In Bankei Yōtaku’s teaching, the pivotal theme is the “Unborn Buddha-mind,” the claim that the mind is originally and inherently enlightened. From this standpoint, formal sitting meditation, or zazen, does not occupy the central place it holds in many other Zen lineages. Because the Unborn mind is always already present, to practice meditation as a technique for “attaining” enlightenment risks reinforcing the illusion of a separate seeker striving for a distant goal. Bankei repeatedly warned that such goal-oriented practice can subtly suggest that something is lacking here and now, thereby obscuring the very realization it aims to produce.

This perspective led him to view formal meditation as, at best, secondary and, at worst, an obstacle when clung to as a special method. He regarded contrived efforts to produce particular mental states as creating an artificial condition that departs from the natural clarity of the Unborn. Rather than encouraging withdrawal into rarefied contemplative experiences, he stressed that enlightenment does not depend on posture, special states of consciousness, or separation from ordinary life. Meditation, in the conventional sense of disciplined sitting to gain insight, was therefore treated with considerable caution.

Yet Bankei did not simply reject meditation outright; instead, he reframed what genuine “meditation” means. For him, the true contemplative life is the effortless, moment-to-moment abiding in the Unborn Buddha-mind amid all activities—seeing, hearing, speaking, and working. Ordinary life becomes the field of practice when one allows the mind to function naturally, without interference or fabrication. In this light, formal zazen may be used as a supportive condition, but only insofar as it helps one notice deluded tendencies as they arise and return immediately to the Unborn, rather than as a specialized path to cultivate extraordinary experiences.

The distinctive role of meditation in his teaching, then, is largely negative and corrective: it is stripped of its status as a privileged route to awakening and subordinated to the direct recognition of what is already the case. Bankei urged students to maintain natural awareness without forcing the mind into any particular shape, to live spontaneously from their inherent enlightenment rather than chase after it. True practice, as he described it, lies in not interfering with the natural functioning of the Unborn awareness, allowing it to permeate every aspect of daily existence instead of confining it to the meditation hall.