Kukai

I just read in the introduction to Kukai's (774-835) work that he wrote in Chinese because at the time he wrote, Japanese wasn't advanced enough at that time, to carry the abstract concepts. 

This volume, Kukai: Major Works by Toshito S. Hakeda (1924 -1983), the Columbia professor who passed away in 1983, includes a biography section. All page cites are from this book.

An outline of his life

His birth name was Tōtomono. He started studying with his uncle at 15 and got into college, which was reserved for the children of nobles. They studied Confucius. He went off to meditate a lot in the mountains and had some visions, like the sword of Manjushri and Venus entered his mouth. It was an austere existence in the mountains and he became a monk eventually. It's not clear if he quit college right away to become a monk or how long he was in college. 

The document he created called "Indications of the Goals of the Three Teachings", which is the first text in the book. It's unknown if the publication date was much later than the original composition of the document. With things so far into the past, and through translation this minor point seems like a weird hill to die on but it illustrates the difficulties and issues with studying Kukai. As with many texts, there are layers of edits throughout a lifetime, and various parts of the text seems to have been written in various parts of his life. In 794 the capital of Japan was moved to Kyoto from Nagaoka, 500 km to the south, when Kukai was 20. We have 2 different introductions in his first text, one when he was young, and one when he was much older. Comparing the differences shows his maturity, and change.

Japan had only been a unified island for 200 years. There were homeless people including the shidoso, who were not ordained Buddhist monks. People were trying to avoid conscription, forced labor and taxation. Emperor Kammu ruled from 781-806. Buddhist temples owned a lot of land, and it's suggested that the move to Kyoto was an effort to start anew in a city that wasn't owned by the Buddhist temples. One of the nobles sent ahead to Kyoto to prepare for the emperor, was murdered. People who opposed the move mysteriously died. The empress died too, his son died too. The mortality rate was pretty high with murder and diseases. People could attribute all sorts of mythologies to these events. 

Kukai had no high placed relatives to give him access to the halls of power, the clan falling out of favor being blamed for an assassination, though he did go to college, so he had to have had something in his favor. Grasping at solutions he read that if he chanted a mantra 1 million times, he would be able to understand the Buddhist scriptures, such as they existed at that time. He climbed mountains and meditated. "I despised fame and wealth and longed for life in the midst of nature." (p. 20). His sense of transience led him to this renunciation. He was a wandering monk for a time.

His renunciation came from the beginning of the Heian period and the end of the Nara period, when the government focused on building Buddhist temples. Buddhism had been introduced to Japan 250 years earlier through Korea in 552. Two Buddhist temples were to built in every province, 20 monks to be maintained in one, 10 nuns in the other. Building temples was ordered in 741. Todai-ji temple was constructed in 752 where a great bronze statue of Vairocana, in Nara, nearby Kyoto. 

The school at that times was called the Natural Wisdom School and they focused on meditation and reciting the mantra to Ākāśagarbha which is associated with the element of space, and is mentioned in the Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Pūrvapraṇidhāna Sūtra (Wayback Machine has a copy). Kukai practiced this form of Buddhism to begin with.

"As he chanted the mantra, he experienced a vision whereby Ākāśagarbha told him to go to Tang China to seek understanding of the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Sūtra. Later he would go to China to learn Tangmi from Huiguo, and then go on to found the Shingon sect of esoteric Buddhism in Heian Japan." (Wikipedia). The cite is from The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse by Ryūichi Abe (1999).

Like all political power, they were co-opting the moral authority of Buddhism to enhance their reputation and power. They had magical beliefs of warding off bad luck and fortune, grief and mourning. As Buddhism gained more power, it became corrupt. It wasn't open source Buddhism, access was granted for favors. Monks would have varying degrees of corruption and sincere devotion. There were many unordained monks called shidoso. Even so, they were trying to reduce the amount of ordained monks draining the coffers of the state.

They don't know where he wandered that provided the space to study and write. It was probably Nara. He alternated retreat and engagement with society throughout his whole life. Mount Koya isn't far from Nara, 70km or 43 miles. Now there is Kongobu-ji temple built in 1593 on Mount Koya, the center of the sect of Shingon which Kukai founded. Indications references 90 books and sutras so he couldn't have just wandered and meditated. 

"...a man is capable of improving himself, no matter how wicked and biased he may be..." (p.26).

From 24-31 there is again little information about Kukai, like his first 16 years. At 31 he goes to China. The stated reason is to study with masters who could explain the Mahavairocana Sutra (320 pages). How did he get the state to pay for his trip to China to do this? Hakeda has various speculation. 

In some ways we know so much about the surrounding context of his life, and he has evocative tidbits in his life, and we have the texts that have survived to this time. In some ways we know quit little through the mist of time. He goes to China in 804 to Ch'ang-an (Eternal Peace) or Xi'An, where China's first emperor, held his imperial court and constructed his massive mausoleum guarded by the Terracotta Army. 

"During its heyday, Chang'an was one of the largest and most populous cities in the world. Around AD 750, Chang'an was called a "million man city" in Chinese records, with modern estimates putting it at around 800,000–1,000,000 within city walls." The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda was built in 649 and would have been there when Kukai went and is still there. The Bell tower marks the beginning of the silk road (source).

Saicho was on another ship, there were 4 ships who went. Saicho (767-822) is often a parallel figure to Kukai, he is credited with founding the Tendai school. He was 7 years older than Kukai and at age 19 lived in a hut on the side of a mountain. He was going to Tiantai Mountain in China.

In 804 ship one took a month, ship two took 2 months, ship 3 turned back and tried again next year, and ship 4 only had one survivor. Kukai's ship was told to go to another port, and when they didn't their ship was impounded. They spent 2 months imprisoned in a swamp. Kukai wrote a letter to the governor and the govenor was impressed and let them go. It took them a month and 20 days to get from Fujian province to Chang-an, 6 months after leaving Japan.

Hakeda says there were 64 Buddhist temples for monks and 27 for nuns in Chang'an, 10 Taoist temples for men and 6 for women, and 3 foreign temples (Nestorian Christian, Zoroastrian and an unknown one). He stayed for about 2 years at the pleasure of the T'ang court. He moved to the Hsi-ming temple, built in 658, and one of 4 temples to survive the destruction of Buddhist temples by Emperor Wu-tsung: "destroying 4,600 Buddhist temples and 40,000 shrines, and removing 260,500 monks and nuns from the monasteries." in 845. 

That's a bit after Kukai was there. Wu-tsung ruled from 840-846, so that's of side interest to Kukai's story, but is a precedent for the cultural revolution.

Kukai was about 200 years to late to meet Xuanzang, a famous Chinese traveling Buddhist monk who journey to India in 629–645 CE and brought over 657 Indian texts to China: "At age 27, he began his seventeen-year overland journey to India. He defied his nation's ban on travel abroad, making his way through central Asian cities such as Khotan to India. He visited, among other places, the famed Nalanda monastery in modern day Bihar, India where he studied with the monk, Śīlabhadra. He departed from India with numerous Sanskrit texts on a caravan of twenty packhorses. His return was welcomed by Emperor Taizong in China, who encouraged him to write a travelogue."

While Kukai was there, Kukai studied under Hui-kuo (746–805). 

Upon seeing Kukai he said, "As soon as he saw me, the abbot [Huiguo] smiled, and said with delight, "Since learning of your arrival, I have waited anxiously. How excellent, how excellent that we have met today at last! My life is ending soon, and yet I have no more disciples to whom to transmit the Dharma. Prepare without delay the offerings of incense and flowers for your entry into the abhiseka mandalas [Womb Realm and Diamond Realm]."

Hui-kuo was a disciple of Amoghavajra (705–774) who was born in Samarkand to a Hindu merchant and a mother of Sogdia origin, the area where the Bukharian Jewish people who live in Queens New York, are from. 

Hakeda says Hui-kuo was a discipline of Pu-k'ung. 

"In 765, Amoghavajra used his new rendition of the Humane King Sutra in an elaborate ritual to counter the advance of a 200,000-strong army of Tibetan and Uyghurs which was poised to invade Chang'an. Its leader, Pugu Huai'en, dropped dead in camp and his forces dispersed."

Amoghavajra was a disciple of Vajrabodhi (671–741) who studied at Nalanda. He traveled to Sri Lanka and Sumatra. He went to Chang'an.

Dharmakirti was one of Vajrabodhi's teachers at Nalanda. Tibetans think Dharmakirti was trained by Dharmapala, who is a mythical being.

Back to Kukai. His teachings from Hui-kuo made him the 8th patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism. Hui-kio discipline I-ming would teach in China, who isn't even mentioned in the Wikipedia article, and doesn't have any information on the internet that I can find. Kukai was expected to spread the teachings in Japan, where he would found a school of Buddhism that would live on to today, and has an outlets in the USA.

Kukai left Chang-an and it took him 4 months to get to the coast. They don't know exactly when he got back to Japan, but he writes a list of all the documents he brought for the emperor. He was in China for 30 months, and he's back in Japan at the age of 33. Hakeda says he must have impressed the court. The emperor got back to him 3 years later. He waited in Kyushu that whole time for permission to approach. The emperor who sent him was no longer alive. His successor wasn't as interested in Buddhism, and when he was, he favored Saicho.

Part 2 post on Kukai

Below is a painting by Hokusai (1760 –1849) of Kukai warding off a demon with tantra.

One legend from Wikipedia:

A mendicant visited the house of Emon Saburō, richest man in Shikoku, seeking alms. Emon refused, broke the pilgrim's begging bowl, and chased him away. After his eight sons fell ill and died, Emon realized that Kūkai was the affronted pilgrim and set out to seek his forgiveness. Having travelled round the island twenty times clockwise in vain, he undertook the route in reverse. Finally he collapsed exhausted and on his deathbed Kūkai appeared to grant absolution. Emon requested that he be reborn into a wealthy family in Matsuyama so that he might restore a neglected temple. Dying, he clasped a stone. Shortly afterwards a baby was born with his hand grasped tightly around a stone inscribed "Emon Saburō is reborn." When the baby grew up, he used his wealth to restore the Ishite-ji (石手寺) or "stone-hand temple", in which there is an inscription of 1567 recounting the tale.

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Last updated 9/19/23