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Shingon (真言宗) is a major school of
Japanese Buddhism, and the most important esoteric, or
Tantric, school outside
India and
Tibet. The word Shingon is a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese
term 'Chen Yen' meaning 'True word', which term itself is a representation
of the
Sanskrit word
Mantra. Shingon arose in
Japan's
Heian period (794-1185)
when the monk
Kukai went to
China, studied the
Tantra and returned, armed with many texts and art works, and
developed his own synthesis of esoteric practice and doctrine, centred on
the cosmic Buddha
Vairocana.
The teachings of Shingon are based on the Mahavairocana Sutra and the
Vajrasekhara Sutra. Tantric Buddhism is concerned with the ritual and
meditative practices leading to
enlightenment. According to Shingon, enlightenment is not a distant,
foreign reality that can take eons to approach but our birth-right, a real
possibility within this very life. With the help of a genuine teacher and
through properly training the body, speech, and mind, we can reclaim and
liberate this enlightened capacity for the benefit of ourselves and
others.
In Shingon the
Buddha Vairocana is held to be within all things. The goal of Shingon
is the realization that one's nature was identical with Vairocana, a goal
that is achieved through
meditation and ritual practices. This realization depended on
receiving the secret doctrine of Shingon, transmitted orally to initiates
by the school's masters. Body, speech, and mind all participated in the
process: the body through devotional gestures (mudra)
and the use of ritual instruments, speech through sacred formulas (mantra),
and mind through
meditation.
One thing that sets Shingon apart from the other surviving schools of
Tantric Buddhism in Tibet is the use of
calligraphy, instead of pictorial representations, to represent Buddha
figures in their mandalas. An ancient
Indian script known as
Siddham is used to write mantras and draw mandalas.
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