It is interesting to me that Bonaventure (1221 - 1274), an Italian Christian scholastic mystic, and Bankei (1622 - 1693), a Japanese Zen master, advocated similar understandings of the Source of all being as the Unborn.
Bonaventure wrote and spoke of the innascibility (incapable of being born) of God and Bankei spent his Zen "career" pointing folk to awareness of the Unborn Buddha-mind. Both spoke of the Unborn as birthing all born. That which cannot assume form births that which can and does.
Each, of course, uses the language available to him and the consciousness structure of the populace to whom they speak.
Bonaventure develops the concept of the Trinity: the Father (the Unborn) births the Son (the Born) through the generative powers of the Spirit (the LifeForce). He addresses both scholastics and mystics (direct experiencers).
Bankei continuously invites Buddhist folk to open beyond ordinary consciousness to the realm of the Unborn. He does this in a characteristic Zen way by direct pointing to a crow cawing, a sparrow chirping, or the wind rustling the leaves.
I greatly appreciate the way universal truths emerge across cultures and time and spiritual pathways.
I really like old Bankei. He really cut to the chase.
ReplyDeleteTemper
A Zen student came to Bankei and complained: "Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?"
"You have something very strange," replied Bankei. "Let me see what you have."
"Just now I cannot show it to you," replied the other.
"When can you show it to me?" asked Bankei.
"It arises unexpectedly," replied the student.
"Then," concluded Bankei, "it must not be your own true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that over."
GREAT POST JB ! THANKS, HB
ReplyDelete