Kukai

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy introduction:

"Kūkai (774–835CE) is one of the intellectual giants of Japan, who ought not to be ignored in any account of the history of Japanese thought. Among the traditional Buddhist thinkers of Japan, and perhaps even of the whole of East Asia, he is one of the most systematic and philosophical. He is most famous for being the founder of Shingon esoteric Buddhism in Japan. But he is also remembered not only for his contributions as a teacher and scholar of religion, but for his accomplishments and innovations in social welfare, public education, lexicography, language, literature and poetry, literary theory, calligraphy, art, painting, wood-carving, sculpture, music, civil engineering, architecture, etc. during a period when Japan was undergoing rapid change." 

There's a lot there. Then there are specific things. Nakazawa Shin’ichi, "reads Kūkai’s works on Shingon as involving a hydrodynamic mode of thinking that in its flexibility deals with the non-Euclidean currents of nature with its forces of reality, undulating in ripples and forming vortexes." (op cit)

Imagine a time when you could make amazing contributions is such a wide variety of areas.

I'm fixated on the fact that he's almost at the midpoint halfway historically between the death of the Buddha and this current year. If the Buddha died 483 BCE and it's 2023, it's been 2,506 years since he left this mortal coil. Half of that is 1,253. 1,253-483=770. Kukai was born in 774. OK, so he has to get to 15 before he starts to study systems of thought, but maybe he's chanting a mantra before that, maybe later. Anyway, that's the closest to the midpoint in time, along with Saicho, of major Buddhists, that's the closest that I know to the midpoint between now and the parinirvana of the Buddha. 

Anyway, the end could be wrong. Maybe there are other prominent Buddhists in other places, I need to find other timelines and find out more about other countries at that time. Kukia's teacher Hui-kuo (Wikipedia, seen below), in modern day Xi'an passed his lineage down to another guy but I can't find information on him. That I can't find information on him on the internet in 2023 isn't that big of a deal. There's plenty of information not on the internet in English, that isn't exactly exhaustive. Maybe his teacher was at the midpoint. 

Hui-kuo was the first Chinese lineage holder of a vajrayana tradition. It took half the history of Buddhism for Vajrayana to spread to China.

There's nothing special about a midpoint, to be sure, it changes every second like everything else, except the mathematical novelty of it. There is a kind of mythology of numbers and mathematical ideas in various sects of Buddhism. I'm not sure if these ideas have any actual power beyond what you give them, but it's OK to give ideas power and kind of scaffold your way along. I see Buddhism more of a psychology in support of the path, than an actually theory you work to verify or disprove. Grinding on the path in meditation, fellowship, devotion, ethics and study is the thing. I can't look online for long at all the logic puzzles people think they have discovered, I wonder if they're meditating, or if they're just playing logic games, and it's quite superficial. With deep friendship in the spiritual life a logic puzzle could occupy a minute or two at most. People go online and foil Buddhism by pointing out that desiring to be enlightened is a desire. I don't agree with their assumptions, and the answer as to why that's not a problem involves terms I can't memorize. Letting the things that stick in my mind or not is perhaps not the best measure of general usefulness in Buddhism, but it's become my guide. 

Kukai had a motto about attaining enlightenment in this very body (p.78 Hakeda). Someone on retreat once told me he though my skepticism about rebirth, my consciousness moving after death, meant that I had to do it in this lifetime. Like rebirth takes some of the pressure of the difficulty of the path. Is that one of it's functions, a pressure valve?

Kukai's favorite deity was Vairocana, the primordial Buiddha, who embodies sunyata. It's a fun journey to travel around thinking about the various Buddha's and seeing which one supports your practice the most. When you do a sadhana you are attempting to merge with it, become it. Kukai is a manifestation of Vairocana.

Poem (p. 80):

All beings as individuals are appearances only, like illusions:

They are composites of forever changing constituents.

Our blind desires, which are neither within nor without, 

With their ensuing actions, delude us more and more.

The world is at once the creating and the created;

It is the Lotus Realm, the infinite continuum of Reality.

Neither empty nor non-empty, nor the oneness of the two, 

It is void, temporal, and yet real, beyond name and form.

Flowers in spring, though transient, are bright to our eyes;

The autumnal moon reflected in serene water delights us.

Swift summer clouds appear and disappear in deep dales.

Heavy snow in wind-dancing maidens seems light to the streams.

Inflamed is the world when we are greedy and deranged;

The sublime Universe emerges if we with insight are egoless.

Alas! Wretched are those who in delusion refuse to meditate.

Let us transcend and reintegrate ourselves in the Realm Eternal--A.

Kukai's version of the Vairocana mantra was different than the standard version (source):

vaṃ - oṃ amogha vairocana mahāputra maṇipadma jvāla pravarttaya hūṃ

Standard version: oṃ amogha vairocana mahāmudra maṇipadma jvāla pravarttaya hūṃ

Here's a version of the standard one on YouTube.

Found this daily practice example of Shingon practice on YouTube.