Sublime

“A roshi is a person who has actualized that perfect freedom which is the potentiality for all human beings. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. The flow of his consciousness is not the fixed repetitive patterns of our usual self-centered consciousness, but rather arises spontaneously and naturally from the actual circumstances of

Rinzai Roku (a celebrated Zen text of the T’ang dynasty) and the teachings of Bankei, the seventeenth-century Japanese master who, for me, represents Zen at its best.

Zen priest in both the Soto and Rinzai schools of Zen Buddhism. He has distilled what he’s learned over the course of decades of study into a series of teachings that he calls Big Mind and has been a game changer for thousands of people.

Bankei (1622–1693) was a contemporary of Hakuin and for some time roshi at the Myoshinji monastery in Kyoto. Translations of his informal talks on Zen, directed especially to lay people, may be found in D. T. Suzuki’s Living by Zen (Pasadena, Calif.: P. D. and Ione Perkins, 1949), and in Lucien Stryk, ed., World of the Buddha (New York: Doubleday &