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萬安英種 Man'an Eishu (1591-1654)
[ばんなんえいしゅ Bannan Eishu]

Man'an Eishu was a prominent Sōtō Masters of the early Edo period. He was a good friend of Suzuki Shōsan, and tried to raise the Sōtō Zen of that period to a higher level. He was successful  in rebuilding the Temple of Kōshō-ji in Uji. Together with other capable individuals of this period, he was convinced that a general reform of Zen was necessary, but he lacked the influence to carry it out. His work reflects a modern trend toward emphasis on Meditation in action.
http://www.slashdocs.com/kzmmmn/man-an-an-elementary-talk-on-zen.html

Unfettered at last, a traveling monk,
I pass the old Zen barrier.
Mine is a traceless stream-and-cloud life,
Of these mountains, which shall be my home?

—   Manan  
Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto
In: ZEN: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews,
Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Inc., Garden City, New York, 1963, p. 14.

Man-An — An Elementary Talk on Zen
— from Minding Mind - A Course in Basic Meditation
Translated by Thomas Cleary
Shambala, Boston, 1995, pp. 83-106.

Although the Way of Buddhahood is long and far, ultimately there is not an inch of ground on earth to travel. Although it is cultivated, realized and mastered over a period of three incalculable aeons, the true mind is not remote. Although there may be five hundred miles of dangers and difficult road, the treasure is nearby. If people who study Zen to learn the Way mistake a single step or stir a single thought, they are ten trillion lands and a billion aeons away.

You should simply see your essential nature to attain Buddhahood. The scriptural teachings expounded by the Buddha over the course of his career are instructions for seeing essential nature; when it comes to seeing essential nature itself and awakening to the Way, that is communicated separately outside of doctrine and does not stand on written symbols.

In this there are no distinctions between the sharp and the dull, the rich and the poor, mendicants and lay people, Easterners or Westerners, ancients or moderns. It only depends upon whether or not the will for enlightenment is there, and whether instruction and guidance are mistaken or accurate.

Even if you get directions from a thousand Buddhas and myriad Zen masters, if you yourself do not continue right mindfulness with purity and singleness of faith, you can never see essential nature and awaken to the Way. This is why you realize your own essential nature by means of your own mind and understand your own life by means of your own insight. If right mindfulness is not continuous and concentration is not pure and single minded, your efforts will be in vain.

As long as our concentration is not purely single minded in both activity and stillness, it will be hard to attain even a little accord. Concentration of right mindfulness should be cultivated most especially in the midst of activity. You need not necessarily prefer stillness.

There is a tendency to think that Zen practice will be quicker under conditions of stillness and quiet and that activity is distracting, but the power attained by cultivation in stillness is uncertain when you deal with active situations; it has a cowardly and weakly function. In that case, what do you call empowerment?

Concentration of right mindfulness is a state of absorption that is in oneself twenty-four hours a day, but one does not even know it consciously. Even though you work all day, you do not get tired out, and even if you sit alone or stand silently for a long time, you do not get bored. To search out enlightenment with principle and fact unified is called genuine study.

If you want to quickly attain mastery of all truths and be independent in all events, there is nothing better than concentration in activity. That is why it is said that students of mysticism working on the Way should sit in the midst of the material world.

The Third Patriarch of Zen said, "If you want to follow the Way of Unity, do not be averse to the objects of the six senses." This does not mean that you should indulge in the objects of the six senses; it means that you should keep right mindfulness continuous, neither grasping nor rejecting the objects of the six senses in the course of everyday life, like a duck going into the water without its feathers getting wet.

If, in contrast, you despise the objects of the six senses and try to avoid them, you fall into escapist tendencies and never fulfill the Way of Buddhahood. If you clearly see the essence, then the objects of the six senses are themselves meditation; sensual desires are themselves the Way of Unity; and all things are manifestations of Reality. Entering into the great Zen stability undivided by movement and stillness, body and mind are both freed and eased.

As for people who set out to cultivate spiritual practice with aversion to the objects and desires of the senses, even if their minds and thoughts are empty and still and their contemplative visualization is perfectly clear, still when they leave quietude and get into active situations, they are like fish out of water, like monkeys out of the trees.

Even people who go deep into mountain forests, cut off relations with the world forever, living as ascetics long ago cannot easily attain pure singleness of concentration. Needless to say, it is even more difficult for those who are mendicants in name only, or shallow householders, who are so busy making a living.

In truth, unless you have definite certitude of overwhelming faith, or are filled with overwhelming doubt or wonder, or are inspired with overwhelming commitment, or are overtaken by overwhelming death, it is hard to attain concentration that is pure and undivided in principle and fact, in action and stillness.

If you are wholeheartedly careful of how you spend your time, aware of the evanescence of life, concentrating singlemindedly on Zen work even in the midst of objects of desire, if you proceed right straight ahead, the iron walls will open up. You will experience the immense joy of walking over the Polar Mountain and becomes the Master within the objects of sense. You will be like a lotus blooming in fire, becoming all the more colorful and more fragrant in contact with the energy of fire.

Do not say that it is harder for lay people living in the world of senses and desires to sit and meditate, or that it is hard to concentrate with so many worldly duties, or that one with an official or professional career cannot practice Zen, or that the poor and the sickly do not have the power to work on the Way. These excuses are all due to weakness of faith and superficiality for the thought of enlightenment.

If you observe that the matter of life and death is serious, and that the world is really impermanent, the will for enlightenment will grow, the thieving heart of egoism, selfishness, pride, and covetousness will gradually die out, and you will come to work on the Way by sitting meditation in which principle and fact are one.

Suppose you were to lose your only child in a crowd or drop an invaluable gem? Do you think you would let the child or the jewel go at that, just because of the bustle and the mob? Would you not look for them even if you had a lot of work to do or were poor or sickly? Even if you had to plunge into an immense crowd of people and had to continue searching into the night, you would not be easy in mind until you had found and retrieved your child or your jewel.

To have been born human and heard true teaching is a very rare opportunity; so to neglect meditation because of your career is to treat the life of wisdom of the body of truths of the Buddhas less seriously than worldly belongings. But if you search for wisdom singlemindedly like someone who has lost a child or dropped a gem, one day you will undoubtedly encounter it, whereupon you will light up with joy.

People in all walks of life have all sorts of things to attend to; how could they have the leisure to sit silently all day in quiet contemplation? Here there are Zen teachers who have not managed to cultivate this sitting meditation concentration; they teach deliberate seclusion and quietude, avoiding population centers, stating that "intensive meditation concentration cannot be attained in the midst of professional work, business, and labor," thus causing students to apply their minds mistakenly.

People who listen to this kind of talk consequently think of Zen as something that is hard to do and hard to practice, so they give up the inspiration to cultivate Zen, abandon the source and try to escape, time and again becoming discouraged. This is truly lamentable. Even if they have a deep inspiration due to some cause in the past, they get to where they neglect their jobs and lose their social virtues for the sake of the Way.

As an ancient said, if people today were as eager for enlightenment as they are to embrace their lovers, then no matter how busy their professional lives might be and no matter how luxurious their dwellings may be, they would not fail to attain continuous concentration leading to appearance of the Great Wonder.

Many people of both ancient and modern times have awakened to the Way and seen essential nature in the midst of activity. All beings in all times and places are manifestations of one mind. When the mind is aroused, all sorts of things arise. When the mind is quiet, all things are quiet.

"When the one mind is unborn, all things are blameless." For this reason even if you stay in quiet and serene places deep in the mountains and sit silently in quiet contemplation, as long as the road of the mind-monkey's horse of conceptualization is not cut off, you will only be wasting time.

Models for practice of sitting meditation and ways of applying the mind in concentration have come down through tradition from the Buddhas and Zen masters. However there are also types of sitting meditation typically practiced by seekers of individual liberation, seekers of heavenly states, humanitarians, and assorted cultists. Those who aspire to unsurpassed supreme enlightenment should practice the sitting meditation of the Buddhas.

Buddhas, Zen masters, and sincere practitioners conceive great compassion from the outset, never forgetting the great mass of living beings. Sitting with the body upright, maintaining correct mindfulness, and tuning the breathing are essential arts of sitting meditation.

In a clean and uncluttered room or under a tree or atop a rock, spread a thick sitting mat. Then loosen your belt and sit. Sit straight, neither leaning backward or forward, aligning the ears with the shoulders and the nose with the navel. Do not close the eyes, for that will beckon oblivion and drowsiness. Rest your mind in the palm of your left hand, and have your energy fill your lower abdomen, waist and pelvic region, then legs.

Expanding the ocean of energy in the umbilical sphere, take one deep breath and expel it completely through the mouth. Then close the lips and let fresh air enter through the nose in continuous subtle movement, neither hurried nor sluggish. Being aware of the exit and entry of the breath, think of what is not thinking. If you concentrate intently, basic energy will naturally fill and solidify you. Your lower abdomen will become like a gourd or a ball.

When this concentration becomes continuous, the physical elements of the body become well tuned, the internal organs are purified, and the upper parts are clear and cool while the lower parts are warm. Body and mind will spontaneously produce great joyfulness.

When you maintain an open, silent, radiant awareness whether you are active, stationary, sitting, or reclining, arouse intense determination. At this time, if you have the slightest conscious discrimination, any thought of peace, bliss, or seeing essence, you will never be able to get out of birth and death, even in a hundred eons and a thousand lifetimes.

If you have faith profoundly settled and galvanize the concentration to bring on the Great Death, suddenly you will find "the bottom fall out of the bucket" passing beyond myriad eons in a single instant, crushing the universe underfoot with a step.

Human beings are all imbued with wisdom and virtue, and fully endowed with the wish-fulfilling jewel, yet they degrade themselves and impoverish themselves. Many of them say they have minimal potential, or they are sickly, or they are obstructed by their past history, or they are entangled by circumstances, or there are no teachers, or the teaching is degenerate, or they have professional jobs, or they are householders. Creating their own laziness and boredom, lax and passive, they do not arouse the determination to practice Zen and study the Way.

Even if people like this meet teachers with clear eyes, they do not relinquish their own opinions to learn the Way. Even if they study the koans of the ancestral teachers of Zen, they do not bring them to mind with focused concentration. The sad fact is that both teachers and students are superficial in their attention to the Way. Those who abandon name and profit are really quite rare. Therefore the teaching centers make talks on Zen and lectures on the classics their style; considering large crowds and plenty of donations to be a flourishing condition; thinking learning and talent are wisdom, and call fame and power virtues.

On the borderline of life and death, on the very last day, of what use will any of this be? One day when you suffer illness, false thought will increase all the more, the fire in your heart will back up, and you will agonize in pain. When we observe the world closely, we find that more people are killed by false thoughts than by physical diseases.

Intensive Zen requires strength of spirit and intensity of concentration. Do not degrade yourself, do not let yourself be weak, and do not debase yourself. The Buddhas and Zen masters were thus, and we also are thus. Sages have horizontal eyes and vertical noses; we too have horizontal eyes and vertical noses. Breathing out and in, we do not borrow the nostrils of anyone else; stepping forward, stepping back, we do not use another's legs. Always keeping up this determination to transcend the Buddhas and Masters, searching into the root core of one's own mind, is called a robust will.

Here is it not a question of whether you are a monk or a layperson. It does not matter whether you are a man or a woman. It makes no difference whether you are keen or dull, more or less intelligent. It does not matter whether you have a lot of work to do or are at leisure. Those who make the great promise and undertake the great commitment, who are full of great faith and arouse the Great Wonder, do not fail to perceive essential nature, awaken to the Way, and attain the skin and flesh of the Buddhas and Zen masters.

If you do not liberate yourself in this lifetime, what lifetime will you wait for? Once this day has passed, that much of your life is gone too. With each passing thought, observe the impermanence of the appearances of the world and give up thinking there will be a tomorrow. With each step tread the Great Way of the mind source, and do not turn to another road.

You should let go your hand and footholds, as if plunging off a precipitous cliff. When body and mind have died away at once, it is like standing right in the middle of cosmic space, like sitting in the center of a crystal vase. All of a sudden there will emerge the great state that is not ordinary, not holy, not Buddha, not mind, not a thing; you will attain penetrating realization that mind, Buddha, and living beings are all one. This is the reality body of all Buddhas, the inherent essence of all people. By realizing this, one becomes a Buddha or a Zen master; by missing this, one remains an ordinary mortal.

Although people's faculties may be keen or dull, and practice and realization may be gradual or sudden, the secret I have been revealing here is the teaching of attaining Buddhahood by sudden enlightenment. It is a standard rule in which higher, middling and lesser faculties are one whole. It is far from the gradual practice and learning of the two vehicles of individual liberation.

To think Buddha nature is the state where mind is empty and objects are silent, where there is radiant awareness without arousing a single thought, is to consider the conscious spirit to be the original human being. It is like taking a thief to be your son, like taking a brick for a mirror. This is the fundamental ignorance underlying birth and death. It is like being a corpse that is still breathing. You cannot release your own radiant light, illumine the self within and shine through mountains, rivers, and earth.

Even if great awakening is realized and the body of reality is clearly comprehended, if you are polluted by practice and attainment, the Buddha Way does not become manifest. You should know that there is that which is beyond even the beyond.

As for the Zen of the living exemplars, even if a clear mirror is placed on a stand, they break through it right away. Even if a precious pearl is in their palm, they smash it at once. A mortar flies through space; the eastern mountains walk on water. Having the fortune to know that all living beings have Buddha nature, and that there is already a matter of utmost importance right where you stand, investigate continuously, twenty four hours a day, in principle and in fact. What is it that is walking, what is it that is sitting, what is it that acts, what is the mind?

If you forge bravely and powerfully ahead, wholeheartedly questioning and wondering for three to five years, without flagging, the Great Wonder will inevitably occur and you will not fail to awaken.

Nurturing the embryo of sagehood, cultivating practice in the aftermath of awakening, is really not easy. An ancient said, "If your potential does not leave a fixed position, it falls into an ocean of poison." It is imperative to know that there is cultivation on top of realization and to preserve the Way of living Zen with hidden practice and secret application.

Do not make the mistake of maintaining the idea of having gained something, lest you become a hungry ghost forever keeping watch over a treasure, or a starveling with a hoard of wealth. Even if you see a Buddha land manifest and perceive the realm of Buddha, you see only once, not twice.

I hope you will concentrate and let go as you breathe out and in, remove all leakage from the stream of mindfulness, perpetuate the bones and marrow of the Buddhas and Zen founders, dispense the pure teaching, like sweet elixir, for the benefit and salvation of all living beings, gratefully requiting the deep and far reaching blessings you have received.