Bankei Yōtaku stands within the Rinzai tradition, yet his relationships with other Zen masters reveal a figure who is simultaneously insider and outsider. He was ordained and trained in the Rinzai school, studying under Umpo Zenshō and later receiving dharma transmission from Dōsha Chōgen of the Myōshinji branch. This firmly situates him in the mainstream institutional lineage of Rinzai Zen, even as his later teaching style departed from many of its prevailing methods. His formal credentials were never in doubt, yet his way of expressing the Dharma did not simply echo the established patterns of his contemporaries.

In relation to other Zen masters of his era, Bankei’s stance was often quietly but unmistakably critical. He regarded the overreliance on formal kōan curricula, elaborate ritual, and scholasticism as a kind of deviation from direct realization. Many institutional leaders emphasized structured kōan practice and disciplined seated meditation, whereas Bankei taught that awakening to the “Unborn” or “unborn Buddha-mind” was immediate and ever-present, not dependent on technical procedures. This divergence created both tension and respect: some masters saw his approach as a departure from orthodoxy, while others acknowledged the authenticity of his realization and the depth of his insight.

Although he did not stand in direct personal relationship with figures such as Hakuin Ekaku, later generations often viewed their approaches as contrasting expressions within the same Rinzai stream. Bankei’s teaching, centered on the innate clarity of mind and a non-formalistic path, came to be seen as a counterpoint to more rigorous, kōan-centered systems that would later dominate the school. Within his own lifetime, monks and laypeople from various temples and backgrounds sought him out, suggesting that his position relative to other masters was not that of a sectarian rival, but of a teacher whose influence cut across institutional boundaries. In this way, he remained rooted in the Rinzai lineage while offering a living critique of its more rigid tendencies.

His legacy among Zen masters after him reflects this dual character. On the one hand, his formal lineage did not become the primary source of authority for the major institutional heads of later Rinzai, and his methods were often sidelined within the official training halls. On the other hand, his emphasis on the Unborn mind and on a natural, non-coercive realization quietly nourished those teachers and practitioners who sought a Zen less bound by formality. Thus his relationship to other Zen masters can be seen as that of a recognized heir to the tradition who, by embodying it in an unorthodox way, invited the tradition to remember its own deepest roots.