Getting angry
"Looking around me, I see that we have an even larger
crowd than usual this morning, so probably a lot of you
didn't hear the talk I just gave. All those who heard it
should leave at this point and give their places to those
who didn't."
When those present had changed places and seated
themselves, a certain man brought forward a question he
wished to ask the Master.
"In your sermons," he said, "you always state that, getting
into bad habits in life, we switch the Buddha mind for
evil thoughts. Hearing you, I realize that doing this is
wrong. Still, I'm a townsman, my business is trade, and
things people say make me angry or annoyed. Inside me, I
don't harbor any evil thoughts of anger or annoyance, but
other people often get me angry, whether it's my wife and
children or my servants. After hearing your sermon, I re-
52 • BANKEI ZEN
alized doing this was wrong and tried to put an end to it.
But if I stop those angry thoughts, they only come up
again, and there's no end to them after all. What can I do,
then, to stop them?"
The Master replied: "The fact is, you want to get angry,
so you're getting yourself mad. If you hadn't the least bad
thought to begin with, no matter how much others provoked
you, you surely wouldn't get angry. But if, in you,
feelings of anger and annoyance have already been formed,
then, even though [the other people] don't set out deliberately
to say things to make you mad, you get carried away
by the force of your own self-centeredness, lose your temper
and insist, 'I don't say anything that's untrue or improper!'
Your thoughts create the karma of the Three Evil
Realms, while your demonic mind torments you. This is
the fiery cart88 of self and self-created karma.
"Outside, hell, hungry ghosts, karma, demons and fiery
carts simply don't exist. What's more, to try to stop your
rising thoughts, holding them back and suppressing them,
is a bad idea. The original, innate Buddha Mind is one
alone—it's never two. But when you try to stop your rising
anger, [your mind] is split between your angry thoughts
and your thoughts of stopping them. It's as if you're chasing
after someone who is running away, except that you're
both the runner and the one pursuing him as well! Let me
give you an example of what I mean: You can busy yourself
sweeping under a tree with thick [autumn] foliage; but
since the tree's leaves will keep scattering down from above,
even if, for the moment, you manage to get things neatly
swept away, more leaves will only come falling later on,
won't they? In the same way, even if you stop your original
thoughts of anger, the subsequent thoughts involved with
the stopping of them will never come to an end. So the
idea of trying to stop [your thoughts] is wrong. Since that's
how it is, when you no longer bother about those rising
thoughts, not trying either to stop them or not to stop
Sermons • 53
them, why, that's the Unborn Buddha Mind. That's what
I've been telling about just now in such detail. Weren't
you listening? [If you weren't,] it's a shame!"89