Morning Star

 

"Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism" is a book published in 1988. It´s attributed to Taiko Yamasaki, but has apparently been heavily edited and amended by an entire team of American translators. The publisher is Shambhala. 

Shingon is a form of Tantric Buddhism practiced in Japan since the 9th century, when the Japanese Buddhist monk Kukai (later known as Kobo Daishi) introduced it from China. As far as I understand, the Chinese mother branch no longer exists. Ultimately, Tantric Buddhism comes from India. "Shingon: Japansese Esoteric Buddhism" doesn´t deny that Tantrism is originally non-Buddhist, and sees parallels with both Vedic religion and the pre-Vedic ditto of the Indus Valley Civilization. Interestingly, the book tries to distance Shingon from Vajrayana, the name used for the Tantric Buddhist traditions today associated with Tibet. Shingon comes across as a less "wild" version of esoteric Buddhism, a kind of Vajrayana minus the ritual sex and the drugs. If this is true, is anybody´s guess. While the Shingon priesthood has revealed many of its secret rituals, beginning in the 1960´s, we obviously cannot rule out that further secrets might exist...

The book is incredibly complex (a bit like Shingon´s own system) and I admit that I only skimmed certain sections. Much space is devoted to describe elaborate rituals involving mudras (hand signs), mantras, mandalas and visualizations, taking place together with more "standard" ritual activity. Each little detail has a deep symbolic significance. Some rituals can take 100 days to perform! Others can only be carried out at certain select locations, since the practitioner is expected to experience mystical communion with mountains, trees and stars. The "Morning Star" meditation must end on the day of a lunar eclipse. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Shingon is a minority religion, with about 10 million followers, of which 16,000 are initiated into the priesthood. There are about 18 sub-sects of Shingon. (These figures are from 1988 or earlier.) 

The history of Shingon is equally complicated. The tradition is usually associated with the "medieval" Japanese aristocracy, its rituals often being conducted for worldly ends such as protection of Japan or the imperial house. However, periodically Shingon was also associated with wandering miracle-workers and mountain ascetics, some of which were popular among the common people due to their percieved abilities to heal disease or make the rains fall. Some of the monastic leaders put strong emphasis on charity towards the commoners and the poor, including the building of bridges and the digging of wells. During the pre-modern period, Japanese Buddhism had a strong syncretistic tendency, both towards Shinto and between different Buddhist schools. Shingon and Tendai, a competing school, mutually influenced each other, and at one point Koya-san (Shingon´s holy mountain) was virtually invaded by unruly Amida bhaktas who apparently didn´t see the contradiction between their cult and whatever it was Shingon was doing (they were eventually expelled). Shingon seems to have gotten into trouble during the Meiji Restoration on account of both its aristocratic connections, and its popular superstitions. The Meiji Restoration was generally anti-Buddhist, instead promoting a modernized version of Shinto as Japan´s new national religion. But as already mentioned, Shingon managed to survive anyway.

Shingon is obviously different from both Theravada and "exoteric" Mahayana, with rather daring reinterpretations of the Dharma. The tradition could be described as "pantheist", since it argues that the Dharmakaya (the closest equivalent to "the divine" in Mahayana) is identical to the phenomenal universe. Shingon argues that the phenomena we can experience *are* the Dharmakaya, there is nothing "above", "beyond" or "behind" the phenomena. Or perhaps there is (from a somewhat different vantage point): an eternal and eternally dynamic energy (obviously similar to the Shakti of Hinduism), which spontaneously gives rise to new phenomena. The universe is constantly evolving towards enlightenment of all its parts, but this creative evolution is incomprehensible to humans. In this system, Nirvana doesn´t seem to exist, and there is no real distinction between "good" and "evil", although "compassion" is often used to describe the Dharmakaya´s nature. Enlightenment seems to entail some kind of mystical communion with the Dharmakaya. The river is sometimes used as a metaphor: to an outsider, the movements of the water in a river looks incomprehensible, but if you would *be* the river, you would be fully conscious of every little drop and its motion. In the same way, a buddha is presumably conscious of the entire cosmos. Somewhat ironically, this pantheist creed at the same time has a "personal god", Dainichi Nyorai (in Sanskrit Vairocana), really a symbolic manifestation of the Dharma Body. There are also countless of buddhas, bodhisattvas and "gods" symbolizing various aspects of Shingon theory and practice. They are depicted in mandalas. 

Since everything is divine, everything has Buddha-nature and can be used as a vehicle for enlightenment. Indeed, in a certain sense, everything *is* enlightenment. Desire is a good thing, and rather than being suppressed or transcended, desire is transmuted into an instrument for attaining buddhahood. After all, a desire for enlightenment is a positive thing! Nor should the mind be emptied. In a certain sense, it should be made more full. The purpose of meditation is to make the mind disciplined and one-pointed, not empty. From this follows that visualizations (often very complex ones) can be used in meditation. A typical visualization may entail imagining a calligraphic letter change form into a sword, and then into a god. Imagining yourself merging with a god is another common exercise. Since the human body is just as much part of the Dharmakaya as everything else, mudras (hand-signs) can be used as a tool for enlightenment. So can art, colors, or statues. The most important practice is the chanting of mantras, indeed "Shingon" means mantra. Mantras are considered to be identical to the Dharmakaya and therefore the Buddha - they *are* enlightenment.

Probably not my cup of tea, since I like to think that there is something beyond the élan vital´s crazy perturbations, something with real compassion, perhaps? Still, it´s a fascinating book about a somewhat exotic worldview. Should I check out Tendai next?