Shingon-Japanese Esoteric Buddhism

Abstract

A consensus of tradition has always told us that “esoteric” teachings are kept secret and reserved because they transcend the limited capacities of ordinary men. A cordon must be thrown around them to protect them from abuse or distortion at the hands of those too ignorant to comprehend their meaning. Until shortly after the Second World War, Shingon was one such school. It is a late school of Buddhism, which originated in India sometime during the sev¬enth century and was carried eastward to China and Japan in the course of the next two hundred years. Another branch of the doctrine went north to Tibet during the eighth century. At the time of its origin it was a completely new school of Buddhism, which taught that man could recover his innate but lost Buddha nature “in this very body.” No longer was it necessary to wait until after death or after the passage of countless rebirths. By performing certain dis¬ciplines of body, speech, and mind, and by undergoing certain initiatic con¬secrations, the disciple could realize, in this life, his fundamental identity with the Buddhahood of the whole world. This school, known variously as esoteric or Tantric Buddhism, has always drawn a distinction between its exoteric and its esoteric teachings. For the world at large it offered a brilliant art and iconography, a pantheon of divine protectors from worldly ills, a doctrine of the ultimate Buddhahood of all sen¬tient beings, and a corpus of magic spells whereby ordinary people could be helped to heal their sicknesses, vanquish their enemies, bring rain during a drought, and ensure an abundant harvest. The spiritual practices leading to the various initiations, on the other hand, were always treated as esoteric; they were reserved for those disciples who were undergoing the prescribed training toward the requisite consecration. Such teachings, known as mikkyd in Japanese, were never committed to writing. They were transmitted by word of mouth to those qualified to receive them. The mikkyd doctrines were brought to Japan by Kukai at the beginning of the ninth century. For some eleven hundred years they remained esoteric, handed down in an initiatic chain from master to pupil. They were never recorded or published. Some forty years ago, however, this carefully guarded secrecy, this strict distinction between exoteric and esoteric, began to break down. Accounts of doctrine and practice, never before written down, began to be published in Japan for all to read. Comparatively little of this wisdom has so far been made available to West¬ern readers. Works on Shingon art and iconography have appeared in English; treatises in French have been published on the fascinating subject of the Two Mandalas, so prominent in the rituals and meditations of mikkyd; some invalu¬able monographs have been given us by authorities such as Kiyota Minoru. By and large, however, this important school of Buddhism, which has immea- surely enriched the cultural and spiritual life of Japan, has been neglected in the West. Compared with the immense literature on Zen, and the substantial writ¬ing on Tibetan vajraydna, works on Shingon mikkyd have been scarce. Details of the spiritual exercises, published so comparatively recently in Japan, have been especially inaccessible. This book is the first comprehensive study of Shingon—treating its history, its doctrines, and its practical disciplines—to appear in any Western language. It will be warmly welcomed by all Western students of Buddhism. Much of it is based on two books by Professor Taiko Yamasaki, Mikkyd meisohd (1974) and Mikkyd meiso no shinso shinri (1981). Both are practical guides to Shingon meditation methods. A Shingon priest of high rank, a pupil of the celebrated Kanayama Bokusho, a student of Indian yoga and of depth psychology, an adept in all the various forms of esoteric meditation, Professor Yamasaki is ad¬mirably fitted to introduce these complex teachings to Western readers. His books were published in Japan in the hope that practical instructions in these well-tried meditation techniques might prove a useful corrective to the psycho¬logical ills of the age. His work has been translated and edited by a dedicated team of scholars, both American and Japanese. Always working in close collaboration with Professor Yamasaki, they have nevertheless thought right to broaden the scope of the book for the needs of an English readership. They have accordingly drawn on a wider range of Shingon sources than those provided by Professor Yamasaki alone. The resulting study is a true overview of the subject. Here for the first time the English reader can follow the history of the school, from its mysterious origin in India to its introduction and development in Japan. We can read of the remarkable men who carried the teachings from India to China in the course of the eighth century, who translated the texts—let us never forget the appalling difficulties of translating from the Sanskrit to the Chinese—and who continued the initiatic chain of teaching in the capitals of T’ang China. Here too is the life of the brilliant genius Kukai—calligrapher, sculptor, and spiritual master— who brought the teachings from China to Japan in the early ninth century and who systematized both doctrine and practice in such a way that they have sur¬vived virtually unchanged to this day. Here too are the metaphysical doctrines of the school, its founding scriptures, its views on levels of consciousness and stages of samadhi. Here too is the whole range of Shingon practice, its medita¬tions and exercises, hitherto virtually unknown in the West. Nor is this all. We can also find guidance to the mysteries of the Two Man- dalas and their use in ritual and meditation. These mandalas may be familiar to us as icons on the walls of temples. But of their construction, of the correct progression through the multitudinous figures that inhabit them, of their func¬tion in ritual, little has so far been divulged in English. How welcome, therefore, is the full description given here of the Taizokai, or Womb World Mandala, with its central Buddha, its twelve rectangular “halls,” its 409 divinities, its orientation to the east, its eight red petals, its five gates. We are guided through each “hall,” with its resident divinities, and shown how the construction of the mandala follows prescriptions in the Mahavairocana Sutra. Here also are described the intricacies of the Kongokai or Diamond World Mandala, with its nine squares, its orientation to the west, its 1461 divinities, and its interior spiral movement toward the center. Of special interest to Western students of Buddhism, however, will be the account here given of the spiritual exercises practiced in Shingon, whereby the disciple can recover his lost Buddha nature. Fully described are the sammitsu, the three secret modes of “symbolic mimesis” by which the disciple can iden¬tify his bodily actions, his speech, and the operations of his mind with those of the Buddha Vairocana. We shall find that the exercise comprises a period of a hundred days, in which the disciple must enact a symbolic drama by means of mudras of the hands, mantras, and visualizations. The place of the rite is sealed off by golden walls and nets, the Buddha and his retinue are brought to the place in a jeweled car¬riage, invited inside, feasted, entertained, and worshiped. At the climax of the rite the disciple s Buddha nature is released and fused into a mystic unity with the Buddha. Thereafter the magic walls and nets are “untied” and the divine guests sent back to their world with flowers strewn under their feet. It is a com¬plex and difficult practice, which requires the personal supervision of a teacher. The reader will likewise find here a fascinating account of some of the supple-mentary meditations of Shingon. Professor Yamasaki is thoroughly versed in the ajikan, or recitation and visualization of the Sanskrit letter A, a sound that is held to encapsulate all the wisdom of the Mahavairocana Sutra and to speak directly to a deep layer of our consciousness. Professor Yamasaki is, further, one of the few people alive to have completed the extremely arduous practice known as the kokuzo gumonji-no-ho, here called the Morning Star Meditation because the dis¬ciple by this practice hopes to achieve mystic union with the deity Akashagarbha in the form of the planet Venus. Professor Yamasakis account of his personal experiences in undergoing this grueling fifty-day discipline makes fascinating reading. He lived in a small temple on the top of Mount Misen, open on three sides to the landscape and surrounded by huge trees. In fifty days he had to accomplish a million times the recitation of the mantra No bo Akyasha kyarabaya on ari kyamari bori sowaka. Every day, therefore, with a rosary to help him count, and facing east in full view of the morning star, he had to recite the man- tra 21,600 times. As the days went by he reported visions and phenomena of unusual intensity, which required courage and wisdom to withstand. Toward the end of the practice these diminished in force, to give way to a heightened and crystalline clarity of consciousness and perception. In Japan today, despite the headlong pace of modernization during the last forty years, much of a more ancient world has survived, on a level of the mind that seemingly remains untouched by modern gadgetry. Shingon has been lost to India and has long vanished from China. Only in Japan has this old and mys¬terious school of Buddhism survived. Some there may be who deplore the ‘'re¬lease'’ of hitherto esoteric knowledge, who believe that such an opening of the gates can result only in misuse and spiritual impoverishment. Others may reply that it is better to record than to lose, better that such knowledge be made avail¬able to all than lost to all. Be that as it may, the release of Shingon esoteric doctrine has been a fact in Japan for several decades. It is surely good, therefore, that Western readers should be given an overview of this school by a qualified and initiated authority. Our gratitude goes to Professor Yamasaki and to the devoted team who have given us this valuable book.