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Tales of Kobo Daishi
| Article
# : |
19053 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1991 |
4,206 Words |
| Author
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Pack Carnes
Pack Carnes is associate professor of Japanese studies and
folklore in the Department of Modern Languages at Lake Forest
College in Illinois. He is editor of Western Folklore. |
From the point of view of philosophy and religion, the eighth-century Buddhist priest Kobo Daishi is of great importance to Japan. Part a legacy of his extended stay in China, part his own syncretism of religion and meditation, his form of esoteric Buddhism called Shingon (true word) is still very vital in Japan. Esoteric Buddhism was the latest form of Buddhism to reach China from India. It is characterized by ritual, symbols, and a complex iconography, all of which strongly appealed to the aesthetics of the court society of Japan. Shingon refers to various incantations or formulae considered to be of central importance to the mysteries.
Kobo Daishi is known among Buddhist scholars usually as Kukai, a name he gave himself upon becoming a monk. Kobo Daishi (Kobo means roughly "spreading the teachings [of Buddha]"; Daishi means Great Teacher) is his posthumous name and the name by which he is known to all of Japan. He composed dozens of religious tracts in which he defended Buddhism, as well as other works attempting to reconcile Shinto and Buddhism. He is perhaps best known among historians of religion for his works dealing with the superiority of Shingon over other types of Buddhism.
Kobo Daishi (hereafter Kobo) is now so ingrained into Japanese folklore that his name is heard in virtually every sort of traditional form: proverbs, legends, tall stories, didactic tales, and even jokes. A sculptor, painter, poet, and calligrapher, he is also known as the father of Japanese culture. The average Japanese is perhaps dimly aware that he founded Shingon, that he built the monastries on the sacred mountain Koya, and that he's connected with the eighty-eight-temple pilgrimage on Shikoku, still accomplished by many thousands of Japanese every year.
Miracle stories surround his birth. A number of celestial signs prefigured his birth on Shikoku and the birth itself is said to have been the result of a supernatural pregnancy that occurred in a dream his mother had of a hijiri, or holy man. (Similar legends are told about the births of the Buddha and other religious figures.) Legend tells us that he was born with his hands in a mudra (hand gesture), recognized as that of Dainichi (Sanskrit for Mahavairocana, the Great Shining Buddha). Kobo later had a number of dreams that confirmed his path to study Buddhism and his mission of bringing what he thought was a "pure" form of that religion to Japan.
Kobo was born in the year 774 into the Saeki family on the island of Shikoku, the fourth largest of the main Japanese archipelago. His birth
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