Kukai/Origin

Origin
Kūkai (空海), also known posthumously as Kōbō-Daishi (弘法大師 The Grand Master Who Propagated the Buddhist Teaching? ), 774–835, was a Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Shingonfollowers usually refer to him by the honorific titles of O-Daishi-sama (お大師様? ) and Henjō-Kongō (遍照金剛? ).

Kūkai is famous as a calligrapher (see Japanese calligraphy) and engineer. Among the many achievements attributed to him is the invention of the kana, the syllabary with which, in combination with Chinese characters (kanji), the Japanese language is written to this day. Also according to tradition, the Iroha, which uses every phonetic kana syllable just once and is one of the most famous poems inJapanese, is attributed to him but again, this is popular belief and nowhere attested to. His religious writings, some fifty works, expound the tantric Buddhist Shingon doctrine. The major ones have been translated into English by Yoshito Hakeda



Kūkai was born in 774 in the present-day Zentsū-ji precincts in the province of Sanuki on the island of Shikoku. His family were members of the aristocratic Saeki family, a branch of the ancient Ōtomo clan. There is some doubt as to his birth name: Tōtomono (precious one) is recorded in one source, while Mao (True Fish) is recorded elsewhere. Mao is generally used in modern studies.[1]  Kūkai was born in a period of important political changes with Emperor Kanmu (alt. Kammu, r. 781–806) seeking to consolidate his power and to extend his realm, taking measures which included moving the capital of Japan from Nara ultimately to Heian (modern-day Kyoto).

Little more is known about Kūkai's childhood. At the age of fifteen, he began to receive instruction in the Chinese Classics under the guidance of his maternal uncle. During this time, the Saeki-Ōtomo clan suffered government persecution due to allegations that the clan chief, Ōtomo Yakamochi, was responsible for the assassination of his rival Fujiwara Tanetsugu.[1]  The family fortunes had fallen by 791 when Kūkai journeyed to Nara, the capital at the time, to study at the government university, the Daigakuryō (大学寮? ). Graduates were typically chosen for prestigious positions as bureaucrats. Biographies of Kūkai suggest that he became disillusioned with his Confucianstudies, but developed a strong interest in Buddhist studies instead.

Around the age of 22, Kūkai was introduced to Buddhist practice involving chanting the mantra of the Bodhisattva Ākasagarbha (Kokuzō). During this period Kūkai frequently sought out isolated mountain regions where he chanted the Ākasagarbha mantra relentlessly. At age 24 he published his first major literary work, Sangō Shiiki, in which he quotes from an extensive list of sources, including the classics of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The Nara temples, with their extensive libraries, possessed these texts.

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">During this period in Japanese history, the central government closely regulated Buddhism through the Sōgō (僧綱<sup style="line-height:1em;"><span class="t_nihongo_icon" style="color:rgb(0,0,238);font-weight:bold;font-size:9px;line-height:normal;padding-right:0.1em;padding-left:0.1em;">? , Office of Priestly Affairs) and enforced its policies, based on the Ritsuryō system. Ascetics and independent monks, like Kūkai, were frequently banned and lived outside the law, but still wandered the countryside or from temple to temple.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Abe_2-0" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[2]

<p style="margin-top:0.4em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:19.1875px;font-family:sans-serif;">During this period of private Buddhist practice, Kūkai had a dream, in which a man appeared and told Kūkai that the Mahavairocana Sutra is the scripture which contained the doctrine Kūkai was seeking.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Hakeda_1-2" style="line-height:1em;unicode-bidi:-webkit-isolate;">[1]  Though Kūkai soon managed to obtain a copy of this sūtra which had only recently become available in Japan, he immediately encountered difficulty. Much of the sūtra was in untranslated Sanskrit written in the Siddham script. Kūkai found the translated portion of the sūtra was very cryptic. Because Kūkai could find no one who could elucidate the text for him, he resolved to go to China to study the text there. Professor Abe suggests that the Mahavairocana Tantra bridged the gap between his interest in the practice of religious exercises and the doctrinal knowledge acquired through his studies.

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