Kukai
(774–835), Japanese Buddhist monk. Kukai, also known as Kobo Daishi, was born in Shikoku; at age seventeen, he went to Kyoto to attend the university, where he studied Chinese classics. Renouncing the life of the scholar-noble, he became a mountain ascetic and eventually encountered the Great Sun Sutra, one of the central texts of Shingon esoteric Buddhism. This stimulated a desire to travel to China to study the deeper meaning of the sutra.
Sailing to China in 804, Kukai reached Chang'an, where he studied Sanskrit before approaching Huiguo, the master he had been seeking. Within three short months, Kukai received the formal transmission of the major esoteric teachings, becoming the dharma heir of Tantric Buddhism. When Kukai returned to Japan in 806, he brought translations of texts of esoteric Buddhism and the ritual implements necessary for transmission of the dharma lineage. Saicho, eventual founder of the Tendai school of Japanese Buddhism, initiated a correspondence with Kukai by asking to borrow certain texts which Kukai had copied in China.
Gaining patronage at the imperial court in Kyoto, Kukai spread the teachings of Shingon esoteric Buddhism, founded a monastic center on Mount Koya in 816, and was granted the prestigious Toji temple as headquarters for Shingon training. Credited with creating the kana syllabary, constructing various waterworks, and originating the eighty-eight-temple pilgrimage on Shikoku, as a scholar Kukai is remembered for his ten-volume Ten Stages of the Development of the Mind. It came to be believed that Kukai remains in eternal samadhi in the Okunoin, the inner shrine on Mount Koya.
Further Reading
Kashiwahara, Yusen, and Koyu Sonoda, eds.(1994) Shapers of Japanese Buddhism. Trans. by Gaynor Sekimori. Tokyo: Kosei Publishing.
Tsunoda, Ryusaku, et al. (1958) Sources of Japanese Tradition. Vol. 1. New York: Columbia University Press.
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