Practising the Dharma? What do I mean?

I recently had an email from someone who read my Wikipedia article on Shingon and wanted to know more about it. (Had a look at the article recently and didn't recognise most of the text but that's the Wikipedia for you). I explained to him that I had read everything I could get my hands on, and I had done detailed study of Kukai's writing, but that I did not practice Shingon Buddhism, and therefore couldn't offer much more than what was in that article. My correspondent was interested in what I meant when I said "I practice the Dharma". Amongst Buddhists this kind of throw away line would probably not even get a second thought. We all assume we know what someone means by that kind of statement. But how do you explain it to someone who might not share your jargon or assumptions.

So I started thinking about what I meant when I said I practice the Dharma. At first I was tempted to go into complicated answers that involved lots of doctrinal categories: the path of ethics, meditation and wisdom was an early starter. But then I realised that this would just be gobbledegook to anyone without a few years of reading the same books as me. And unlike my knowledge of Shingon, my Dharma practice is not just book learning.

I do a variety of more formal Buddhist practices: meditation, puja, study, reflection, chanting, right-livelihood etc. But this wasn't going to be much use because each one of these exists in a context which requires explanation. So I started stripping things back to essentials. What is it that I am doing in all of these formal practices, and in the many informal practices I do?

And it came to me that what I do is I try to pay attention to things. This is the guts of what I wrote in an earlier post about my approach to the six perfections. From that perspective I pay attention to other people, to our mutual impact on each other. This produces not only a change in behaviour which promotes awareness, but also liberates energy. Then I can start paying attention to my own mind through meditation. Finally I can begin to pay attention to the nature of reality.

Another approach to this might be to start from my basic desire for happiness. This is something we all have. Even if, like me, we're not always sure we deserve happiness, we still want it. It goes beyond self-esteem and self-views. From this point of view what I am doing as a Buddhist is looking closely at the kinds of things that conduce to happiness and which don't. I also try to note how long that happiness lasts. For instance, a certain amount of dark chocolate does indeed make me feel happy and secure and less anxious. It really works. But it's a short lived happiness. And then there is the anxiety that I will run out of chocolate and the shops will be shut and I'll get a headache because I haven't had my fix lately. Now at present I might not be ready to stop eating chocolate as an antidote to anxiety, but I can still pay attention to the process. I can still observe the cycling between anxiety, eating, happiness, rising anxiety until the desire to eat is triggered again.

So, it became clear that what I do as a Buddhist is I try to pay attention to things, to my mental and emotional states, to other people, and to the real nature of reality. Which sounds a bit simplistic doesn't it? I mean what about the whole edifice of teachings, the profound philosophical doctrines, and, since I'm interested in Shingon, the initiations and lineages. I'm by no means finished thinking about all of this, but it strikes me that all of the superstructure of Buddhism is just an increasing elaborate way of making us pay attention. My impulse is to simplify things, to cut away all of the extrusions and look for what is essential.

In any case it's clear to me that one cannot simply take the Buddhist tradition on it's own terms. I've written about this as well in The Unity of Buddhism. Each strand of traditional Buddhism sees itself as the pinnacle, and other as provisional at best. This is alright when strands exists in relative isolation, but in the present we have access to so many of the strands, each with their unique contribution that it doesn't make sense to privilege one over the others.

The one major objection that I have come up with to this train of thought is that attention is an ethically neutral function. We can pay attention to unethical things as much as ethical. Just paying attention might not actually be enough. It might be necessary to add some qualifier. There is actually a traditional precedent for this - the Pali texts tell us to avoid ayoniso-maniskara, unwise attention.But again I think if we simply pay attention to the consequences of paying attention then it will become clear what things are better to focus on. This was the point of my essay on Imagination. It may be that we need to be reminded of the need for kindness, for kindly attention, from time to time.

It is possible that we might seek our own good at the expense of others. But if we are paying attention to others then we will be aware that they are suffering as a result of something we have done. I find this a very uncomfortable awareness. So if I am paying attention it seems unlikely that I could be happy by exploiting someone else. My happiness is tied up with the happiness of those people around me, and ultimately with all beings.

So what I mean when I say I practice the Dharma is: I pay attention to things. Simply that. And it has been very fruitful to date.

Kukai : Buddhist hero of Japan

In this post I want to draw attention to and celebrate a Buddhist hero. Kukai is a figure so multi-sided, so multifaceted, that summing him up in a short essay is almost impossible. He is known by three main names, Kukai, Kobodaishi, and Odaishisama (or just Daishisama), and I will try to say a little something about each.

Kukai was the Buddhist monk who brought the Vajrayana teachings to Japan in 804. Not only was a dedicated and deeply realised spiritual practitioner, he was a gifted poet and calligrapher, a competent civil engineer, and a consummate political operator. At a time when heterodox people of any kind could sink without trace, he managed to radically alter not only the face of Japanese Buddhism, but the whole Japanese culture. His Shingon Buddhism was to dominate Japanese society for several centuries, and it is said that with Shingon came the Siddham script which in turn helped to give birth to the Japanese Kana. This in turn enabled an indigenous, vernacular literature to develop, since before this writing was all in Chinese and education in Chinese was denied to women and non-aristocrats. Shingon reinvigorated Japanese Buddhism which had become rather scholastic. Kukai's insistence that Awakening was possible in this very life was apparently novel, and was at first questioned. Without this basic premise however, Buddhist practice is just going through the motions.

Kobodaishi is the title bestowed on Kukai posthumously by the emperor. The title means 'Great Teacher who Spreads the Dharma'. Where Kukai is very much a man in history, Kobodaishi is something more. He is superhuman, and supra-historical. As happens with religious figures in any tradition, the stories about the many grew after his death. Feats and texts where attributed to him that he did not perform or write. This is not necessarily a falsification because myth has to have a vehicle and Kobodaishi happens to be an excellent vehicle for the Japanese mythic imagination. Kobodaishi then is an archetypal figure. He did not really die in 837, but retired to meditate until the advent of Maitreya the next Buddha. This resurrection myth is quite universal in character, Kukai, King Author, Christ, and probably Elvis Presley, will all be appearing again before long. The myth of renewal goes very deep in the human psyche. Shingon practitioners tend to refer to Kukai as Kobodaishi, indicating that 1200 years after his death it is probably the myth rather than the man that informs their practice. Ordinary humans can only inspire us so much. What really moves us are archetypal figures who seem to embody the deepest forces in the world and our psyches.

Odaishi-sama is an almost completely different character. He is one step further removed from Kukai the historical man. In a way we can see the process of myth making quite clearly in this change from Kukai, to Kobodaishi, to Daishi-sama. Daishi-sama is not associated with Kukai's signature form of Buddhism, Shingon, at all. He is the invention of 10th and 11th century wandering shaman-priests who had adopted large dollops of Pure Land Buddhism into their patter. They travelled the countryside practising medicine, soothsaying, and carrying out important rituals. Daishi-sama became a kind of saint to them, and like the Buddha Amitabha, it was said that if you chant his name then you will be reborn in the Western Paradise, Sukhavati, the Happy Land. There is little remaining of the historical character, but he is none the less an important folk figure. Many a person is devoted to the cult of Daishi-sama, chants his name and fervently believes in his saving grace. And why not?

Kukai is the pivot point of a great mythic cycle. From outside space and time Mahavairocana manifested beings to whom he could communicate. He gave Vajrasattva his initiation and asked him to pass it on to other beings. Vajrasattva, an entirely mythic being, then gave the initiation to Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna stands athwart the mythic and human realms. It is thought that he actually lived, and that there were likely to have been two people with that name separated by several hundred years. Or it is believed that he was a wizard who lived for 700 years. His biography is almost entirely made up of mythic elements. Nagarjuna initiated Nagabodhi, another semi-legendary figure, who gave the initiation to Vajrabodhi. Vajrabohi and the succeeding patriarchs of the Shingon lineage are genuine historical personages with relatively straight forward biographies. Skipping a couple of steps we find that Hui-kuo gave the initiation to Kukai making him the 8th Patriarch of the lineage. Then Kukai, after his death, undergoes a series of transitions to become Odaishisama, that is which lead him back into the mythic realm.

Kukai is a key figure in the history of Buddhism. His writings are lucid and fresh even after 1200 years. That many are available in good English translations is a cause for celebration. He is less well studied than he might be because Shingon has not done much proselytising outside of Japan. If you are interested in Japanese Buddhism, in mantra or vajrayana, then Kukai’s works are invaluable. Hakeda's Major works is a reliable translation, but there are also some in the BDK English Tripitaka published by the Numata Centre. Ryuichi Abe's The Weaving of Mantra is a difficult read at times due to the semiotics jargon that he uses, and I don’t entirely agree with his thesis, but it is invaluable as a more indepth study of Kukai. Taiko Yamasaki's Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism is a good introductory and can be published from Shingon Buddhist International. Engaging with Shingon practice is more difficult because teachers are hard to find in the West. However we can be inspired by Kukai's life, and his written works can help us to understand the Dharma more deeply.

For more info on Kukai see the Wikipedia article, which I can recommend because I wrote most of it (well originally it's all been altered now of course!).