Metaphor and Mandala in Shingon Buddhist Theology

by David Gardiner

Abstract Buddhist mandala that are made of colored sand or are painted on cloth have been well represented in Asian art circles in the West.Discussions of the role that they can play in stimulating religious contemplation or even as sacred icons

charged with power have also appeared in English scholarship. The metaphorical meaning of the term man _ d _ ala, however, is less commonly referenced. This paper discusses how the founder of the Japanese school of Shingon Buddhism, the Buddhist monk Kūkai of the ninth century, uses this

term in a metaphorical sense to convey the transformed nature of awareness that is the ultimate goal of Buddhist practice. Emphasis is also placed on the importance of metaphorical thinking to the religious path of transformation itself.

Keywords: Shingon.Buddhism.Kūkai.Mandala.Metaphor.Jujushinron.Sokushin-jobutsugi

Introduction

I could say that the focus of this essay is the positive value of certain kinds of cognitive dissonance. Some people who think a lot about education say that the most significant and transformative learning grows from encountering new ways of thinking, from encountering new paradigms that register

a discord with our established, habitual ways of knowing and of being. This is a fairly common epistemological model among psychologists for describing effective vehicles for growth, and for encouraging pedagogies that incorporate intellectual conflict in order to catalyze valuable

transformation. But this particular model of intellectual and emotional growth is actually not my chief interest here, as concerned as I am with its pertinence for our thinking about human psychology in general, and even education and teaching in particular. Still, I think that something about this model is relevant for discussing some Buddhist perspectives on religious practice.

I will present here some thoughts about the usage of mandala (mandara in Japanese) in Shingon Tantric Buddhism. This is the same word man _ d _ ala that is used in Indian Vajrayāna Buddhism (Shingon Buddhism came to Japan from China in the ninth century, not long after streams of Vajrayāna Buddhism had entered China). I intend to portray one understanding of man _ d _ ala as being instrumental in a path of religious practice aimed at transformation along Buddhist soteriological lines. I will move from a consideration of the material or plastic man _ d _ ala to an analysis of the

term mandala as a metaphor for a new envisioning of reality, of self, of the world. And I will argue that the metaphorical usage of man _ d _ ala represents a theological perspective that engages a certain tension—a tension that might be described as a cognitive dissonance—as a vehicle for transformation. I will also suggest that the tension inherent in the very nature of metaphorical thinking is central to this model of transformation, which sees enlightenment as a kind of transformed vision.

Material Mandala

I will not elaborate on the vast historical usage of man _ d _ ala, but will make only a few comments. In Indian Vajrayāna or Tantric Buddhist traditions, they seem to have been firstdrawnwithcoloredsandonhorizontalearthenplatforms,withthesideclosesttothe practitioner being designated as the

east. Cloth scrolls on which colored man _ d _ ala get depicted are mostly vertical transpositions of the horizontal man _ d _ ala, such that the east is now at the bottom. I will only add that, in the early traditions, man _ d _ ala were commonly used within a ritual context aimed at inviting

(invoking) a deity into the man _ d _ ala, as a guest, a pattern of religious behavior commonto manypractices in India fromancienttimes.Verticallyhungpaintedman _ d _ alaarestilloftenregardedinthissame manner as a ‘seat’ of the deity who is to be invoked in rituals. There is some tendency in scholarly writing on man _ d _ ala to address their role as props or aids for the practice of visualization in meditation. An important article that reviews some of these views is Robert Sharf’s ‘Visualization and Man _ d _ ala in Shingon Buddhism.’1 The article focuses on the ritual use of man _ d _ ala in the Shingon tradition, and essentially aims to disabuse us of the view that, in this tradition, man _ d _ ala serve as props for visualization practices. It should help us here to summarize a few key arguments in Sharf’s article, since it clarifies some crucial ways of understanding what man _ d _ ala are and are not in the Shingon tradition. The first sentence of Sharf’s article states the following: One of the truisms in the study of East Asian Buddhist Tantra is that the depictions of deities associated with Tantric practice—notably the often complex geometric arrays of divinities known as man _ d _ alas—function as aids for visualization practices. (151) After citing examples in the scholarly literature of this truism, Sharf adds: ‘Yet rarely, if ever, do scholars bother to substantiate the claim with historical or ethnographic evidence’ (153).

1 In Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, ed. by Robert Sharf and Elizabeth Sharf, Stanford, 2002.

He follows this accusation by noting, ‘Shingon rituals themselves offer little support for this view’ (153). He continues: Even more striking is the fact that there is little obvious correlation between the elaborate graphic detail of the major Shingon man _ d _ alas, on the one hand, and the

content of the specific rites with which they are associated, on the other. Finally, the commonly accepted understanding of “visualization”—the notion that Shingon rites involve fixing a Technicolor image of one or more deities in the mind’s eye—is borne out neither by an examination of the

ritual manuals, nor by ethnographic evidence pertaining to the utilization of such manuals. (153) Near the end of his Introduction, Sharf clarifies that the aim of his paper is: ... to raise some problems concerning the claim that (1) Shingon meditative practices center on the mental construction or inner visualization of man _ d _ ala-like images, and (2) Shingon man _ d _ alas are used as aids in visualization exercises. I [he] will hereafter refer to both claims under the rubric of the “phenomenological model,” because they are enmeshed in an approach to the subject that

privileges the ‘inner experience’ of the practitioner over the performative and sacerdotal dimensions of the rite. (153–54) While he acknowledges that there are passages in the ritual manuals that instruct the practitioner to hold in mind particular images, he finds that these passages are more

‘discursive,literary,ortropicalthantheyarevisualorgraphic’(163).Hethuschoosesto avoidusingtheEnglishword‘visualization’whenrenderingthemultipleChineseterms commonly so translated, and opts, instead, for terms such as

‘think,’‘imagine,’ ‘contemplate,’and‘discern(163).Healsonotesthat,eveninthosefewinstanceswhere an image of a deity is described in the text in graphic detail, there are no indications of what to do with this image and, moreover, the ethnographic evidence he cites indicates that,evenifapractitionerwantedtomakeeffortsto‘sinkinto’suchavisualization,there is no more than a few seconds’ time during which she would be permitted to do so because, during the actual rite, these contemplations are placed in the midst of many, many other ritual sequences that need to be

completed within a limited time frame. AccordingtoSharf,sincethemanuals,aswellasthewrittenrecordsoforaltraditions he has also studied, suggest

little, if any, correlation between the painted man _ d _ ala and anyinternalactsofimagination,heurgesthatthebestwayforustoproperlyunderstand theuseof man _ d _ alainShingonritualisasobjectspossessingasortofdivinepresence.In other words, he emphasizes the ‘magical’ role that these icons play, and he adequately supports this view by citing the writings of Kūkai and others.2

2 In addition to his argument against interpreting these ritual manuals as referencing the interiorization of man _ d _ ala images in Shingon contexts, Sharf argues elsewhere that the ‘rhetoric of meditative experience’ itself constitutes a problematic discourse for analyzing Buddhist practice. He points to the scanty references in classical Buddhist texts to actual states of mind experienced by practitioners, in spite of abundant theoretical constructs in such texts of ideal states and stages of consciousness. While this insight regarding a tendency to assume that people actually do what the texts say they can orought to do stands as an important caution, it is still the case that innumerable classical Buddhist texts

do, of course, discuss at length the incomparable value of transforming our minds through meditative experience. See Sharf’s ‘Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience.’ Numen 42 (1995):228–283.

Metaphor and Man

One of the ways in which Sharf highlights the importance of the physical presence of the man _ d _ ala is by showing the care that is taken in Shingon ritual to set up, or to adorn, the ritual space. He focuses on the term shōgon or ‘adornment’ in its technical meaning of properly laying out

the altar space with paintings and statues of deities and many implements. Beyond this, he notes, ‘The “adornment of the sanctuary” is thus a formal procedure wherein the place of practice is ritually transformed into the world of enlightenment—the instantiation of the Mahāyāna tenet that nirvana is sam _ sāra correctly perceived.’ He adds that ‘[t]his transformation of the sanctuary into a pure land is effected in large part through the

agency of the image that constitutes the sacred presence of the principal deity’ (191). The image thus sacralizes the space. On a historical note, Sharf comments on the tendency among modern scholars (east and west alike) to ignore the very ‘magical’ properties of these icons, and concludes that this misunderstanding is rooted in a Japanese predilection, from the Meiji period (late 19th C.) and in response to rapid Westernization, to excise

elements of their religion that appear magical or superstitious. He refers to the ‘Protestantization of Buddhism’ and of the problematic tendency to speak of religious practice in terms that emphasize or privilege private ‘religious experience’ (192).3 As a nod to the view that inner ‘experience’ may actually play some role in Shingon ritual practice, Sharf admits in his conclusion that: It is certainly possible, if not probable, that the

store of visual imagery that does appear in the texts, would contribute to the construction of an elaborate imaginative world in which the sanctuary is construed as a pure Buddha field populated by a host of benevolent deities. In entering the sanctuary and undertaking the rites a priest learns to behave as if he were dwelling in a sacred realm, as if he were in the presence of the principle deity, as if he had merged with Mahāvairocana [the

cosmic Buddha]. Andheaddsthatallofthese‘asif’aspectsofShingonperformancedemandthatthe practitioner remain fully cognizant of his immediate environs, like any good stage actor. As such, he states that his analysis ‘stands in contrast to the phenomenological projection or “inner visualization” of an alternative universe’ (196).

Alternative Considerations

Having summarized Sharf’s arguments, I would like now to supplement his analysis by a consideration of this very notion of ‘an alternative universe.’ In short, I want to draw our attention to certain perspectives present in Shingon texts—albeit not the liturgical manuals—that reveal that the ‘as if’ dimension Sharf points to may also be understood somewhat more deeply as a significant soteriological tool. As Sharf himself notes, the adornment

(shōgon) of the sanctuary can be seen as a physical reminder of the Mahāyāna doctrinal premise that, when properly perceived, nirvana (the Buddhist term for spiritual liberation) is really sam _ sāra (the term for our default 3 Gregory Schopen, ‘Archaeology and the Protestant Presuppositions in the Study of Indian Buddhism,’ History of Religions 31 (1991):1–23.

state of spiritual entrapment, suffering, and delusion). This premise suggests that our world can be perceived as a pure land, as an alternative and better universe. With this concept in mind, I would like to direct our attention to other uses of the term ‘adornment,’ metaphorical uses that point

to a significant altering of perception or thinking—perhaps the making real of the imagining of a possibility—as constituting one ultimate aim of the ritual practice. As we shall see, both the material and the metaphorical man _ d _ ala play crucial roles in this adornment process. Further, I want

to suggest that we can understand the relationship between these two man _ d _ ala as informing a kind of tension, one in which the imaginative dimension is creatively coupled with the practitioner’s awareness of his immediate environs such that the two do not ‘stand in contrast,’ but,

rather, complement one another in a tension that could form a central aspect of the soteriological practice. Sharf’s very helpful critique isolates the liturgical context within which icons function as charging forces. He demonstrates that the liturgical texts make almost no reference to the man

dala as a support for visualization. In other words, his analysis is restricted to an understanding of the man _ d _ ala as artistic icon and of adornment as referring to the placement of mandala and other ritual accoutrement in liturgical space. My approach here is to look instead at some

Shingon doctrinal writings in order to demonstrate that there are other meanings of ‘mandala’ and other meanings of ‘adornment.’ Shingon tradition commonly characterizes its ritual practice as comprising acts of body, speech, and mind, known as the Three Mysteries (alternate translations include

‘secrets’ or even ‘intimacies’): the practitioner makes particular physical gestures with the body (mudrā), recites mantras by mouth, and ‘thinks’ in terms of the mandala. These acts are said to ‘unite’ the practitioner with the Three Mysteries of the Cosmic Buddha Dainichi (Mahāvairocana). Sharfs’

corrective is aimed at the misconception that the third of these Mysteries, the Mystery of Mind, entails ‘visualizing’ what is depicted in the man _ d _ ala. The purpose of the present essay, however, is to demonstrate that the practice of the Mystery of Mind can also be understood as follows: the

practitioner is adorned to the extent that she or he sees/understands the world as a man _ d _ ala, as a world of awakened beings. Of course, the physical presence of the icon itself may assist in this process. The soteriological power of this shift in perspective— this new seeing or

understanding—is an essential emphasis of much of the Shingon doctrinal literature that employs the terms ‘adornment’ and ‘man _ d _ ala.’ Thus, my readings of these terms supplement the understanding gained from Sharf’s presentation. These other meanings of man _ d _ ala and adornment allow us

to understand as implicit within the ritual practice an inner dimension, perhaps one not made very explicit in the liturgical texts themselves. This inner dimension of ‘seeing’ may not be an actual visualization, but is, nonetheless, a form of what I will call a vital envisioning. And I intend this word to include both its meanings of forming a mental image and of imagining a future possibility.

Kūkai on Shōgon and Mandala

The entry for shōgon or ‘adornment’ in the Mikkyō daijiten (the Japanese Large Dictionary of Esoteric Buddhism) lists only the meaning of ‘to decorate ornately,’

and the term can refer to the elaborate ornaments and utensils found in the sanctuaries (dōjō) of Shingon temples. For the common Sanskrit equivalents of shōgon—vyūha and alamkāra—Edgerton’s Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Dictionary offers the meanings of ‘an array’ and ‘a manifestation of

something sacred,’ both of which appear commonly in the Mahāyāna literature. Many Mahāyāna texts describe the elaborate and spectacular arrays of various Buddha fields or Pure Lands in terms of their ‘adornments’ of gold mountains, lapis lazuli lakes, perfumed trees, and so on. Along a more explicitly metaphorical vein, the Hua-yen ching uses the term ‘adornment’ to describe the meditative trance state of the Buddha Vairocana as being a

miraculous world of interpenetration, where the ordinary limits of time and space are exploded. Yet another metaphorical usage of the term shōgon is indicated in the Sōgō Bukkyō jiten (the Japanese Comprehensive Dictionary of Buddhism), which lists several meanings in addition to ‘to decorate,’ most of which refer to the metaphorical adornment of a practitioner with the qualities of wisdom and virtue. There seems to be at least one common

thread in these various meanings of ‘adornment,’ which is a sense of the marvelous transformations of character, as well as of vision (in a sense, transformations of the inner and outer worlds) that come into being as a result of realizing Buddhist truths, such as dependent origination and emptiness, and as a result of learning to manifest the wondrous skills of compassion that are so central to the bodhisattva path. The decorations of

a sanctuary can, thus, be seen as symbolic of these noble qualities. In this sense, the final enlightenment of a Buddha would be the ultimate adornment, wherein, as a consequence of one’s vows and meritorious deeds, one acquires the three Buddha bodies and nurtures a glorious Buddhafield for the cultivation of the spiritual capacities of living beings. Kūkai uses the term shōgon frequently and in various contexts. Sometimes, he

describes the pure abodes of Buddhas in a manner similar to the descriptions of Sukhāvatî in earlier Pure Land texts, by writing of ‘mountaintops all being adorned with jeweled trees’ (1:14). Yet, I think it is more common for him to describe ornate palaces than landscapes. His many references to the residence of the Buddha as a ‘palace adorned with jewels’ carry regal connotations, albeit of a metaphorical palace with ornaments. As an

interesting side note, in some comments of his on the actual Japanese sovereign’s palace of his day, he refers metaphorically to its religious attributes by noting how the ‘imperial palace was adorned with lectures on the Dharma’ (1:78, 79). Most commonly, however, Kūkai uses the term shōgon to refer, as do some of the earlier texts mentioned above, to spiritual qualities that accrue to practitioners on the Buddhist path. One phrase that

appears often in his writings with this meaning is a description of the religious goal as one of ‘immeasurable adornment’ (muryō shōgon, or its synonym, ‘inexhaustible adornment’ mujin shōgon). He also uses the term to refer to the goal of Buddhahood in his Himitsu mandara jūjūshinron (Treatise on the Ten Mind Abodes of the Secret Man _ d _ ala), his massive text on the stages of religious development. I think it is important to

note here that, in English scholarship, it has been common to translate the title of this text using the abbreviation ‘Treatise on the Ten Stages.’ Yet, this rendering ignores both the wording of jūshin, ‘mind abodes,’ and ignores that Kūkai’s understanding of these abodes is that they all form a ‘secret man _ d _ ala.’ Of course, in this text, the tenth and highest ‘stage/abode’ is that of Shingon practice, wherein the wonders of

Buddhahood are revealed. The name of the tenth stage is the ‘mind abode of secret adornment’ (himitsu shōgon jūshin). As he writes in the opening section of the tenth chapter of the Himitsu mandara jūjūshinron (which, to repeat, means, ‘Treatise on the Ten Mind Abodes of the Secret Man _ d _

ala’): The mind of secret adornment [the tenth abode] is to thoroughly awaken to the knowledge of the root source of one’s own mind and to realize, as it truly is, the multiplicity of one’s own body/ies. This [abode] is none other than the oceanic assembly of the Womb Man _ d _ ala, the assembly

of the Diamond World Man _ d _ ala, and the Eighteen Assembly Man _ d _ ala of the Diamond Peak [[[Sūtra]]]. (2:307)4 And near the end of the same final chapter, he writes: The term “adornment” refers to the universal manifestation of all manner of

sacreddeportmentfromthesingleequalityofbody.Thereisnothingamongthese sacred deportments that is not a secret seal [that is, that does not express reality]. From the single equality of word manifests all sounds. There is nothing among these sounds that is not mantra. From the single equality of

mind manifests all of the sacred ones (honzon). There is nothing among these sacred ones that is not an expression [of their vows; sammaya]. Every single one of the distinct marks of these three activities [of body, speech and mind] are without limit and unfathomable. Therefore we speak of

“inexhaustible adornment.” (2:316) Here, we see Kūkai discussing ‘adornment’ as spiritual realization, of both body and mind. He equates this realization with the iconic depictions of the Two Man _ d _ ala frequently employed in Shingon ritual, the Womb World and the Diamond World Man _ d _

ala. This equivalence of the inner and outer, or mental and material, is telling: the painted icons are understood as representations of the goal of personal transformation, as visual depictions, for example, of the truth of the ‘multiplicity of one’s own body/ies.’ As such, they may not be props for actual visualization techniques, but they surely are aids for the work of envisioning.

Metaphors

I want to turn now to some reflections on how both the terms ‘adornment’ and ‘man _ d _ ala’ function as metaphors. I have been aided in my reflections on metaphorical language by the writings of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur.5 One way in which Ricoeur recommends thinking about metaphors is to consider them not as a form of substitution—that is, as if a sort of knowing is temporarily replaced with another knowing (a relationship becomes a swamp, the cold wind turns into knife)— but rather as forming a specific tension. Within a given sentence (and a metaphor can never function at the level of a single word, but it must happen in the context of a

4 Teihon Kōbōdaishi zenshū, Research Institute of Esoteric Buddhist Culture, Koyasan University, 1995. From this point,texts from this collection will be cited with their volume andpage number only. 5 ‘Word, Polysemy, Metaphor: Creativity in Language’ In A Ricoeur Reader, ed. by Mario J. Valdes, University of Toronto Press, 1991, 76–85.

sentence that is a proposition about something), a metaphor displays a kind of tension that we can understand as almost a self-contradiction, as a semantic discrepancy: it tries to make sense with nonsense (‘but Daddy, the cold wind isn’t really a knife, is it?’). It is a kind of visionary grasping of resemblance. According to Ricoeur, this discerning of similarity where we would normally not see it is, itself, the very fruit of metaphor. But the tension present in metaphor is one that allows the holding together of both sameness and difference. The wind both is not and is a

knife. Ricoeur stresses the simple fact that, if the two were to somehow become indistinguishable, the language would no longer function metaphorically. To say this is to note that the likeness disclosed through metaphor is somewhat paradoxical, because it correlates sameness and difference without simply mixing the two. They remain opposed yet connected, in a potent tension, a creative tension. This tension of likeness manages to become a matrix of emergent meaning, of new possible human ways of being in the world. Ricoeur applauds this flexible and fertile feature of our linguistic and cognitive capacities. I once came across a fine quote from Borges on the subject of ‘symbols’ that dovetails nicely with Ricoeur’s analysis of metaphors. In his review of Arthur Waley’s Monkey, Borges writes an introductory section on allegory, in which he states the following: We tend to believe that the interpretation exhausts the meaning of a symbol. There is nothing more false... Symbols, beyond their representative worth, have intrinsic worth... The lean and hungry wolf of the first canto of the Divine Comedy is not an emblem or a figure of

avarice: it is a wolf and it is also avarice, as in dreams. That plural nature is the property of all symbols.6 Is there a similarity between the double duty of dreams and of metaphors? With this ‘plural nature’—constituting a field from which new meaning can emerge—the theme of new possibilities expressed by metaphor should be ripe with potential for religious language. And this theme is also centrally anchored in an important

feature of Tantric Buddhist doctrine in all its forms. In the Indian and Tibetan traditions, this doctrine is indicated by the injunction to ‘avoid the sin of ordinariness.’ In these traditions, the practitioner is exhorted to be on guard against the conceiving of her own person as ordinary, as being just a teacher, just a student, and so on. Instead, one is encouraged to develop what is called ‘divine pride,’ which is a sense of confidence

not merely in one’s potentiality for supreme transformation, but, instead, a confidence that one is in actuality at the very moment an embodiment of the perfected wisdom and compassion that is a Buddha. The Tibetan tradition, in particular, maintains to this day healthy lineages of oral transmission in which the practitioner is taught to engage in detailed contemplative exercises that entail intricate visualizations of specific

features of the body, speech, and mind of a deity that one ‘imagines’ oneself to be in one’s practice. And in the Tibetan tradition, this visualization is, indeed, assisted by paintings of man _ d _ ala, the visual details of which are effective supports for the practice. The imaginative act of self-generation as a

6 Jorge Luiz Borges: Selected Non-fictions, ed. by Eliot Weinberger, Penguin Books (2000), 252.

deity is seen as counteracting, as an antidote to, our habitual ‘imagination’ of ourselves as, ‘David,’‘Joan,’‘a good student,’‘a lousy accountant,’ and so on. In other words, the visualizations are a direct assault on our tendency to rehearse, to attach to, to identify with a particular self-

image. In standard Buddhist psychology, such misplaced attachment is, of course, seen as the fundamental source of afflictions such as hatred and greed. Thus, in Tantric practice, one is trained to imagine oneself as something altogether different, something that entirely embodies the ideal

virtues espoused in the tradition. One is, furthermore, trained also not to attach to this visualized image, and this caution is ‘programmed’ into the visualization not only in terms of doctrinal reminders, but, for example, also by technical directions to begin one’s visualization by generating the image out of one’s imagining of the all-pervasive clear light that is the mind’s own cognition of the ultimate truth of emptiness, and to end the visualization by dissolving the image back into this clear light. It is commonly said that, post-meditation, one tends to gradually ‘return’ to attending to the apparent ordinary self who strives in practice to realize its extraordinary dimension. Note the tension here: the meditator is both the practitioner aiming for Buddhahood and is also the Buddha. This is a tensive relationship (‘but Daddy, you aren’t really the Buddha, are you?’).7 The Shingon tradition shares with the Tibetan tradition similar instructions regarding ‘divine pride.’ Kūkai’s language of being ‘adorned with the man _ d _ ala’ expresses this view, an example of which we saw earlier: The term “adornment” refers to the universal manifestation of all manner of sacred deportment from the single equality of body. There is nothing among these sacred deportments that is not a secret seal. Elsewhere, we find in

a text by Pu-kung (Amoghavajra), the teacher of Kūkai’s main Chinese teacher and an author and translator of numerous texts on Tantric practice: ‘To call oneself an ordinary being is the equivalent of slandering all the Buddhas of the three times. It is a severe offense against the Dharma.’8 The Shingon practices of Body, Speech, and Mind (mudrā, mantra, and man _ d _ ala), the Three Secrets/Mysteries/Intimacies, is often said to create a

sense of identity between the practitioner and the Buddha. Yet, I think ‘identity’ is not actually the best term, and that the relationship is actually more of a tensive one, as it is in metaphorical thinking. As Kūkai often writes, they are ‘two but not two.’ Or, in his Sokushin jōbutsu gi (The Meaning of Becoming a Buddha in This Body), regarding the relationship between sentient beings and Buddhas: ‘they are not the same and yet the

same, not different and yet different’ (3:28). I would like to quote here another passage of Kūkai’s, from a votive document he wrote on the occasion of the consecration of the ritual space on top of Mount Koya, where he founded a monastic community. Kūkai’s evocation of the significance of

7 On basic Tibetan tantric visualization methods, among numerous texts now available, see Lama Yeshe’s Introduction to Tantra, Wisdom Publications (1987) and the Dalai Lama’s Tantra in Tibet, Snow Lion Publications (1987). David L. McMahan’s Empty Vision: Metaphor and Visionary Imagery in

Mahāyāna Buddhism, Routledge Curzon (2002) also contains helpful analyses that overlap with my thinking here. 8 Togano Shogun, Shingon Dokuhon—kyōgihen, 13. Original in Taisho #1174, vol. 20: 713c28, Five Letter Dharani Verse 五字陀羅尼頌).

this event, which marked the founding of the first temple in Japan dedicated entirely to Shingon practice, waxes poetic: Mahāvairocana Buddha, the great compassionate one, enjoying for himself the taste of equality that is enlightenment, was saddened by the plight of the beings in the six realms of rebirth. And so it was that the thunder of his wisdom that is one with reality trembled throughout His dharma-realm palace and the secret man _ d

_ ala was thereby transmitted to our world. (Emphasis is mine.) Clearly, this is written in the language of myth. It speaks of the ‘origins’ or transmission of the esoteric teachings of the man _ d _ ala among human beings. It speaks metaphorically of the power of wisdom as thunder, of the

effect of this wisdom trembling through our world, and of the practices that share in this wisdom, that help beings to realize it, as themselves constituting a secret man _ d _ ala. This kind of poetic phrasing is very common in Kūkai’s writings, and in the Chinese Tantric texts he frequently

cites. The language of this tradition is deeply metaphorical, and I think this feature is woven deeply into the fabric of the practice, whether in body, speech, or mind. A good Tantric practitioner works on his or her metaphors.

Mandala as a Prop for the Metaphorical Work of Envisioning

To return, then, to our entry into this topic, we looked at Robert Sharf’s critique of the ‘truism’ that: ... the depictions of deities associated with [[[Wikipedia:East Asian|East Asian]] Shingon] Tantric practice—notably the often complex geometric arrays of divinities known as man _ d _ ala—function as aids for

visualization practices. We have noted that Sharf’s observations are a corrective based on careful readings of Shingon liturgical texts. I will add to this consideration that I think one source of what Sharf calls a misunderstanding among scholars might be the faulty assumption that the man _ d _

ala of Japanese Tantra must be used just as they are in Tibetan Tantra. If, as Sharf claims, this assumption is unwarranted as far as the details of actual visualization practice are concerned, then he has made an important contribution to our understanding by clarifying a weak and possibly

inchoate assumption. Nonetheless, as I have argued, these beautiful icons are still part of a practice of envisioning, if not of visualization. As the practitioner ‘sees’ the icon, she also learns to ‘see’ her world through this image. Thus, the icon must be understood to catalyze a

transformation of her sense of the ordinariness of her world and its horizons. The visual arts of the Shingon tradition, thereby, assist the emergence of this transformative vision, whereby the ‘secret man _ d _ ala is transmitted to our world.’ In light of this understanding, I think we

need to supplement Sharf’s comments regarding how misconceptions of ‘visualization practice’ are ‘enmeshed in an approach to the subject that privileges the “inner experience” of the practitioner over the performative and sacerdotal dimensions of the rite’ (153–54). With due respect for the

undeniable importance of studying what religious people do as much as what they write or think, in the presence of texts that eloquently exhort mental transformation (this being just one of the Three Secrets, or loci, of transformation),

I suggest that there is ample evidence that mandala, in both their material and metaphorical dimensions, are implicated in processes of ‘inner experiences’ of transformation in various ways in the Shingon tradition.

Further Reflections on Metaphor and Imagery

The poet and poetry critic Jane Hirshfield says of metaphors, images, and tropes that, ‘within a good image, outer and subjective worlds illumine one another, break bread together, converse.’9 There is also a way, says Hirshfield, that through the spoken or written word of poetry, ‘image summons the body, into a poem.’10 She adds that, metaphor, and the images in poetry that perform a similar function, are ‘no decorative addition, but a fundamental tool for the seeding of meaning: by a fertile, imaginative turning of outer image, we plow the ground of our lives.’11 I think Hirshfield offers here a marvelous metaphor for understanding how metaphors work.

A feature that strikes many readers of Tantric texts is the pervasiveness of metaphorical language. This verbal style is sometimes referred to as ‘twilight language,’ and is often described as a code. But regardless of how code-like this opaque terminology might be, I think it is also part of

an intentional project to help shift a practitioner’s perception of things from ordinary to extraordinary, from the appearance that all things of our experience possess an intrinsic identity (svabhāva) to knowing things as being empty of any enduring core and as, thus, fluid and open. Kūkai’s

metaphor ofshōgon (adornment), which refers to an enhanced perception, a shift in the way one understands one’s own body and mind, might also be thought of as a dawning of a new awareness. I will take the liberty of complicating matters by deriving from this metaphor of dawning (which is not

Kūkai’s but mine) its homonym ‘donning,’ and will playfully remark on how this punning reveals a stunning image. Can we not speak metaphorically of the ‘donning’ of a new awareness, like the donning of a beautiful raiment? I think that the term ‘adornment’ (shōgon) conveys this kind of meaning. I also think that Kūkai intends ‘adornment’ to include a corporeal dimension, and that this sense extends as well to his understanding of man _ d _ ala.12 Here are Kūkai’s words again from the Treatise on the Ten Mind Stages of the Secret Man _ d _ ala, in an extended gloss on a passage from the Kongochōkyō (Vajraśekhara-sūtra), which is among other things cited in order to clarify the meaning of the phrase ‘inexhaustible adornment.’ Kūkai

glosses in particular the phrase ‘secret adornment, flower adornment’ as follows: “Secret” refers to the Vajra Three Secrets. “Flower” means the

unfolding of the flower of enlightenment. “Adornment” means to possess all varieties of virtue. So [the phrase] says that the Buddha virtues as numerable as grains of sand, and

9 Jane Hirshfield, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, Harper Perennial. New York (1997), 84. 10 Ibid., 18. 11 Ibid., 84. 12 In a forthcoming book on Kūkai, I explore the somatic aspect of his understanding of man _ d _ ala.

the Three Secrets as numerable as particles of dust, are the adorned body and land [of enlightenment]. This is called man _ d _ ala. (2:318) Kūkai’s prose is indirectly exhorting the practitioner to don this man _ d _ ala, to become adorned by the power of this vision. And he employs a metaphor

intentionally as a key element in his discourse. I think one reason for this is that metaphors are themselves, in a sense, such donnings. They ‘cover’ one reality or phenomenon with the meaning of another reality or phenomenon. However, as I alluded to before in reference to Ricoeur’s

comments, the ‘cover’ is transparent, so that the thing ‘covered’ is still visible. For metaphors to be truly effective, the two must not merge into one; indeed, they cannot. The nature of metaphorical thinking is such that it operates always with a tension between two different things, whereby

one thing is ‘seen in light’ of the other, where both similarity and difference are preserved. Thus, the metaphor of shōgon, which itself curiously refers to the very process of working with metaphors, is, as Hirshfield says, ‘no decorative addition but, a fundamental tool for the seeding of

meaning.’ Her explanation that metaphors do not add anything extra, as would a decoration, is perfectly congruent with Ricoeur’s insight that neither do metaphors function as forms of substitution. They might adorn, but only by transforming the range of the possible. Hirshfield also writes that

‘[i]mages, metaphors, similes, and stories are sliding doors, places of opening through which subjective and objective may penetrate and become each other.’13 The two are not entirely two; reality and the wisdom realizing it are not completely distinct; self and Buddha are not two; and separate

bodies are not altogether separate because, as Kūkai writes in The Meaning of Becoming Buddha in This Body, ‘they all interpenetrate like reflections of light in a mirror.’

Conclusion

It is fitting to end with a quote from Kūkai’s introduction to the Ten Stages, one that addresses the importance of understanding what he calls ‘the

words and letters of the secret names.’ This phrase refers in particular to the true nature of mantra, but also, I think, more generally to the nature of metaphorical language: If people could just recognize the [actual nature of] words and letters of the secret names, they would profoundly

open the secret store of adornment. Then hell [would become] heavenly halls, Buddha-nature [would become] the icchantika [one incapable of attaining enlightenment], afflictions [would become] bodhi, and sam _ sāra [would become] nirvana. (2:6) With reference to the tension of preserving both

sameness and difference, I will add one more supplement to a comment of Sharf’s introduced earlier. In discussing briefly the metaphorical meaning of ‘adornment’ as imaginatively holding the view that the sanctuary is a Pure Land or Buddha Field, Sharf avers that such a holding is made extremely difficult by the pressing demands of the Shingon practitioner who, in the midst of complex liturgical processes, must ‘remain fully cognizant of his

immediate environs, like any good stage actor.’ Thus, he states that his analysis ‘stands in contrast to the phenomenological projection or “inner visualization” of an alternative universe.’ This may well be true with regard to the difficulty of engaging in a detailed and complex visualization

of the particulars, say, of a given material man _ d _ ala depiction while engaged in the thick work of liturgy. But what about the possibility that, instead of visualizing a man _ d _ ala, a practitioner could envision his practice as being the work of the Buddha? To do so while engaged in the

work seems not only possible, but is, moreover, in perfect accordance with the various doctrinal exhortations presented above. So the issue may not be one of either/or, that one can either perform a complex ritual or a complex visualization. Rather, it may be an issue of both/and. It appears that

the tension of both/and—a tension inherent in the structure of metaphorical thought, as well as in basic Tantric Buddhist doctrine— can be preserved so long as one acknowledges that the term man _ d _ ala designates not only a sacred material icon, but also a transformation of self and world to which one awakens as the fruit of sacred envisioning. Glossary

Kūkai 空海 Shingon 真言 Sanmitsu 三密 Shōgon 荘厳 Mandara 曼荼羅 Muryō shōgon 無量 荘厳 Himitsu mandara jūjūshinron 秘密曼荼羅十住心論 Sokushin jōbutsugi 即身成仏儀

References

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