Kukai

Painting of Kukai (774-835 C.E.).

Kūkai (空海), also known posthumously as Kōbō-Daishi (弘法大師) , 774–835 C.E.: Japanese monk, scholar, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Kūkai is famous as a calligrapher (see Shodo), engineer, and is said to have invented kana, the syllabary in which, in combination with Chinese characters (Kanji) the Japanese language is written. His religious writing, some 50 works, expound the esoteric Shingon doctrine. Kūkai is also said to have written the iroha, one of the most famous poems in Japanese, which uses every phonetic kana syllable.

Biography

Early Years

Kūkai was born in 774 C.E. in the province of Sanuki on Shikoku island in the present day town of Zentsuji, Kagawa. His family were members of a declining aristocratic family. At age fifteen, he began to receive instruction in the Chinese Classics under the guidance of his maternal uncle. In 791 C.E. Kūkai went to "the capital", (probably Nara), to study at the government university, the graduates of which were chosen for prestigious positions as bureaucrats. The Fujiwara clan became very powerful in government, and Kukai’s prospects for a career as a bureaucrat dimmed. At some point Kūkai became disillusioned with the course of study at the university and went through a decisive transformation that led him to abandon his studies and become a wandering mendicant.

During this period Kūkai frequently sought out isolated mountain regions where he chanted the Ākāsagarbha mantra relentlessly. But he also must have frequented the large monasteries of Nara. We know this because his first major literary work, Sangō shiiki (三教指歸; Indications of the Goals of the Three Teachings), composed during this period at the age of 24, quotes from a remarkable breadth of sources, including the classics of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. Indications gave the first hint of the way that Kūkai would transform Japanese society from the wholesale importation of Chinese culture toward the emergence of a truly Japanese culture.

Travel and Study in China

Kūkai was born in a period of political turmoil with Emperor Kammu (r. 781-806 C.E.) seeking to consolidate his power and to extend his realm. In 784 C.E. Kammu shifted his capital from Nara to Nagaoka in a move that was said to be intended to edge the powerful Nara Buddhist establishments out of state politics Then, in 794 C.E. Kammu suddenly shifted the capital again, this time to Heian-kyō, which is modern day Kyoto. How Kukai managed to be included on a government sponsored mission to China is uncertain, but he set sail in 804 A.D..

In 805 C.E. Kukai met Master Hui-kuo (Jap. Keika) (746-805 C.E.), the man who would initiate him into the esoteric Buddhism tradition. Hui-kuo came from an illustrious lineage of Buddhist masters, famed especially for translating Sanskrit texts, including the Mahavairocana Sutra, into Chinese. Hui-kuo immediately bestowed on Kukai the first level Abhisheka, or esoteric, initiation. Kukai had expected to spend 20 years in China studying, but in a few short months he was to receive the final initiation, and become a master of the esoteric lineage. This means that Kukai must have mastered the complex rituals involving combinations and mudra, mantra, and visualisations associated with each of the deities in the two mandala, amounting to several dozen distinct practices. Kukai was the only one who received the entire teaching of both the Garbhakosha and the Vajradhatumandalas. Hui-kuo also gave Kukai a number of ritual implements and art works. Kukai arrived back in Japan in 806 A.D..

Kukai and Saicho

In Kukai's absence Emperor Kammu had died and been replaced by Emperor Heizei, who had no great enthusiasm for Buddhism. Saicho, the founder of the Tendai school, was a court favourite, and these two factors seemed to have contributed to the lack of interest shown by the court in Kukai's return. Saicho had travelled to China at the same time, and he was also initiated into esoteric Buddhism (by Shun-hsiao), and had also returned with esoteric Buddhist texts. Indeed he can rightly claim priority in introducing esoteric Buddhism to Japan. Esoteric Buddhism became an important aspect of the Tendai school which was primarily focused on the Lotus Sutra, an esoteric text. Saicho had already had esoteric rites officially recognised by the court as an integral part of Tendai, and had already performed the abhisheka, or initiatory ritual, for the court by the time Kukai returned to Japan. Kukai was in quite a difficult position in that he was a relative unknown, up against the rising star of Saicho, in a field of opportunities strictly limited by draconian state control of religious practice. However with the demise of Emperor Kammu, Saicho's fortunes began to wane. But we know that he and Kukai corresponded frequently and that Saicho was a frequent borrower of texts from Kukai. Saicho also requested, in 812, that Kukai give him the introductory initiation, which Kukai agreed to do. Kukai also bestowed a second level initiation on Saicho, but refused to grant the final initiation because Saicho had not completed the required studies. Their friendship could be said to end when Kukai refused to lend him a scripture, saying that Saicho could not learn what he needed from a text, but only through a proper initiation into the teachings.

Kukai and Emperor Saga

We know little about Kukai's movements until 809 C.E., when the court finally responded to Kukai's report on his studies, which also contained an inventory of the texts and other objects he had brought with him, and a petition for state support to establish the new esoteric Buddhism in Japan. That document, the Catalogue of Imported Items is interesting because it is the first attempt by Kukai to distinguish the new form of Buddhism from that already practised in Japan. Late in 809 C.E. Kukai finally received the courts response', which was an order to reside in the Takaosanji (later Jingoji) Temple in the suburbs of Kyoto. This was to be Kukai's headquarters for the next 14 years. The year 809 C.E. also saw the retirement of Heizei due to illness and the succession of Emperor Saga, who supported Kukai. During the three year period after his return from China there was little that Kukai could do, but he seems to established himself as a calligrapher of note, for Saga often invited Kukai to the palace where he would write letters on the Emperor's behalf. They also exchanged poems and other gifts.

In 810 C.E. Kukai emerged as a public figure when he was appointed administrative head at Tōdaiji Temple in Nara. Tōdaiji was the central temple in Nara and therefore the most important in the country. To get the appointment Kukai needed not only the support of the Emperor, but also of the powerful Nara clergy.

Shortly after his enthronement Saga was seriously ill and while he was recovering Heizei fomented a rebellion, which had to be put down by force and resulted in much bloodshed on both sides. Eventually Saga won the day, but the political crisis, combined with his illness made this a very difficult period. It seems that Kukai was one of his mainstays at the time. In any case in 810 C.E. Kukai petitioned the Emperor to allow him to carry out certain esoteric rituals which were said to "enable a king to vanquish the seven calamities, to maintain the four seasons in harmony, to protect the nation and family, and to give comfort to himself and others". His petition was granted.

Mount Kōya

The emperor granted Mt. Kōya to Kukai free from all state control. Kukai's vision for Mt. Koya was that it become a representation of the two mandalas which form the basis of Shingon Buddhism, with the central plateau as the Womb Realm mandala, and the peaks surrounding the area as petals of a lotus; located in the centre of this would be the Diamond Realm mandala in the form of a Temple which he named Kongōbuji - the Diamond Peak Temple. At the centre of the Temple complex sits an enormous statue of Mahavairocana Buddha who is the personification of Ultimate Reality.

The Toji Period

When Kammu had moved the capital, he had not permitted the powerful Buddhists from the temples of Nara to follow him. He did commission two new temples: Toji (Eastern Temple) and Saiji (Western Temple) which flanked the road at southern entrance to the city which were intended to protect the capital from evil influences.

1n 824 C.E. Kukai was appointed to the administrative body that oversaw all the Buddhist monasteries in Japan, the Soogoo, or Office of Priestly Affairs. The Office consisted of four positions, with the Supreme Priest being an honorary position which was often vacant. The effective head of the Sogo was the Senior Director (Daisoozu). Kukai's appointment was to the position of junior director (Shoosoozu). In addition there was a Vinaya Master (Risshi) who was responsible for the monastic code of discipline. In 828 C.E. Kukai opened his School of Arts and Sciences (Shugei shuchi-in), a private institution which was open to all regardless of social rank.

Final Years

Kukai completed his magnum opus The Ten Stages of the Development of Mind in 830 A.D.. A simplified summary, The Precious Key to the Secret Treasury followed soon after. In 831 C.E. he experienced the first signs of the illness that eventually killed him. He sought to retire but the emperor would not accept his resignation, and instead gave him sick leave. Towards the end of 832 C.E. Kukai was back on Mt. Koya and spent most of his remaining life there. In 834 C.E. he petitioned the court to establish a Shingon chapel in the palace for the purpose of conducting rituals which would ensure the health of the state. This request was granted and Shingon ritual became incorporated into the official court calendar of events. In 835 C.E., just two months prior to his death, Kukai was finally granted permission to annually ordain three Shingon monks at Mt. Koya.

Legend has it that Kukai has not died but entered into an eternal samadhi (or deeply concentrated meditation) and is still alive on Mt Koya, awaiting the appearance of the next Buddha Maitreya. Kukai came to be regarded as a Bodhisattva who had come to earth in order to bring relief from suffering to the time between Shakyamuni Buddha, and Maitreya, which is said to be characterised by increasing disorder and decay.

Thought and Works

Background: the Rise of Esoteric Buddhism

Buddha identified desire as the cause of human suffering and sorrow, and saw the denial of physical desire through an ascetic life as the path to Nirvana (Paradise, Enlightened World). Hinayana Buddhism, which grew from this concept centering on celibate monks, presented a gloomy theory of salvation which did not appeal to lay people and could not be applied in their daily lives. Mahayana Buddhism arose in response, taking Buddha’s simple teachings and creating from them an elaborate system of metaphysics. From this current, esoteric Buddhism took shape, incorporating ideas from Hinduism. The earliest esoteric texts appeared in India around the 4th century C.E., and there is evidence that Nalanda University in northern India was a center for the early Tantric movement. By the 13th century C.E., Buddhism had mostly died out in India, its practices merging with Hinduism, and both tantric religions were experiencing pressure from the rising importance of Islam. The majority of the tantric practices, with variations from the original Indian forms, had been adopted in Tibet, where they were preserved until recently.

The central figure of esoteric Buddhism is Vairocana (also Vairochana or Mahavairocana; 大日如來 or 毘盧遮那佛). What is Vairocana? Gautama Buddha was a spiritual teacher in ancient India. The time of his birth and death are unclear, but most modern scholars have him living between approximately 563 B.C.E. and 483 B.C.E. According to tradition, he was born with the name Siddhartha Gautama and, after a quest for the truth, underwent a spiritual transformation and changed his name to Buddha. He is also commonly known as Shakyamuni. After a lapse of years, Buddhists started to think that this great teacher must have been, not only a historical figure, but the enlightened Buddha in his previous life. Eventually the enlightened Buddha became dharma-kaaya Buddha. Nichiren later pointed out the contradiction between the historical figure of Buddha and the enlightened Buddha, asserting that only the dharma-kaaya Buddha was the real Buddha The Huayan (Avatamsaka Sutra) put forth a theory that dharma-kaaya was a being called “vairocana.” The thinkers of esoteric Buddhism took this viarocana and created a new Vairochana or Vahavairocana who transcended and separated from Buddha. This was in contradiction to the theory of the void (sunya, empty) put forth by Nāgārjuna (龍樹 in Chinese) (c. 150 - 250 C.E.), a very important Indian Buddhist philospher and the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Path) school of Mahāyāna Buddhism .

The Sutras of esoteric Buddhism (大毘盧遮那成佛神變加持經and金剛頂経) only speak of Vairocana, never of Buddha. This is a denial of traditional Buddhism. Esoteric Buddhism was introduced to China by two Indian monks (善無畏and金剛智) in the 8th century C.E. Amoghavajra (705-774 C.E.) (in Chinese 不空 Bukong/P'u-k'ung) was a prolific translator who became one of the most politically powerful Buddhist monks in Chinese history, acknowledged as one of the eight patriarchs of the doctrine in the Shingon lineages. Amoghavajra’s disciple was Hui-kou (恵果)（746－805 A..D.）, who became the mentor of Kukai.

Cosmology of Kukai’s Esoteric Buddhism

Christian philosophy orders the world as God-human-the world, with a deep discontinuation between God and human. In Hindu and Buddhist cosmology the order is God- the world – human. In India, Hinduism says that God is the world, and the relationship between God and humans is closer than in Christianity. Philosopher mystics of the Upanishads identify Brahman, the world soul, with atman, the inner essence of the human being, or the human soul, and say that Brahman and atman were originally the same. Buddhism in general denies God. Nāgārjuna (龍樹 )’s theory of the void (sunya ,empty) asserts that there is no God, no world, no human being and no realisation (Buddhahood). This concept of the void (sunya ,empty) is difficult for ordinary people to understand. It says that this world and people are very low and must be completely denied in order to be purified. Through various Buddhist practices, the world and people are purified and the world of Pratītyasamutpāda (purified world) appears. Esoteric Buddhism begins from this purified world. In Japanese Buddhism, Saicho and Kukai had a different philosophical view of the world from the established Buddhism of Nara. They asserted that this world is not a vulgar and low place which should be completely denied, but a purified world which should be affirmed. The Huayan school of Nara Buddhism already had a theory of “the purified world,” but it had never been understood and accepted.

There were no Buddhists like Kukai who took an interest in the world. The purified world was named Mandala (Sanskrit mandala "circle"). The word is of Hindu origin, but is also used in a Buddhist context to refer to various tangible objects. In practice, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart, or geometric pattern which represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the universe from the human perspective. Mandala was a sacred area and the state of the realisation of Buddha. It could only be perceived by a fully enlightened person.

The order of the world and all phenomena can be expressed as visual pictures which contain the essence of Vairocana.

Major Works

Biographies of Kūkai suggest that he became disillusioned with his studies while at university, and began to investigate Buddhism. After the Taika Reform (646 C.E.) the Fujiwara clan became very powerful, and Kukai’s prospects for a career as a bureaucrat dimmed. Finally, Kūkai went through a decisive transformation that led him to abandon his studies and become a wandering mendicant. Kūkai was introduced to the Buddhist practice of chanting the mantra of the Bodhisattva Ākāsagarbha, and during this period he frequently sought out isolated mountain regions where he chanted the Ākāsagarbha mantra relentlessly. He also must have frequented the large monasteries of Nara, because his first major literary work, Sangō shiiki (三教指歸; Indications of the Goals of the Three Teachings), composed during this period when he was 24 years old (797C.E.), quotes from a remarkable breadth of sources, including the classics of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The Nara temples, with their extensive libraries, were the most likely place, perhaps the only place, where Kūkai could have found all of these texts.

He established, to his own satisfaction at least, that Buddhism is the highest of the available spiritual teachings . Sangō shiiki (三教指歸; Indications of the Goals of the Three Teachings) does not seem to be a treatise for aiming at success in life , but for convincing himself to be an anchorite. It was Kukai’s first expression of his view that life is transitory. The work contains Kukai’s first examination of Buddha, his first deep insights into Taoism, and the beginnings of a “theory” of Confucianism, which had never been analyzed before. In essence, the work declared Kukai’s renunciation of the world.

After returning from China in 806 C.E. Kukai presented the court with a document, the Catalogue of Imported Items, which is interesting because it is the first attempt by Kūkai to distinguish the new form of Buddhism from that already practised in Japan. When Kukai introduced this catalogue, he no longer appeared as a mendicant. the Catalogue of Imported Items was a catalogue of foreign documents and instruments. Such an organized catalogue had never been seen before, and it showed that Kukai had started to systematize esoteric Buddhism. The government appeared to vacillate for some time before accepting the Catalogue because Kukai was not well known, but the monk Saicho already acknowledged the Catalogue of Imported Items and Kukai himself.

Kukai wrote his greatest work, The Ten Stages of the Development of Mind, in 830 A.D.. A simplified summary,The Precious Key to the Secret Treasury, followed soon afterwards. In these books he explained the ten stages of the mind of a Buddhist monk engaged in ascetic practices. The first stage is a mind which acts on instinct like a ram. The second stage is a mind that starts to think others, and to make offerings. The third stage is the mind of child or a calf which follows its mother. The fourth stage is a mind which can recognize physical and spiritual being, but still denies its own spiritual self. The fifth stage is a mind which recognizes the infinity of all things, eliminates ignorance and longs for Nirvana. The sixth stage is a mind which wants to take away peoples’ suffering and give them joy. The seventh stage is a mind which is the negation of all passing, coming and going, that meditates only on vanity and the void. The eighth stage is a mind which recognizes that all things are pure, the object and subject of the recognition were harmonized. The ninth stage is a mind which, like water, has no fixed boundaries, and is only rippled on the surface by a breeze. Similarly, the world of enlightenment has also no clear edge. The tenth stage is the state of realizing the height of the void (sunya, empty) and the Buddhahood; spiritual enlightenment.

The first through the third stages signify the level of people in general. The fourth and fifth stages represent Hinayana (Theravada, lesser Vehicle) Buddhists. The fourth stage is that of enlightenment through learning Buddha’s words, Zraavaka .The fifth stage is that of self-enlightenment, Pratyekabuddha. The sixth stage indicates the Dharma-character school (Chinese: 法相宗) or Consciousness-only school (Chinese 唯識). The seventh stage represents Sanlun (Traditional Chinese: 三論) or, literally, the Three Treatise School, a Chinese school of Buddhism based upon the Indian Madhyamaka tradition, founded by Nagarjuna. The eighth stage represented Tendai (Japanese: 天台宗, a Japanese school of Mahayana Buddhism) descended from the Chinese Tiantai or Lotus Sutra school. The ninth stage represents Kegon (華厳) a name for the Japanese version of the Huayan school of Chinese Buddhism, brought to Japan via the Korean Hwaeom tradition.The tenth stage represents Shingon (真言), also called Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, a major school of Japanese Buddhism, and one of two major sub-schools of Vajrayana Buddhism, the other being Tibetan Buddhism. The word Shingon is a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese term Zhen Yan meaning "True Word", which itself is a representation of the Sanskrit word for mantra .

It is worth noting that in The Ten Stages of the Development of Mind, Kukai placed Kegon (華厳) or the Huayan school at a higher stage than the Tendai (Japanese: 天台宗), or Tiantai, or Lotus Sutra school. Tiantai (天台宗, Wade-Giles: T'ien T'ai), also called the Lotus Sutra School, was founded by Zhiyi (智顗, Wade-Giles: Chih-I) (538-597 C.E.). Zhiyi (Chihi) organized sutras in five stages in a chronological order and selected the Lotus Sutra as the primary text of the Buddha. Nichiren and Saicho followed Zhiyi's interpretation. Kukai not only challenged Zhiyi's interpretation but asserted that Shingon (真言), also called Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, was superior to Tiantai and Kegon, because Kukai thought that Shingon (真言) had the possibility of constructing a system of knowledge concerning “the purified world.” During the Japanese modern era (Meiji), this theory of The Ten Stages of the Development of Mind made many contributions to modernizing Japanese Buddhism.

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References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Abé, Ryuichi. 2000. The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse. Columbia University Press.
• Hakeda, Yoshito S. 1984. Kukai and His Major Works. Columbia University Press.
• Skilton, A. 1994. A Concise History of Buddhism. Birmingham : Windhorse Publications.
• Wayman, A and Tajima, R. 1998 The Enlightenment of Vairocana. Delhi : Motilal Barnasidass. [includes: Study of the Vairocanābhisambodhitantra (Wayman), and Study of the Mahāvairocana-Sūtra (Tajima)]

External links

• Kukai's Sokushin-Jobutsu-Gi (Principle of Attaining Buddhahood with the Present Body)
• another biography.
• Kyoto Museum Exhibition many images related to Shingon Buddhism.

fr:Kobo Daishi ja:空海 ru:Кукай de:Kūkai

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