Burning with the Fire o Shingon by
Richard Payne
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(Facing page) Ashura (Jpn., Daiitoku Myoo) Kamakura period (1185–1333), Japan
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rom the frst time I saw it, I knew what I wanted. The raw emotional power o the Shingon fre ritual was so moving that it has given defnition to my practice and study o Shingon ritual since that New Year’s morning in 1982. My wie and I had driven up to Sacramento rom our home in the south San Francisco Bay Area in time or the rst service o the New Year. Rev. Taisen Miyata—who recently retired as bishop o the North American Shingon Mission in Los Angeles—had invited us to come and participate. The temple, dark at this early morning hour, began lling up until there were about a hundred people, and the service began. As Rev. Miyata lit the re on the al tar o the temple, a taiko drum began a steady rhythm, leading all o us in chanting the Heart Sutra: “Kanji zai bosai gyojin, Hannya Haramita ji…” (“The Great Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, while practicing the perection o wisdom…”) As my own voice joined with the voices o a hundred others in the predawn darkness, the sounds o the Heart Sutra completely replaced my thinking mind. The ritual o making oerings to deities through the medium o a re characterizes tantra in all o its orms, both Hindu and Buddhist. With its roots in the practices o Vedic India, the history o the re ritual extends over perhaps as much as ve thousand years. This was the practice I wanted to pursue. To do so, however, I would have to
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travel to Koyasan in Japan, the main center o the Shingon tradition, and complete a ull course o training. I would have to become a Shingon priest.
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he history o the Shingon tradition begins in early medieval India, when tantric Buddhism was rst taking shape. Two early sets o practices based on two Buddhist tantras (texts that describe a particular deity ritual) and two mandalas (symbolic representations o the world o a particular central deity) were transmitted to China in the eighth century and then to Japan at the beginning o the ninth century. Known in India as the “way o the mantras,” the tradition’s name was rendered into Chinese as zhenyan, meaning “true word,” a translation o one o the denitions o mantra. The Japanese pronunciation then rendered this as shingon. In China, tantric practices came to permeate Buddhism, and no separate, distinct lineage was ormed. In Japan, however, Shingon received imperial recognition as a distinct orm o Buddhism, and it developed as an autonomous tradition within the variety o dierent orms o Buddhist practice. Until the seventeenth century, sectarian identity in Japan was not as exclusive as it is today. Throughout the medieval period, many priests engaged in a variety o dierent practice traditions, much as today someone might train in mindulness practice under a Theravada master, then spend some time sitting zazen, and nally engage in a Tibetan Dzogchen practice—all the while taking
RichaRd K . Payne fs s trg rv orto s Sgo prst 1982. h urrtl srvs s t o t isttut o Bust Stus, w s flt wt t Grut Tologl Uo wt Rukoku Uvrst Koto. h s t utor o Tantric Buddhism in East Asia (Wsom Publtos).
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(Facing page) Naraenkengo Kamakura period, Japan
classes on Buddhism and Asian taught at a local college, Inspired by the idea that one could achieve a kind o heas well as studying and reading on their own. The reedom roic perection by way o meditation, I began practicing and that medieval Buddhist priests elt to work with a variety studying, rst Zen and then other orms o Buddhism as well. o Buddhist orms acilitated the spread o tantric ideas and Over the years I explored several kinds o practice, including practices into other Buddhist lineages, where they can still not only Zen but also yoga, TM, and vipassana, until I nally be ound today. learned about Tibetan Buddhism. Although it is now seriThe ninth-century monk Kukai—posthumously given ously outdated, the movie Requiem or a Faith exposed me the title Kobo Daishi, meaning “Great Teacher Ocean o to the art o Tibetan Buddhism, whose intensity and power I Dharma,” and commonly reerred to by the honoric ex- ound ascinating. The idea o transorming negative energies pression “O Daishi sama”— into positive ones, portrayed is revered as the ounder o in the orm o wrathul boShingon appealed to me as a Shingon in Japan. He was dhisattvas, held much more combination o the tantric Buddhism placed in charge o Toji appeal to me than the idea that I had ound in Tibetan traditions Temple in Kyoto, which is o overcoming or repressing still an important center or my own desires—strategies and the Japanese cultural context that Shingon. The ve-story patoo clearly identiable in the I elt quite comortable in. goda at Toji used to mark moralistic culture o Amerthe southern entrance to the ica at the time. Ater learncity, and it was, prior to the modernization o Kyoto, one o ing about the Nyingma Institute, the center near Berkeley the most prominent buildings in the entire city. ounded by Tarthang Tulku, and its rst Human DevelopIn addition, Kukai was given permission to set up a train- ment Training Program, I began a more systematic study ing center on Koyasan (meaning “high, wild mountain”), and practice o Tibetan orms o Buddhism, a path I would which was several days journey rom the capital. The train- ollow or another seven years. ing program he established or monks on the mountain was Shingon appealed to me, however, as a combination o increasingly codied over the centuries. the tantric Buddhism I had ound in the Tibetan traditions and the Japanese cultural context that I elt quite comorthad already been introduced to Rev. Miyata by one o my able in, given the mix o ethnicities I had grown up with in teachers at San José State University, and he later agreed Caliornia. Rev. Miyata’s interview explored this range o to interview me and my wie regarding my desire to study study and experience and was the gateway that led me to Shingon. His support and the introductions he could make study on Koyasan the ollowing year. would be crucial or any success I might hope to eventually achieve. One o the rst things he asked me about was y train, Koyasan is about two hours rom Osaka’s Nanba the extent and character o my study o Buddhism. Little station. Gazing out the window, one rst sees industrial did I realize at the time the importance o this question, as Osaka, but airly soon this begins to give way to suburban the Shingon tradition balances education in the history and Japan and eventually to areas with houses surrounded by teachings o Buddhism with practice. small rice paddies. About halway to Koyasan, as the line Unlike many in my generation, my rst exposure to Bud- begins to climb toward Hashimoto—the largest city between dhism was not through Zen or Tibetan Buddhism, but rather Osaka and Koyasan—the countryside becomes more and through Jodo Shinshu, the Japanese Pure Land tradition. more agricultural, the rice elds larger, the houses arther Growing up near San José in the ties and sixties, I was rom one another. Finally, one is in rural Japan, where the taken by my parents to O Bon celebrations at the San José land is mountainous with only scattered houses set ar back Buddhist Temple, and I remember going to bonsai shows at the edges o elds to maximize the space available to grow at the Palo Alto Buddhist Temple. It was only later, as the rice. Emerald green in the spring and summer, the paddies Beats gave way to the hippies, that I began to hear about change to tawny brown in autumn, when the plants are cut Zen, reading Paul Reps’ Zen Flesh, Zen Bones and listening and hung upside down or the rice to dry beore threshing. to Alan Watts’ lectures on KPFA, back when FM radio could Here train stations may only be a concrete platorm with a still be described as underground. single bench, no building, and no sta; you might see one or
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Bishamonten (Jpn., Tamon-ten) Kamakura period, Japan
The actual training to become a priest includes our parts: the practice in eighteen stages, Vajra World practice, Matrix World practice, and the fre ritual. Struggling with the backpack and dufe bag that contained all my worldly possessions, I exited the upper station and splurged on a taxi. Soon I had my rst glimpse o the town o Koyasan and the temple where I would begin the hundred days o training to become a Shingon priest.
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two people get o or on, or perhaps in the late aternoon a ew students reading manga (comic books) coming home with their backpacks and school uniorms. The end o the line is known as Gokuraku bashi station—the “Bridge to the Land o Bliss,” reerring to the old idea that Koyasan is Amida’s Pure Land, Sukhavati, here on earth. This station is on an old pilgrims’ trail that led to the mountain, and at this site there is a bridge over a stream, where pilgrims let the world o delements and entered the world that puries. Hastening through the station, one next boards a cable car that climbs the side o the mountain, oten through og, that aords occasional glimpses o massive trees and orests. On my rst trip I elt like I was back home in Caliornia, but then I realized these were not redwoods but Japanese cypress, and the underbrush was bamboo.
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he town o Koyasan is nestled in a small mountain valley, surrounded by ve peaks, and is home to the main lineage o Shingon Buddhism, the Chuin-ryu. At one end o town is the Great Gate ( Daimon), which seemed to be perpetually under reconstruction while I was training on the mountain. As is commonly the case in Japanese Buddhism, the Great Gate marks the boundary between the outer world and the domain o practice, or the domain o at least making a serious attempt to pay attention to the reality o the dharma. Although the Great Gate was traditionally the main entryway into Koyasan, today most travelers come via the rail and cable-car line, and the station is located on a dierent side o town. In the middle o the town is the Garan, a large complex o buildings that includes the Golden Hall ( Kondo) and the Great Stupa (Daito). The Garan as a whole serves as the central ritual space or Koyasan. Close by is the head temple, called Kongobu-ji. This is the ecclesiastical and administrative center or the Chuin-ryu lineage. At the ar end o town is Kukai’s mausoleum. Opposite the Garan is Yochi-in, the temple where Rev. Miyata sent me to study under the guidance o Rev. Chisei Aratano. There are two large temples specically devoted to training, Senshugaku-in and Shinbe-sho. However, temples with properly qualied leadership may also undertake the individual training o priests. With two generations o masters who have served in the United States, Yochi-in was an ideal site or study. Indeed, Yochi-in continues to have an active commitment to training oreign priests; in addition to
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mysel and others rom the United States, I know o priests rom Taiwan and Germany. The training to become a priest (Skt., acarya; Jpn., ajari) is called the “training in our stages,” reerring to the our rituals one learns to perorm in the course o the training, which lasts one hundred days. Prior to beginning the training, however, one must receive a lay initiation, which “establishes a karmic connection” between the individual and the deities o the two main mandalas o the Shingon tradition: the Matrix World mandala and the Vajra World mandala. These mandalas provide the organizing symbolism or Shingon practices. The Vajra mandala and the Matrix mandala are associated with wisdom and compassion, respectively. The deities represented in the two mandalas are based on the amilies detailed in the two main texts o the Shingon tradition: the Great Illuminator Sutra (Skt., Vairocanabhisambodhi Sutra; Jpn., Dainichi kyo) and the Vajra Crown Sutra (Skt., Vajrasekhara Sutra; Jpn., Kongo cho gyo). Blindolded, the initiate is given a fower to throw onto each o these mandalas, an ancient tantric rite that Kukai experienced during his stay in China. In addition, one needs to enter the Buddhist order and receive a dharma name. I was given the name Chien, meaning something like “ully rounded wisdom.” Ater that, one is ready to take the three sets o vows required o those entering the tantric path. These are the amiliar vows o a monk, the vows o a bodhisattva, and the tantric vows. This is done over a three-day period, with the tantric vows rst, then the bodhisattva vows, and nally the monastic vows. This is not so much a progressive accumulation o vows as a process o learning to hold each set o vows within the container o the more encompassing vow; monastic vows are held within the context o the bodhisattva vows, and both o these are held within the context o the tantric vows. Having established a karmic connection, received a dharma name, and taken the vows, I was then ready to be given three practices that are preliminary to entering the hundred days o training: breath-counting meditation, meditation on the ull moon, and meditation on the syllable A. Breath-counting meditation is ound throughout the Buddhist tradition. Buddhaghosa, perhaps the most revered medieval scholastic o the Theravada tradition, includes breath counting as one o the orty kinds o meditations he discusses in his Path o Purifcation (Visuddhimagga). Most o these
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orty meditations are prescribed as a corrective or a practitioner’s predominant emotional issue—greed, hatred, or delusion (the three poisons)—and, just as with medicine, not every kind o meditation is appropriate or everyone. Breath counting, however, is one o the ew considered sae or any practitioner to employ. The specic orm I was taught on Koyasan was just like what I’d experienced in the introduction to Zen meditation: seated on a cushion, you cross your legs, old your hands in your lap, sit up straight but relaxed, close your eyes halway, and begin counting each breath. And, just as in the introduction to Zen practice, you all too quickly discover that your attention has wandered o and gently come back to counting the breath. For the ull-moon meditation, the practitioner sits beore a hanging scroll displaying a simple white moon disc resting on a lotus blossom. By alternately gazing on the moon disc and then closing your eyes, you gradually learn to orm a mental image o the visual one. With practice, the mental image becomes increasingly stabilized and independent o the visual image. This is very similar to the meditation devices also described by Buddhaghosa—circular images o uniorm color and substance that one gazes upon, orming a mental image. The orty meditation objects presented by Buddhaghosa include ten such devices: earth, water, air, re, blue, yellow, red, white, enclosed space, and bright light. The meditation on the syllable A employs a similar white moon, but this time it has the syllable A written in the Siddham script o Sanskrit, an ancient script predating the contemporary Devanagari script. The practitioner visualizes this expanding to ll the universe, and then contracting back to the image in ront. The syllable A has a complex o symbolic signicances in Sanskrit. As the
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The most important part o Shingon practice is ritual identifcation. Tantric Buddhism adds ritual practice as a means o actualizing naturally awakened consciousness.
The ourth and nal ritual in the training is the re ritual. Symbolically, this includes the deities rom both mandalas, and it adds to the structure a series o ve re oerings. The implements held by the chie deity, Fudo, hold special signicance. A lasso catches those who would run away rom being ully who they are, and a sword cuts away their most prized possessions, their delusions. Fudo’s primary quality, however, is immovability or steadiness. In the ace o whatever personal issues a practitioner brings to the practice, Fudo is unmoved and implicitly demands an equal solidity on the part o the practitioner. It is the very character o awakened consciousness to be unmoved by greed, hatred, and delusion, and to transorm them into positive energies.
rst syllable o the Sanskrit syllabary, it signies beginning. Considered to be present within all Sanskrit syllables, it is universal. As a negating prex, it represents ending. Meditations on the syllable A are also ound throughout Tibetan tantric Buddhism as well. These three are “open-ended” practices in the sense that you continue with them until your teacher eels you are ready to begin the ormal training. The actual training to become a priest includes our parts: the practice in eighteen stages, Vajra World practice, Matrix World practice, and the re ritual. The practice in eighteen stages in its early orm included eighteen mantra and mudra (hand gestures). Within Shingon ritual practice, mantra and mudra always go together, and indeed the mudra are considered to be in some senses more secret, because it is the mudra that actually make the mantra eective. This appears to be why some o the earliest Chinese ritual texts recorded the mantra but did not show the mudra, apparently relying on teacher-todisciple transmission o this knowledge. The most important part o Shingon practice is ritual identication, which reers to the identication o the practitioner’s body, speech, and mind with the body, speech, and mind o the Buddha. This allows the practitioner to experience directly the awakened nature o their own natural consciousness (consciousness as the totality o body, speech, and mind, and not purely mental). While Mahayana thought includes the understanding o natural consciousness as already awakened, tantric Buddhism adds ritual practice as a means o actualizing this naturally awakened consciousness. Ritual identication becomes more prominent as the practitioner progresses through the sequence o our rituals. The second o the our rituals, the Vajra World ritual, ocuses on the pantheon o thirty-seven buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other deities o the Vajra World mandala. In the same way, the third ritual, the Matrix World practice, ocuses on the Matrix World mandala, and the pantheon o deities ound there. Physical representations o these two mandalas are usually hung in the training hall. They represent the two cosmic orms o awakened consciousness: wisdom and compassion. The buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other deities that one evokes in the ritual practice arise rom these cosmic mandalas o wisdom and compassion.
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nally nished the training in September, when days were beginning to get shorter and nights on the mountain quite noticeably colder. It was one o those moments in lie when, having completed some very intense undertaking, one is suddenly nished and wonders, “What now?” There was, o course, more to be done. The nal initiatory ritual, known as the dharma-transmission ceremony, which bestows the title o ajari, enabling one to act independently as a Shingon priest, ollowed in a couple o weeks. This was soon ollowed in turn by a move rom Koyasan to Kyoto. Many years later, I was nally able to go on a pilgrimage route around the island o Shikoku, a journey usually undertaken by new Shingon priests airly soon ater completing their training. And now, suddenly it seems, twenty-six years have gone by. My teacher, Chisei Aratano, himsel attained the status o “Dharma-seal Great Master,” which required him to lead all the ritual activities conducted on Koyasan or a ull year. Shortly thereater, he passed away. His temple, Yochi-in, remains and continues to be a place o training or aspirants rom outside Japan. What seems most important to convey to Western Buddhists who have not trained in tantric rituals ( sadhana) is that the common understanding o the categories o meditation and ritual is inaccurate. Most Westerners learn that meditation is something internal, a mental undertaking, and in our society it’s generally looked upon as having a positive value. Ritual, on the other hand, is oten viewed negatively, as something merely external, mere orm, and our religious culture tells us undamentally that it is empty o meaning. This opposition to ritual grows out o a long history in the West, one that goes back most signicantly to the Protestant Reormation. Much o the ocus o dispute during this period in European history concerned the status o religious ritual. In large part, the reormers wanted to reduce the number o rituals o the medieval church, and some o them wanted to eliminate rituals entirely. In place o rituals,
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Misshakongo Kamakura period, Japan
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which were under the control o priests who mediated between the individual and the divine, practices o a contemplative nature became the way or the individual to directly relate to the divine. One o the consequences o the Protestant Reormation or Western religious culture has been the markedly negative attitude toward rituals o any kind that we see today. However, this avorable view o meditation and unavorable view o ritual is merely the consequence o that history and does not refect the nature o Buddhist practice. While Zen practice is called meditation, anyone who has experienced a basic introduction to the tradition is struck by the highly ritualized character o the practice. In Zen, one is directed on how to sit, how to hold one’s hands, even which oot to enter the meditation hall with rst. Eating is also highly ritualized in Zen monasteries. Conversely, Shingon ritual practice is lled with meditative elements. Not only the preliminary practices described above, but in the course o each ritual perormance the practitioner engages in a series o visualizations. Thus, the distinction between meditation and ritual is or Buddhism not one o confict or opposition, but rather more a matter o emphasis. What is to my mind even more important is that all Buddhists—East and West, nativeborn and convert—come to acknowledge that we all share the same goal, and that we respect one another in our dierences. Koyasan, that high, wild mountain, oers one understanding o the nature o the ground, path, and goal. For mysel, I ound that the understanding oered there reaches deeply down through my delusions, encouraging me to act rom within the state o naturally awakened consciousness.
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