Myōe

Category: Mystic

 

 

 

Myōe (Japanese: 明恵) (1173–1232) was a Japanese Buddhist monk active during the Kamakura period who also went by the name Kōben (Japanese: 高弁).  He was a contemporary of Jōkei and Honen. 

He is perhaps best known for his development of a sutra brought back from China by Kūkai, the founder of Shingon Buddhism – the Mantra of Light.  But, there is added interest in Myōe because he also kept dream records and analysed them. He kept a diary of his dreams and visions for over 35 years -  The Chronicle of Dreams (Yume no ki) is available in English, Japanese and French [see references].  Furthermore he was recognised by the foremost contemporary authority on waka poetry Fujiwara Teika as a preeminent poet.

 

Religious affiliations and influences

In order to understand something of Myōe’s motives for promoting and adapting the Mantra of Light, it is helpful to look at his religious affiliations.  Myōe entered the Kegon lineage by receiving the full monastic precepts at the ordination platform of Todaiji, the seat of the Kegon school, in 1189 at the age of sixteen.  He received formal instruction from a Kegon master – Rinkanbo Shosen. 

He then chose a somewhat unorthodox route choosing to make extensive use of the lay Huayan master Li Tongxuan (d 730).  The massive Flower Ornament Sutra is the main sutra of Kegon and full of visions and other experiences.  Tanabe has suggested that Myōe turned to Li because both sought the meaning of the visions and dreams they obtained.

The Mantra of Light

Although Kūkai (774-835) brought the scripture of the Mantra of Light to Japan, it does not appear to have been used by Kūkai himself.  The earliest known use of the Mantra of Light in Japan took place in 880 for a memorial service for the emperor Seiwa.  At that time, 50 monks are said to have gathered to recite the mantra from the eleventh day following the funeral until the forty ninth day memorial service.  There is little mention of the Mantra of Light from that time until the mid to late Heian Period (794-1185).  It is not until the eleventh century that references to the Mantra of Light begin to appear with some regularity. It was occasionally employed at state funerals, but it was not until the thirteenth century that Myōe made the move to disseminate the practise more widely.

The Mantra had already undergone a great deal of revision and adaptation even before Myōe worked on its codification and adaptation:

 

Shingon refractions – Professor Mark Unno

Hanjun (1038-1112), a cohort of Gihan, made a study of the Mantra of Light within the Tomitsu tradition in order to apply its powers to curing illnesses and increasing longevity. He specified different ritual protocols for these purposes from those for the funerary use of the ritual. This marked the beginning of the use of the mantra for purposes other than funerals. Mandalas, circular diagrammatic depictions of Buddhist cosmology …., were also used in conjunction with performance of the mantra; the type and ritual location of the mandala to be used were specified as well, and these practices were transmitted to Shokaku of Sambo'in, who was the abbot of Daigoji and preceptor to Emperor Shirakawa. ……………Shokaku's innovation was to bring together all the functions of the mantra, whether for expiating sins of the deceased or for curing illness in this life...

Shokaku transmitted his understanding to his younger brother Jitsu’un, who in turn taught his disciple Jokai.  In 1159, Jokai was chosen to perform the Mantra of Light in the palatial hall of the Ninshoden, whereupon “the nobleman Chunagon Tomotaka dreamt that his entire being was suffused with Light”.

By this time, the ritual had expanded to become seven stages and sixty eight steps.  The entire ritual was designed to effect a ‘deity yoga’, the union of the supplicant [initiate] with the main deity – moksha.  The methods at this stage can be summarised as:

• Enacting ritual and Ceremony – entering the ritual enclosure, adornment of the ritual enclosure, requesting and sealing the boundaries of ritual space, unsealing the ritual boundaries etc
• Believing in the spiritual world
• Visualisation – of seed syllables, of the three mysteries of the body
• Love with visualisation – visualisation of the supplicant becoming one with the main deity, worship of buddhas, supplication before the deity, offerings
• Forgiveness and asking for forgiveness – “removing karmic hindrances, repentance and overcoming transgressions”, along with a key stage of purification
• Squash the big I am – various acts designed to subdue the ego
• Listening to beating sounds
• Humming and singing – recitation, hymns of praise

Thus by the mid 1100s, the Mantra of Light was already well developed and had been expanded beyond its original conception.

Myōe’s objectives in adapting the Mantra of Light

What was Myōe trying to do when he adapted the Mantra of Light?

• Unification and peace - Myōe deplored the in-fighting and division that had taken place amongst Buddhists. What Myōe contributed were amendments such that the practises could be disseminated more easily across both lay members and the different sects, and the addition of practises from other sects that might serve to unite the monks and avoid the factional splits and arguments
• Reverse the decline in Buddhist values - Myōe was a firm believer in the notion of Dharma Decline and sought to promote the Mantra of Light as a means of reversing this. Whilst Kūkai developed practices for attaining Enlightenment in this life, Myōe promoted the mantra as a means of being reborn in the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha – going to heaven!  The parallels with what happened to Christianity are clear.  Jesus too promoted the equivalent of Enlightenment for all during their lifetime, only later did the theologians introduce the ‘bread tomorrow if you are good’ approach.  What makes Myōe’s methods better than the ‘bread tomorrow’ Christian approach, however, is that he added methods that were actually quite conducive to ‘bread today’ as well!
• Widening the constituency -  Shingon and other Buddhist sects had become like exclusive clubs open only to members of the aristocracy and nobility.  Very few were allowed to study at the major temples and monasteries; copies of sutras were unavailable, if permission to copy a sutra was given it had to be achieved using brush and ink – hand copying.  The meaning of the texts could only be explained by qualified masters and the initiations were secret.  Myōe hoped that by clearer explanation of the practises, they could be disseminated more easily, to a much wider audience, making the Buddha’s Enlightenment for all wish, a practicality.

 

Tanaka - Komyo Shingon shusei
The general propagation of the Mantra of Light took place after Myōe Kōben began to advocate it.  He began with the simple intent of reviving the Kegon school and from there worked to harmonise the Pure Land and Kegon doctrines.  Furthermore he worked to unify Kegon and Shingon and out of this arose the Commentary on the Syllables of the Mantra of Light.  He also composed the Dosha kanjin ki – Recommended Faith in the Sand in which he sought to harmonise Pure Land and Shingon, to free the Mantra of Light from its subordinate status in relation to Amidism and introduce the Mantra of Light to the common people.

Myōe and women

One group largely excluded from direct spiritual experience at this time was women.  Women were not excluded from religious life, but Enlightenment was effectively denied them.  There is every reason to believe that Myōe corrected this anomaly.  Women played a significant part in Myōe’s life, in fact he rejected much of the male Buddhist establishment in favour of women, he saw them as the route to spiritual Enlightenment.  He both helped them and was in turn helped, they became his guides and companions.  Both in spirit and in material means, the women surrounding him played key roles in his life during the period of his most intense concentration on the Mantra of Light. The nuns of Zenmyoji, the convent founded by Myōe, were one very key group, but two other women also played a significant part in his spiritual life:

• 

   
  Lady Sanmi [Kosanmi-no-Tsubone] -  a noblewoman and Myōe’s lay patron.  Lady Sanmi’s husband had died, as had her son.  She had one daughter, a nun, whom Myōe once tended when she was ill.  She was a noblewoman with means and one of the principal patrons of Myōe and Kozanji. In 1206, by the imperial decree of the retired emperor Gotoba, Myōe was given abbotship of Kozanji, but it was Lady Sanmi whose patronage was crucial to the construction and support of Kozanji.   “The depth of the relationship between Myōe and Lady Sanmi  was beyond the merely financial.  They related to one another both at the level of the familiar love of mutual friendship but also at the level of dharmic love in which they saw each other as spiritual beings.”  She is said to have paid for a number of important scrolls and to have ‘elevated her eros to Buddhist compassion’, although the same writer noted that ‘one would have to be quite naïve to think that all of Myōe’s feelings for her consisted of sublimated eros’.
• The Woman of Yuasa – was his cousin and the wife of his uncle Yuasa Munemitsu.  She was a medium.  When Myōe went to pray for an oracle concerning his wish to go to India in early 1203, the Woman of Yuasa had been preparing for seven days by fasting.  She suddenly entered into a trance, in which two Buddhist deities – Fukukenjaku Kannon and Sakyamuni himself, spoke through her and advised him not to go.  As a result he abandoned his plans.  There is every reason to believe that if he had gone to India, the Mantra of Light would never have been written.  The observations provide more details. “As in other cases, there appear to be elements of both maternal care and erotic passion in the relationship between Myōe and the Woman of Yuasa”

The Changes in methods

Records for the time show that the daily regimen of practices for the monks at Kōzan-ji, during Myoe's administration, included zazen meditation, recitation of the sutras and the Mantra of Light. These same records show that even details such as cleaning the bathroom regularly were routinely enforced. A wooden tablet titled Arubekiyōwa (阿留辺畿夜宇和?, "As Appropriate") still hangs in the northeast corner of the Sekisui'in Hall at Kōzan-ji detailing various regulations.

If one examines the practises that he appears to have added using the list above, what we can glean from his relationship with women, along with the ones he inherited we find methods that are varied and quite effective:

 The five senses are a continual distraction when one is attempting spiritual experience and Myōe added sensory deprivation to a growing list of methods needed.  The list of methods is quite long as one can see, and it appears he might have been criticised for the continual extension of the list, as at one point he cut off one of his ears to prove his point:

The Ritual of Sand

Sand is symbolic, it has much the same meaning as dust.  Water purifies and disintegrates aggregates, Earth is an aggregated state.  The seashore is that boundary between the spiritual [Water] and the land [Earth] where aggregates are formed.  By the movement of waves – or if you prefer by the constant activity of the functions of the universe - solids [form] are perpetually being formed and dissolving.  Coalescing and disintegrating.  Different coloured sand in a number of symbol systems denotes the different building blocks that make up aggregates – the Platonic solids.

Myōe made the symbolic actual.  He introduced rituals that were designed to reinforce the symbolism and help people comprehend what is a difficult set of concepts.  From what we can see ,very few western writers understand this aspect of Myōe’s adaptations to the Mantra of Light, but today the Mantra of Light with its use of sand is one of the most important and widely practised mantras in Japanese Shingon.  Furthermore, the use of sand has become an integral part of the practises of other schools including Tendai and Zen.

 

In the same way that those in the west may sprinkle dust over a coffin during burial,  Myōe’s  sand is also sprinkled on corpses and graves ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust’.  Once blessed it also took on a placebo role and could be given to the ill as a form of symbolic ‘frozen’ healing energy.  We have to think of it as spirit input made visible, and in this form it could be used ceremoniously to cure various ailments and to provide spiritual relief from the burden of evil karma.

The Importance of Ritual

The practise of contemplation and detachment requires great discipline.  One has to teach the mind to ignore the mind!  Perhaps of all the techniques on this site it is the most difficult, it is also the most rewarding long term with higher states being attainable.  The method that Myōe used to instill the sort of disciplined behaviour needed to succeed, was to introduce numerous rules into the daily lives of the monks.  By getting used to living under a constant rule bound regime, the discipline needed to use contemplation and detachment as a method had been instilled:

In summary

In assessing Myōe’s contribution, we need to be aware that it is the methods he advocated and the extension into areas not fully articulated before, that are his key contribution.  His writings in general show not only a profound awareness of the problems of Buddhism at the time, problems relevant to today, but also a creative response, a positive vision.

References

Myōe was a prolific writer, composing over 50 works, of which about 25 are extant.  Numerous additional documents purport to record his statement in the form of transcripts, chronicles and hagiographies.  Myōe wrote on a wide variety of subjects, including philosophical treatises, meditation manuals, oracular chronicles, travel itineraries, codes of conduct, and polemics.  We also have a number of his letters

 

Chronicle of Dreams [Yume no ki]

Both Tanabe and Girard’s works contain translations of Myōe ‘s Chronicle of Dreams [Yume no ki] . 

• Girard, Frédéric (1990). Un moine de la secte Kegon à Kamakura (1185-1333), Myôe (1173-1232) et le Journal de ses rêves, Paris: Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient
• Tanabe, George – The Dream Diary of Myoe Shonin.  In Myoe the Dreamkeeper – Fantasy and knowledge in Early Kamakura Buddhism 1992
• Hayao Kawai – The Buddhist Priest Myoe:  A Life of Dreams, a translation from the Japanese, analyses the Chronicle of Dreams from the perspective of Western depth psychology.  Given that dreams of a religious nature employ religious symbolism, then this might not be as helpful spiritually as the other two sources.  It is however, at least an alternative source for the dream records.

Mantra of Light

The following have been attributed to Myōe:

• Commentary on the significance of the Syllables of the Mantra of Light of the Baptism of the Buddha Vairocana of the Unfailng Rope Snare - 1222
• On the Efficacy of the Mantra of Light 1224
• Significance of the Mystic Power of Sand and the Mantra of Light 1227
• Recommending Faith in the Sand of the Mantra of Light -  2 fascicles 1228
• Recommending Faith in the Sand of the Mantra of Light -  supplement 1228
• The Matter of the Mantra of Light 1230
• Secret Treasury of the Huayan Contemplation of the Samadhi of the Buddha’s radiance
• Collected sayings of things truly heard
• Tales of Toganoo.

Background

• Unno, Mark (2004). Shingon Refractions: Myōe and the Mantra of Light.

Observations

For iPad/iPhone users: tap letter twice to get list of items.

• Myōe – Dream of being devoured by Wolves
• Myōe – I made the wind in the pines my friend in meditation
• Myōe – If there is faith, myriad goods will flourish like the verdant earth
• Myōe – It is like a doctor who knows where the moxacautery points are
• Myōe – Lectures on the Commentary on the Mantra of Light
• Myōe – ln Recommending Faith in the Sand of the Mantra of Light 01
• Myōe – ln Recommending Faith in the Sand of the Mantra of Light 02
• Myōe – Mani is the wisdom of equality
• Myōe – Receives a vision of Light
• Myōe – The 'three mysteries' (sanmitsu)
• Myōe – The Dream of Shanmiao
• Myōe – The dream of Vairocana and the queen
• Myōe – The Woman of Yuasa
• Myōe – There was a pole made of lapis lazuli hanging from the sky
• Myōe – This fool, filled with faith, inscribed inside of the bell
• Myōe – Truly (such a thing as] one's own body does not [really] exist