{Shikoku Hachijūhachikasho Meguri}

--HISTORY--
Kūkai/Kōbō Daishi

Kūkai was born into an aristocratic family in Sanuki Province (now Kagawa Prefecture) on the northeastern coast of the island of Shikoku in 774. At birth he was given the name Saeki no Mao — or, Mao of the Saeki Family. His father and several other family members were local aristocrats and his ancestors had even been provincial governors in the past. The Saeki family was an offshoot of the Ōtomo family, which, until just after Kūkai's birth, played an important role in the imperial court. However, in 785, during construction of the new capital in Nagaoka, Ōtomo no Tsuguto was charged with the assassination of Fujiwara no Tanetsugu and the Ōtomo and Saeki families lost all prestige and influence.

If you strip away the numerous myths and legends that have been written since his death, nothing much is known about Kūkai's life as a child. It can be conjectured, though, that when he reached his teens, the Saeki clan looked to Mao as the person who was going to reclaim the clan's right to prominence and fame. The only way to reclaim their lost aristocratic privileges was to have Mao become a court bureaucrat. Therefore, at the age of 15 (in 788) he was sent to Nara to study with Ato Ōtari, his maternal uncle and tutor to Emperor Kammu's third son, Crown Prince Iyo. As was the custom for the aristocracy, Mao studied the Confucian classics, poetry, and rhetoric in order to prepare himself for entrance to the university.

At the age of 18 (in 791), having passed the entrance exams, he left his uncle's house and entered the State Confucian College in Nara (usually referred to as the university as a translation of the Japanese daigaku). There, he continued his Confucian-based studies of poetry and rhetoric in preparation for a court career. However, at some time during this period, he met a monk who introduced him to the esoteric Mantra of Kokūzō (Akashagarbha) and the Gumonji Hō, an esoteric Morning Star meditation practice which is centered on this mantra to the bodhisattva Kokūzō. At this point, his life took a dramatic turn and his studies started to wander off the normal Confucian track. From then on, in addition to his required Confucian studies at the college, he began to read both Taoist and Mahayana Buddhist literature as well. However, as Yoshito Hakeda points out in his book, "...his interest in Buddhism arose not so much from book learning as from the actual experience of meditation. This point is important to an understanding of his religion as a whole."

These new teachings must have gone directly to his heart. The impact of what he read seems to have affected him immediately, and within a year of arriving at the college he had begun to return on a regular and frequent basis to the forests and mountains of Shikoku in order to devote himself to rigorous and ascetic meditative practices. In fact, since the Gumonji Hō meditative practice typically takes about 100 days to perform (10,000 recitations of the mantra per day for 100 days), and since no student could miss more than 100 days of classes before being dismissed from the college, Mao was probably a student in name only after his first years of studies.

I've read of three possible reasons for his then dropping out of college. One possibility says that, since no student was allowed to stay at the college past the age of 25, when Mao turned 24, he decided to admit that he wasn't going to become a bureaucrat and quit his studies. A second possibility cited is the political problems that the Saeki and Ōtomo clans were undergoing due to the murder and turmoil that occurred as construction began on a new capital in Nagaoka (and hence cancelled). Realizing that his family name made it doubtful he would be accepted in the imperial court, he dropped out of the college that's sole purpose was to train bureaucrats. Thirdly, some say that at first sight he was completely smitten with Buddhism and never went back to Confucianism or Taoism. (Taoism was forbidden in Japan at the time but bureaucrats knew of it and read about it.)

In any case, against the wishes of his family, and to their deepest disappointment, he left the college and the capital and returned to Shikoku to become an itinerant mountain ascetic.

Even though Kūkai had renounced the aristocratic life and become an unregistered, wandering ascetic, he began a routine that he would continue throughout his life — he apparently split his time between meditative isolation in the mountains and scholarly research in the large monasteries of the capital. In order to gain religious insight and spiritual powers he spent part of his time wandering and performing the gumonji hō and other meditative practices at remote sites like Mt. Tairyū in Awa Province (now Tokushima Prefecture) and Cape Muroto in Tosa Province (now Kōchi Prefecture). At other times he would return to Nara (probably) to read and study the Buddhist literature in the libraries of the major Buddhist monasteries. It was at this time that he first discovered the Dainichikyō, the esoteric Great Sun Sutra (Mahavairocana Sutra).

Kūkai wasn't the only ascetic on Shikoku — far from it. But, there was a significant difference between him and many of the others. Kūkai was an ubasoku, a Buddhist lay believer. Unlike many of the other ascetics he had never been ordained — either officially or unofficially. Like all of the other ascetics Kūkai strove to gain supranormal spiritual powers, to gain the deepest of religious insights, and to find the truth. Unlike many of the others, though, his goal was not to use these new found powers to become a priest at one of the official temples and obtain worldly power.

Kūkai makes it clear in his first book, Sangō Shiiki (Indications of The Goals of The Three Teachings), that his ideal during this period of his life was that of a beggar — clothed in rags, with no more personal possessions than were absolutely necessary, and living aloof from the world, dedicated to nothing more than living a life according to the Way, and to gaining the deepest realizations possible.

Sometime between returning to Shikoku and when he turned 31 in 804, he had an enlightenment experience while meditating in a cave on Cape Muroto. At this time he declared his intention of dedicating his life to all mankind. He also took the name of Kūkai, apparently because the focus of his meditations had been the point where the ocean and sky meet. (Kū = Sky; Kai = Ocean)

Why he was chosen will never be known for sure, but shortly after his enlightenment experience in 804, Kūkai was selected by Emperor Kammu to be a member of a diplomatic mission preparing to depart for Ch'ang-an, the capital city of China. Since only ordained Buddhist monks could participate in such missions, he was fully ordained in April at Tōdaiji — just 3 months before departing as a student scholar. His plans at the time were to spend the next twenty years in China learning Chinese customs and deepening his understanding of esoteric Buddhism. After some difficulty, both diplomatic and with the weather, the mission finally arrived in Fukien Province three months after leaving Japan. Kūkai then worked his was to the Tang capital in Ch'ang-an, arriving in December of the same year.

His first task was to study Sanskrit, the language from which most of the Buddhist writings had to be translated. By mid-805, though, he was introduced to Hui-kuo, (Jp. Keika) the leading Chinese Shingon master, and became his student. Luckily for Kūkai, his years of study and practice on Shikoku had prepared him well for this meeting and he made fast and deep progress in his studies. I say lucky, because by the end of the same year Hui-Kuo found that he was dying and there was little time left for him to transmit his teachings to his students. Before his death in December of that year, though, he had completed the transmission to Kūkai and made him promise to return to Japan to transmit the esoteric teachings to the Japanese.

In order to fulfill his promise to Hui-Kuo, Kūkai broke his promise to stay in China for 20 years and returned to Japan in the autumn of 806, bringing 216 works in 451 volumes (of which 142 works in 247 volumes were translations of Shingon Buddhism).

Upon his return, Emperor Heizei refused to recognize him or his accomplishments and Kūkai was forced to remain at Dazaifu on Kyūshū until late in 807. It is thought that Heizei didn't recognize his return for three possible reasons, or some combination of these. 1) Kūkai had promised to stay in China for 20 years and had broken that promise. That probably angered some people in the capital, and the government had to decide what to say and do, 2) Heizei had driven his younger brother, Prince Iyo, to death because he suspected him of treason. Ato Ōtari, Kūkai's uncle, had tutored the prince and Heizei might have assumed that Kūkai and Iyo had been friends, or 3) Saichō had gone to China with the same diplomatic mission as Kūkai, but had returned within a year. His mission had been to study and master Tendai Buddhism, but when he returned to Japan he brought back some aspects of esoteric buddhism as well. Upon his return, he sold himself as not only a master of Tendai Buddhism, but as a master or esoteric buddhism. That put the government in the position of trying to figure out what to do with Kūkai. If Saichō was already a master of esoteric buddhism, and had already begun preaching it and initiating members of the court, what was there for Kūkai to do? Until the government could figure that out, it was best to leave him at Dazaifu.

After a year at Dazaifu, Kūkai was sent an imperial notice that he should return to Honshū, but instead of going to Kyōto, he was told to go to Izumi Province where he was to live at Makino'o-sanji, on Mt. Makino'o. Kūkai, himself, may have asked to stay here when he found that he was being ordered back to the capital. When he returned to Japan, he was not content to simply spread the esoteric teachings that he had learned while in China. Here at Makino'o-sanji, he would have the time, away from imperial pressures to teach, to continue what he had started at Dazaifu — the serious work of developing those teachings into the integrated theoretical system that was to become Japanese Shingon Buddhism.

In early summer of 809, newly appointed Emperor Saga gave Kūkai permission to return to Kyōto and ordered him to take up residence at Takaosanji, on Mt.Takao, just northwest of the capital. This temple was chosen by the leaders of the 6 sects of what has come to be called Nara Buddhism. By 809 they had come to realize that Saichō, who had brought back and established Tendai Buddhism on Mt. Hiei, on the northeast outskirts of Kyōto, was determined to expand Tendai Buddhism in Japan at their expense and by denigrating the teachings of the 6 sects. While at Daizaifu, on the other hand, Kūkai had made it clear in both words and actions that he did not intend to take this course. His approach was to be compromise and adaptation.

Kūkai intended to recognize the Nara sects for their accomplishments to date and for having spread the Buddhist message as they knew it. Very soon after his return from China he let it be known that he felt that it was because of the teachings of Kegon Buddhism that he had studied while on Shikoku those many years that he was able to so quickly see into the depths of esoteric Buddhism. In fact, Kūkai is quoted as having said of Kegon Buddhism, "One step further, and it could reach the level of Esoteric Buddhism." Sensing that Kūkai would help offset the growing power of Saichō in the imperial court, the leaders of the six Nara sects went out of their way to help him settle in the capital after his return and begin spreading his message.

At Takaosanji, Kūkai continued his studies of the esoteric Buddhism he had brought back to Japan. By 810 he had become a public figure and was working to integrate his Shingon teachings with those of the six Nara sects and Tendai. His influence with the court was also growing as Emperor Saga was actively approaching Kūkai because of his well known skills at literature and calligraphy, which had amazed even his Chinese hosts in Ch'ang-an.

In November 811, Emperor Saga ordered Kūkai to leave Takaosanji and move to Otokuni-dera, a temple in Otokuni County, near the site of the short-lived capital of Nagaoka. While Saga told Kūkai that the reason was because Takaosanji was just inconvenient, some say the move was an attempt to pacify the wrathful spirit of Crown Prince Sawara. Ever since Emperor Kammu had exiled Sawara to this temple, and then sent him into exile, and death, on Awaji Island in 785, the imperial court had felt cursed by Sawara's angry spirit. Some believe that Kūkai's forced move was because he was the only person who had the power to pacify this spirit.

Kūkai was allowed to return to Takaosanji in October 812 and he immediately recommenced his teaching and work to spread the influence of Shingon. He also began writing in order to explain his new religion to others.

Although their relationship soured in later years, both Saichō and Kūkai remained friends for most of their early years together in Kyōto. Kūkai met Saichō for the first time when Saichō visited him at Otokuni-dera. Saichō then went on to receive initiation into the first realm of Shingon's Mikkyo from Kūkai at Takaosanji in late 812. Saichō was seven years older than Kūkai, extremely idealistic, and introspective. He adamantly believed that the corruption of the Nara sects needed to be reformed and refused to work with them. Kūkai, on the other hand, was an extrovert, ambitious, and a master in the art of compromise. While he must have seen the same corruption, his philosophy, reflecting Shingon universalism, was to embrace all views, attitudes, and teachings. He did this in the belief that, in the end, his own teachings and ideas would triumph.

To Saichō, Kūkai's willingness to compromise and work with the corrupt Nara sects appeared insincere and hypocritical. Yet to Kūkai, Saichō's attempt to introduce Tendai (a sect that in China predated Nara Kegon philosophy) seemed reactionary. In addition, Kūkai adamantly refused to accept Saichō's contention that Tendai esoteric philosophy and Shingon esotericism were identical. On top of all this, Kūkai firmly believed that esoteric Buddhist teachings could only be understood when they were transmitted directly from a master to the student. Saichō, on the other hand, seemed to believe that you could learn these same teachings simply by reading the books that Kūkai had brought back with him from China. In the end, they were doomed to separate.