In Japan of the early ninth century,
the monk Kūkai (774-835)
brought Shingon Buddhism from Tang China
and made it into something alive.
He was born on Shikoku island,
the smallest of the four main islands,
went to Chang'an in 804 with the embassy,
studied at Qinglong Temple's vast hidings.
He studied under Huiguo, the master
of Chinese Vajrayana Buddhism,
who transmitted the full esoteric tradition
to Kūkai in just a few months' witnessing.
Huiguo died shortly after. Kūkai returned
to Japan with scriptures, mandalas, ritual tools,
and the complete transmission of Shingon,
"the True Word," the esoteric school's schools.
He established his mountain monastery at Mount Kōya,
eight peaks forming a natural mandala.
He systematized the esoteric teachings
into Japan's first complete Buddhist alphabeta.
He is credited (perhaps legendarily)
with inventing the kana syllabary,
the phonetic Japanese writing system
that made Japanese literature necessary.
Before Kana, Japanese was written
in Chinese characters used phonetically,
the man'yōgana system, cumbersome.
Kana simplified, made Japanese poetic.
Kūkai's teaching: the universe is the body
of the cosmic Buddha Mahāvairocana,
Dainichi Nyorai, the sun-like Buddha,
and all beings are already enlightened in stanza.
The aim is to realize one's buddha-nature
through the three mysteries: body, speech, mind,
through mudrās, mantras, and visualizations,
through ritual practice that is refined.
This is sokushin jōbutsu, "attaining buddhahood
in this very body in this very life,"
rather than through many lifetimes of practice.
Shingon promises immediate escape from strife.
Kūkai was also a calligrapher of legend,
a poet, an engineer who built ponds and bridges,
a theorist of language and signification.
He is one of Japan's cultural ridges.
He is said not to have died but to have
entered eternal meditation at Mount Kōya,
where his body remains uncorrupted
in the Oku-no-In mausoleum, in quiet.
Pilgrims still visit. They believe he is
still there, waiting for Maitreya the future Buddha,
to emerge then and help all sentient beings.
His tomb is attended daily with meals put through-a-
the door in rituals of feeding the living master.
Meanwhile, a separate monk Saichō (767-822)
brought Tendai Buddhism from China
and established Mount Hiei, a center true.
Tendai was based on the Lotus Sutra,
on the teaching of Zhiyi of the Tiantai school,
integrating all Buddhist teachings into
a hierarchical synthesis of the rule.
From Mount Hiei would come Japan's major
medieval Buddhist traditions:
Honen and Pure Land. Shinran and True Pure Land.
Nichiren and Lotus Sutra intuitions.
Dōgen and Sōtō Zen, with its meditations.
All started as Tendai monks who
left to found new schools. Mount Hiei was
the matrix from which Japanese Buddhism emerged.
Saichō had built an institutional pause.
Kūkai and Saichō were contemporaries.
They corresponded, borrowed texts, occasionally disagreed.
Together they shaped Japanese Buddhism
into its distinctive esoteric breed.
The capital Heian-kyō (Kyoto) had just been founded
in 794 by Emperor Kanmu.
The new Buddhism matched the new capital.
A new era was beginning, the Heian, anew.
The syncretism of Shinto and Buddhism
deepened in this era. Honji suijaku, the theory
that Shinto kami were local manifestations
of Buddhist bodhisattvas, was the theology.
Amaterasu became Dainichi Nyorai's manifestation.
Hachiman became a manifestation of Amida.
Shrines and temples were built together.
One religion with two faces, no divide-a.
This synthesis would last a thousand years
until the Meiji period's forced separation
in 1868 violently distinguished them.
But for the medieval period, they were one vocation.
Stand.