unborn.
Bankei
A recollection is a thought already spent. If you take it up again, you go around in circles. Do not bother with spent thoughts, whether they appear or not.
04
On the monk who stole
The assembly
This monk is a thief. He should be expelled from the retreat.
Bankei
If he is sent away, where will he learn? He needs the teaching more than those who already know how to behave.
05
On death
A monk
How should I prepare for death?
Bankei
Find out who it is that is born. If the Unborn is never born, it cannot die. Seeing this is seeing into your nature.
Song of the Original Mind
Verses on the floating world.
Short contemporary renderings after Bankei’s verses. The source translations remain the place to read the poems in full.
The original mind
Unborn and imperishableis the original mind.Search back to the time when you were born:you cannot remember a thing at all.
Letting go
Clinging, craving and the likeI do not keep them on my mind.That is why now I can saythe whole world is truly mine.
The floating world
Thinking back over the past,you find it was an evening dream.Realize that, and you will seehow little there is to hold.
Go and sing
Since, after all,this floating world is unreal,instead of holding things in your mind,go and sing.
Not clinging to emptiness
Though you arriveat the principle that all is empty,do not cling to emptiness:that too becomes a form.
Cherry blossoms
When you look at it,there is nothing to the cherry treeexcept the cherry blossomsand the way they scatter.
This fleeting house
Living in this world,this fleeting house of bubbles,is there anything at allthat could last forever?
Morning
These days I am not botheringabout getting enlightenment all the time,and the result is that I wakein the morning feeling fine.
Sources & further reading
Read the complete records.
The UnbornThe Life and Teaching of Zen Master Bankei, translated by Norman Waddell. North Point Press, 2000.
Bankei ZenTranslations from the Record of Bankei, translated by Peter Haskel and edited by Yoshito Hakeda. Grove Press, 1984.
The Record of BankeiThe two translations above differ in selection and framing. Reading both helps prevent a single English wording from becoming the teaching itself.
Wild IvyHakuin’s spiritual autobiography, translated by Norman Waddell, offers an illuminating contrast in Rinzai method.
The wider Buddhist library
Primary texts first. Good guides beside them.
No reading list is a substitute for ethical practice or Sangha. It can still keep the Temple honest, historically grounded, and open to voices beyond one teacher.
01
Foundational Buddhism
Begin with early discourses on the path, mind, breathing, and not-self.
Early Buddhist canon
Dhammapada
Compact verses on mind, conduct, craving, hatred, and release.SN 56.11
Setting the Dhamma Wheel in Motion
The Middle Way, Four Noble Truths, and first teaching.MN 10
Foundations of Mindfulness
Mindfulness of body, feeling, mind, and phenomena.MN 118
Mindfulness of Breathing
A complete early Buddhist breathing practice.SN 22.59
The Discourse on Not-Self
The five aggregates examined as not self.02
Mahayana & Chan
Emptiness, compassion, Buddha-nature, and the literature from which Zen formed.
Prajnaparamita tradition
The Heart Sutra
The concise teaching that form and emptiness are inseparable.Prajnaparamita tradition
The Diamond Sutra
Non-abiding, generosity, and the emptiness of fixed views.Wumen Huikai
The Gateless Barrier
A central collection of Zen cases and commentary.Yuanwu Keqin
The Blue Cliff Record
A demanding classic of cases, verse, and layered commentary.03
Japanese Zen
Practice, koan, just sitting, awakening, and the arguments around method.
Eihei Dogen
Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
Dogen's major writings on practice-realization and Zen life.Eihei Dogen
Fukanzazengi
A concise universal recommendation for zazen.Hakuin Ekaku
Wild Ivy
Hakuin's autobiography and a sharp contrast with Bankei's method.Shunryu Suzuki
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
A modern Soto classic on posture, practice, and beginner's mind.Philip Kapleau
The Three Pillars of Zen
Influential accounts of practice and kensho in the West.04
Thich Nhat Hanh & Plum Village
Accessible, rigorous teaching on interbeing, peace, sitting, and engaged Buddhism.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The Other Shore
A new Heart Sutra translation with commentary on interbeing.Thich Nhat Hanh
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Mindfulness rooted in ordinary actions and compassionate presence.Thich Nhat Hanh
Old Path White Clouds
A spacious narrative account of the Buddha's life and teaching.Thich Nhat Hanh
How to Sit
Short, humane instruction for optional seated practice.Thich Nhat Hanh
Peace Is Every Step
Peace practiced in body, speech, relationship, and daily life.05
Orientation & history
Accessible maps of Zen, best read alongside primary texts and communities.
Alan Watts
The Way of Zen
Influential and accessible on Indian, Chinese, and Japanese contexts; an orientation, not a substitute for practice or scholarship.Walpola Rahula
What the Buddha Taught
A concise introduction to foundational Buddhist doctrine.Rupert Gethin
The Foundations of Buddhism
A careful scholarly overview of Buddhist history and thought.John McRae