Meditation for Dummies: The Fukan Zazengi

I’ve been sitting on this post for a little bit, but I wanted to cover some meditation basics. The truth is, I kind of suck at meditation. I have been trying it off and on since I was 16, but I have never been particularly dedicated toward it, and apart from a few random experiences in Zen temples over the years, I never really had much experience. I spent much of 2025 focusing more on meditation more than before, but the holiday chaos and parenting have taken their toll, and I meditate probably 5-10 minutes a week, if lucky.

That said, I appreciate the virtues of meditation more than I did before and that’s how I stumbled upon an old Soto-Zen text written by Dogen in 1227 called the Fukan Zazengi (普勧坐禅儀), or the “Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen”.

I like to think of it as a “Meditation for Dummies” book.

The official translation from the Soto Zen International homepage is quite good. As a Buddhist text, it is pretty short, short enough to read in maybe 10 minutes, but a nice thing to reflect on from time to time as you build experience. If you are curious, I highly recommend skimming through it. Most of the Fukan Zazengi covers common-sense, practical matters: i.e. best practices for meditation.

But it also offers some encouragement, too:

This being the case, intelligence or lack of it is not an issue; make no distinction between the dull and the sharp-witted. If you concentrate your effort single-mindedly, that in itself is wholeheartedly engaging the way.

And also Dogen reminds us that there’s not necessarily one right way to do it:

In general, in our world and others, in both India and China, all equally hold the buddha-seal….Although they say that there are ten thousand distinctions and a thousand variations, they just wholeheartedly engage the way in zazen.

In short, Dogen is saying in the Fukan Zazengi there’s no need to dance around the edges, just try it, make mistakes, grow from it, etc.

Good advice, I think.

Namu Shakamuni Butsu

The Pain of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a tough thing. The desire to sink into happier memories of the past, especially in the face of difficult times, is strong. My kids tease me about it as I get older because I sometimes sound like an old man grumbling about “the good ol’ days”. And they are right to do so.

Nostalgia, if left unchecked, can be like a “mental opium”: pleasant, addicting, but it separates us from reality.

Once gone, the face of youth vanishes irrevocably. We cannot bring back the past. When suddenly confronted with impermanence, we cannot bring back the past.

The Shushōgi, chapter one, fascicle three

This longing for the past only seems to get worse with age. Some of us even play old video games from 25 years ago. 😌

By itself, this really isn’t bad thing: after all, the more experiences you accumulate, the more you have to look back upon. Also, appreciating old things isn’t bad either (“so old it’s new!”). But if you indulge in nostalgia, you long for the past more and more, at the expense of the present and the future. Further, it tends to gloss over the past in a way that makes it look rosy. I loved playing Advanced Dungeons and Dragons as a teen, but when I look at the material now, it’s a messy, unpolished game with some crazy loopholes, and dated stereotypes. It was a great game for its time, but better games exist now.

I personally don’t really miss my high school days very much, but I do enjoy reflecting back upon college sometimes. Sometimes I cringe at my young 20’s self, but that’s OK too. Looking back on the past, we can grow from it.

But I guess what I am saying is that the best years of your life aren’t always in the past. In fact, there’s much you can do here and now: new things to learn, new things to discover, new futures to build. If Star Trek teaches us one thing, is that the future can be bright.

So, while it’s nice for me to go back and play classic Castlevania from time to time, there are also new games out there, and new experiences just waiting over the horizon.

Then again, an even better thing you can do is to take time to appreciate this moment. What you do here and now, what you think and what you feel towards others now is probably the most important. It will not come again, but its effects will continue to ripple into the future. Plant good seeds now, and you’ll have plenty of good fruit in the future…

Parting

Enough, Ananda! Do not grieve, do not lament! For have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change, separation, and severance? Of that which is born, come into being, compounded, and subject to decay, how can one say: ‘May it not come to dissolution!’? There can be no such state of things.

https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.16.1-6.vaji.html

Many eons ago, in the summer of 2001, when Destiny’s Child was going strong with “Survivor”, and Daft Punk released their album Discovery, I was in Hanoi, Vietnam studying abroad with the intent of going into graduate school later. Needless to say, I crashed and never went into grad school.

But I do remember spending a lot of time in dial-up Internet cafes, whose computers all had the same background poster for the game Final Fantasy X.

I had been playing Final Fantasy games all the way back to the original. As a kid I was play-testing games for Nintendo of America (they recruited local kids on a voluntary basis then) and got to play the original Final Fantasy before other kids in the US did. I got the game later for my birthday, and always loved Final Fantasy since. Final Fantasy X just looked so cool, and it was exciting to see what the tenth title would have in store.

However, because I was a broke college student in a poor, communist country, I couldn’t play FFX. When I got back to the US, I was now a broke adult who quit grad school and needed a job. Then two weeks later, 9/11 happened, so the economy only got worse. It took years to climb out of that mess before getting married, and raising a family.

All this is to say, I never got to play FFX until I found the HD Remaster recently.

Warning: this post has major spoilers.

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I struggled initially with the game controls and didn’t really understand the plot or the Sphere Grid system until about halfway in when it all started click into place. The story of crashing Yuna’s unhappy wedding, and the budding romance between lead characters Tidus and Yuna was really sweet. Then you get to this scene…

At this point, I was bawling my eyes out. It was really beautiful. It made me think a lot about my wife and I when we first met. We had our own romantic moment like FFX, albeit it was a snowy night for us Nevertheless, this brought back a lot of warm memories. It’s a wonderful feeling to be young and truly fall in love for the first time. I am also happy I can still share my life with that same person even almost 30 years later, raise a family, travel together, and so on.

But as I get older there’s also a nagging thought in the back of my head that it won’t last forever. My wife and I have had conversations about this too. Sooner or later, one of us will go. The thought of being in a world without my wife is a very unpleasant one, but the thought of not being able to protect her anymore is equally unpleasant.

And yet, one of these eventualities will occur someday.

… and is what the Buddha is warning his attendant Ananda about: separation is inevitable. It’s just how things work. It’s not that there aren’t pleasant things in life, and falling in love very high on that list, it’s just that it can’t last forever and parting will occur sooner or later.

Watching my kids grow up and leave the nest has also been bittersweet. I cherish the memories of playing Legos with my firstborn daughter, but that little girl no longer exists, and the adult is now living in another country. My son is approaching adulthood too. I miss the “Pokemon battles” we would act out together when he was a little boy, but that boy is now an awkward teenager, and before I know it, he will be gone too. When he marries someday, I can imagine my wife bawling her eyes out.

So, the Buddha might sound like a downer at first, but he’s also pointing what is plainly obvious too: for every pleasant moment in life, it carries a sad burden too. He asks us to view the world with both eyes open. We cannot simply shut ourselves in from the world; we have to live it fully, but also fully aware of what it entails.

We have to see it through to the end.

Namu Shakamuni Butsu

P.S. Final Fantasy X truly is an amazing game and a beautiful story. 10/10 recommend. As of writing I haven’t quite finish the game yet, but I have briefly seen some spoilers and kind of dreading what comes next.

Building Vocabulary At Scale

Imagine if you will a kids martial arts school. The kids (including my son) are on the floor practicing, while the parents are sitting and watching. A pair of moms gossip, while bored dads check their phones constantly.

I, on the other hand, have two books open and cramming vocabulary (photo above). This has been my life for the past five or six months.

Why? Because I am going to take the JLPT certification exam this year?

“Again?!” you might be thinking. “Didn’t you bomb the last exam?”

Well, yes. Yes I did. 😅

I spent a lot of time reflecting why I failed so badly, and the basic problem is vocabulary. I just don’t know enough.

I can read Japanese, and often do, but I rely on dictionaries too much, which slows things down, and makes it hard to just enjoy a book. It’s also disruptive to comprehending the sentence.

The problem is is that a language, any language, has tens of thousands of words. A native speaker intuitively knows most of them, but a foreigner has to catch up and learn them too. They’ll never quite know as much as a native speaker, but knowing a lot of words helps reach a “critical mass” where you can function in that language and learn the rest later.

But how many words are needed for critical mass?

A very rough guess is maybe 10,000 words, enough to be a functional adult living and working in that society. Maybe 20,000? I am not sure. Many of these words are grade-school level vocabulary, btw. You might be surprised by how much a child knows by the fifth grade.

The point is is that if you want to get good at a language you have to invest a lot of time and effort to building your vocabulary. It’s not impossible but it’s both a long-term and large scale effort.

Flash cards are a tried-and-true method, and Anki SRS is a great way to make flash cards. But making good flash cards that are helpful and not a burden is important too.

Previously, I made my flash cards too long, too complicated. I had both “recall” (English to Japanese) and “recognition” (Japanese to English) fields in the same cards, and the sentences were long and took time to read.

This is OK when learning tens of words, but thousands of flash cards like this is really clunky; and review takes forever. As a working parent with little free time, that’s not going to be sustainable.

So, starting in late 2025, I started making smaller, simpler flash cards. For starters, I want to at least recognize (Japanese to English) a word in a sentence, so I stopped adding recall fields. Also, I use very short, simple example sentences that I pull from my textbook and my kids’ dictionaries. If the sentence is too long, I pare it down to the essential part.

This is an example Cloze-format card I made:

The word I care about is highlighted in bold font, and the English answer, “view”, is below (the Cloze field).

In practice it looks like this :

and the answer:

The goal is to make flash cards that you can flip through quickly and easily, but also unambiguous (no mind games), so you can review many cards in one session without getting tired.

If the card is too vague, or too complex, it becomes exhausting to review and you get frustrated.

Also, it really helps to learn a few words a day, not cram many at once. This means less stress, but also better retention in the long-run.

I have also found the Shin Kanzen Master vocabulary books, like this one, pretty helpful for providing a level-appropriate list of words to learn; and a good foundation for making flash cards.

So, is it working? I started this sometime late last year and I have noticed that many of my books are easier to read than before. I can read whole pages without needing a dictionary. And yet, there are times when I still have to use a dictionary if the page has unfamiliar vocabulary.

So, I am happy that I have made progress, but also I have a long ways to go.

And the JLPT exam is only months away….

Love and Death

“From the shadow of death you can no longer save Lúthien, for by her love she is now subject to it.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, “Lay of Lúthien“

I have been enjoying J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic story, The Silmarillion lately, and I’ve been thinking about this quote, taken from the tale of Beren and Luthien. The Tale of Beren and Luthien is one of the major epic stories within The Silmarillion, and there’s a lot of themes and meanings to it. Far more than I can cover.

The Tale of Beren of Luthien, is a wonderful tale of hope against the darkness, and their sincere love for one another. But there is a tragic element to it all too.

In the quote above, the divine hound, Huan, warns Beren that there is no saving Luthien any more for she has been ensnared by love, and despite her immortal Elf status, she will die from it.

Cover image for 2017 book Beren and Luthien

This is not unlike the teachings of the Buddha,1 wherein one’s love and devotion leads to the same clinging that also propels our eventual demise and death. This isn’t to say that love is bad, far from it. But like all such wonderful things, it is bittersweet, entails a heavy cost, and sooner or later the bill comes due.

Or, more succinctly:

Rushing up but then too far, they miss the point; Only causing ever newer bonds to grow. So obsessed are some by what is seen and heard, They fly just like these moths — straight into the flames.

Ud 6.9, the Adhipataka Sutta, translation by Andrew Olendzki

Back to The Silmarillion, the saga centers around three magnificent jewels, the Silmarils. Before they were crafted, the Elves lived in peace both in Middle-Earth, and in West, and there was a long period without any conflict. But with the crafting of the Silmarils, the dark lord Morgoth stole them, and the Noldor elves swore revenge, even killing other elves who got in their way. Thus, the Noldor were cursed. Their craving for Silmarils would lead them again and again to commit evil deeds in their quest for revenge and greed, despite their own semi-divine and noble heritage.

(For a silly Internet meme, surprisingly accurate…)

Their efforts came to naught, as Morgoth’s power only grew, and they were very nearly destroyed. Other Elves who sought the Silmarils, such as Thingol king of the Teleri Elves, similarly coveted the Silmarils and this greed ultimately destroyed him too.

Thus when we hold something dear, we risk further suffering.

Better to just let it go.

P.S. As an adult, The Silmarillion is way better than I remember. It’s not an easy read, but it’s really a fantastic book. Also, it’s like ultimate heavy metal epic tale. 🔥🎸

P.P.S. Happy Valentine’s Day!! 😅

1 Professor Tolkien was of course Catholic, not Buddhist, but I like to think the Dharma is everywhere, and people with a good heart see it and teach it, even if they don’t know it.

Adventures in Siddham Script on the Interwebs

If you were wondering where I’ve been lately, my free time has been used up on a small side project that became an interesting challenge.

A couple years ago, I wrote this blog post about the Thirteen Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, including the mantras recited for funerary practices for the deceased in Japan. At the time, I posted the Japanese version of the mantras, which is based on Sanskrit, but not quite pronounced the same way. It’s like the way English speakers frequently mispronounce Latin because it’s been filtered through centuries of sound changes, history, etc.

But I digress.

I always regretted I wrote that page without including the Siddham-script version of the mantras though. But back then, I didn’t know enough Siddham to do that, and there’s not enough information online to find examples. A few years ago I picked up a book in Japanese about the Siddham script.

The Siddham script of Sanskrit is frequently used in Japanese-Buddhism, especially the esoteric traditions (Shingon and Tendai), even though it has long since been replaced in mother India. Thus, it is like a snapshot in time in the Buddhist tradition: a fascinating example of the fusion of Indian culture with Japanese Buddhism filtered through the Silk Road and Chinese history.

Here is a page from my pilgrimage book I think from Sanjusangendo in 2023:

In the center, in red is the syllable hrīḥ: 𑖮𑖿𑖨𑖱𑖾

This single letter 𑖮𑖿𑖨𑖱𑖾 actually comprises of five parts:1

  1. The Siddham-Sanskrit letter “ha” as its base.
  2. A “virama” to change “ha” to just “h” (drop the implicit “a” sound).
  3. The Siddham letter “ra”.
  4. Change the vowel from default “a” to “ī” (long “I” sound), and finally
  5. A breathy ending sound called an “anusvara”. In Siddham this is the double-dots on the right hand side. Sanskrit nouns often have this sound.

The book focuses on Siddham calligraphy for the esoteric-Buddhist traditions, and teaches you how to write it with brush and ink (i.e. Japanese calligraphy). Writing with ink and brush is one thing, but typing Siddham on a blog (like I was trying to do in the article above) online is actually quite difficult. Why? There is no native keyboard for Siddham. So, instead, you have to use Unicode blocks. For the example letter above, you need five separate Unicode blocks to make this work:

  1. The base letter “ha” : 𑖣
  2. A “virama” to change “ha” to just “h” : 𑖿
  3. The Siddham letter “ra” : 𑖨
  4. Add the vowel “ī” (long “I” sound) : 𑖱
  5. A breathy ending sound called an “anusvara” : 𑖾

If you edit the HTML code directly, put these five code blocks in this order, you will get 𑖮𑖿𑖨𑖱𑖾.

Now, try to do that for a lengthy mantra such as this one for the Medicine Buddha: 𑖄𑖼 𑖮𑖲𑖨𑖲𑖮𑖲𑖨𑖲𑖓 𑖜𑖿𑖚𑖯𑖩𑖰 𑖦𑖯𑖝𑖒𑖿𑖐𑖰 𑖭𑖿𑖪𑖯𑖮𑖯𑗃 or Oṃ huru huru caṇḍāli mātaṅgi svāhā. It took about 30 minutes to type all this out, based on the description in the book, and me carefully deconstructing each letter to figure what the Unicode code blocks were needed.

But, at last, I updated the Thirteen Buddhas blog post and added the missing Siddham-script mantras.

It was a pain in the neck, but I am happy to finally understand the process, and I learned a lot about Siddham script in the process.

So, that’s what I spent my free time this week doing.

P.S. I also updated the Mantra of Light post similarly.

P.P.S. Title is a joke based on the 1980’s movie Adventures in Babysitting.

“I am old, Gandalf. I don’t look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts….

J.R.R. Tolkien, Fellowship of the Rings

1 This is true with many other Indian-language scripts even to present day: they are “abugida” scripts where the vowel is implied, but then modified for certain vowels.

World Weariness

There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west and my spirit is crying for leaving.

Led Zeppelin, “Stairway to Heaven”

There comes a day for all of us when we world weighs really heavily on our hearts. We become weary, everything feels grey, or pointless.

…and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad. ‘I pass the test’, she said. ‘I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel’.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

In my opinion, this melancholy is not something like clinical, medical depression. It is a pain that comes from seeing the cold, brutality of the world, the endless cycle of greed, violence, injustice, and ill-will, and the fleeting moments of joy that are soon gone. The shadow of life weighs down the heart, and it’s hard not to feel sad.

“The Shores of Valinor” by Ted Nasmith

This is why, I think, the Pure Land of Amida Buddha is such a vital part of the Buddhist tradition. Regardless of how you interpret it, the Pure Land represents something entirely different from the world we slog through: peace, goodwill, light, and so on. The Dharma of the Buddha is embodied in the many facets of the Pure Land:

“Moreover Shāriputra, in this country there are always rare and wonderful varicolored birds: white cranes, peacocks, parrots, and egrets, kalavinkas, and two-headed birds. In the six periods of the day and night the flocks of birds sing forth harmonious and elegant sounds; their clear and joyful sounds proclaim the five roots, the five powers, the seven bodhi shares, the eight sagely way shares, and dharmas such as these. When living beings of this land hear these sounds, they are altogether mindful of the Buddha, mindful of the Dharma, and mindful of the Sangha.

The Amitabha Sutra, translation by City of 10,000 Buddhas

As Shan-dao the 8th-century Chinese-Buddhist monk once wrote, the Pure Land and Amida Buddha call to us, and bring us away from the pains of this world. In the same way, the Parable of the Burning House in the Lotus Sutra shows Shakyamuni Buddha doing the same thing. The Buddhas have stepped out of the “burning house” into the cool safety of the forest, and call us to do the same.

How exactly one does this is up to the follower, but having a sense of direction, as embodied by the Pure Land that resides in the West is vital.

When the Elves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth became weary, they want went West across the sea. In the same way, the Buddha Dharma offers us a similar refuge if we choose to take it.

Namu Amida Butsu
Namu Shakamuni Butsu

The Future

T’POL: Neither of our species is what it was a million years ago, nor what it’ll become in the future. Life is change.

Star Trek: Enterprise, “Terra Prime” (s4:ep21)

One of my fondest memories in recent years was visiting the Museum of Natural History in Victoria, British Columbia, and watching the documentary about the geologic history of Antarctica.

There’s something strangely reassuring knowing that in the vast span of time, life will go on, as it adapts to changes on the ground one way or another. Of course, I won’t be alive to see it. Yet, knowing that life always finds a way, and that the problems of today will be ancient history in the future helps put things in perspective for me.

In the same way, it is also strangely reassuring to know that while we homo sapiens (humans) carry many instinctive throwbacks, and primitive behaviors, this is not always going to be the case. Some very distant future, far beyond myself and my descendants, there will be humans who will look and think differently. They will look at us as something curious.

I think this is also why so many of us are Star Trek fans too: that even a few centuries from now, society may be radically transformed in a way that replaces greed and profit for knowledge and exploration, peace replacing war, paranoia with openness and so on. Up until the 18th and 19th centuries, monarchies were just a default way of running a society. The “Divine Right of Kings” was just assumed by countless people, even if they hated it, but now seems backwards and antiquated. There are very few absolute monarchies now.

So, while our current society seems like something inevitable, it’s not. We can’t see the future, but the forces of history are already in motion and may surprise us someday (or maybe surprise our descendants) and people will organize societies that we can’t anticipate.

Time will tell, but as geologic history shows, nothing is static in the end.

I Finally Like Matcha

Matcha tea and biscuits for me

Ever since I was a college student in my twenties, I drank coffee heavily. In my youth, I drank a lot of Coca-Cola (now I very rarely drink it… too sweet), but when I met my future wife,1 she convinced me to try coffee and since we were living in sin near a Starbucks, I would go there every morning. They even knew me by name after a while.

But coffee is expensive. Espresso is fantastic, but costs money (especially now thanks to Climate Change), and making coffee at home takes time and effort, and money to purchase decent beans.

So, I have tried to cut back on coffee, but I can never sustain the reduction in caffeine for very long. Sooner or later, the demands of work made me drink again.

I tried to switch to tea, but I never quite caught on to the flavor. Green tea was always too bitter,2 and while I do like Oolong tea, it is hard on the stomach. In fact, for years I had terrible heart burn and acid reflux. Sometimes it was so bad I had to vomit.

It turns out my particular problem was never acidity in my drinks but gallstones, which nearly killed me two years ago when my pancreas had become severely infected by the stones.

But now that I have no gall bladder, my acid reflux totally stopped, and I’ve been gradually trying foods and drinks that I was previously afraid to try. Matcha is one of them.

My firstborn loves matcha, and drinks it constantly. She won’t drink coffee much, though Ireland does have some excellent coffee shops, but she does drink matcha all the time. She always encourages me to try, but for various reasons I hesitated. However, once again, I wanted to reduce my dependency on coffee, so my wife got me some basic matcha tea bags from Japanese brand Ito En,3 and I fell in love immediately.

I read a fascinating article recently about how green tea and matcha had different caffeine levels (matcha > green tea), but also matcha is chemically different than coffee, so the caffeine is absorbed differently. The gist is that you get a smoother caffeine buzz than coffee, and other chemicals in matcha tend to promote calm and relaxation. I can see why Eisai, founder of Rinzai Zen, (reputedly) brought green tea to Japan in the first place.4

That said, I still love my morning coffee. But instead of drinking 2-4 cups a day, I started drinking matcha instead after one cup of coffee. I found the transition pretty easy after the first day or two. Plus, I discovered that matcha pairs very nicely with McVittie’s biscuits from England. which my daughter had brought back from Dublin on holiday.

Anyhow, if you haven’t tried matcha, definitely try it.

1 Married as of 22 years last month.

2 A long time ago, I studied abroad in Hanoi, Vietnam, and I remember that the green tea was so strong and bitter I couldn’t drink it. Even at my in-laws house in Japan, it was often too strong (though not Vietnam strong). My taste buds have adapted over time, but as a Westerner, I have my limits.

3 I won’t buy from Amazon, so we either buy locally in grocery stores, or online from Ito En directly.

4 Matcha as “shade-grown tea” didn’t emerge until centuries later. Green tea was imported in the more traditional form, which has less caffeine, but probably was the first source of caffeine to exist in Japan at that time.

The Goma Fire Ritual

My family and I visit a certain Shingon-sect Buddhist temple in the area for New Years tradition, and also for Setsubun rituals (namely mamemaki bean-throwing, plus good luck). Neither my wife nor I follow the Shingon sect, but Japanese-buddhist temples for the Japanese community (not Westerners) are rare, so we are glad to visit despite the lengthy drive.

Shingon Buddhism, one of two “esoteric” (mikkyō, 密教) Buddhist traditions in Japan,1 relies on a complex array of ceremonies, rituals, symbolism, and mantra chants that help awaken one’s Buddha-nature not through words, but through a kind of non-verbal impact. This requires a trained teacher to guide one through it, hence it’s called “esoteric” Buddhism (a.k.a. Vajrayana Buddhism). Years ago, I attended a “moon meditation” sitting once where each one of us sat and meditated before a hanging scroll showing a full moon. It was an interesting experience.

Anyhow, one ceremony that’s very common in Shingon is called the Goma-taki (護摩炊き) ritual, or “fire ceremony”. This is often called Goma in English. This is a video provided by Koyasan Temple in Japan which shows a complete ceremony: a priest creates a pyre within a sacred space, often before a statue of Fudo-myo-o (不動明王). Throughout the ceremony, the priest recites certain chants and uses certain hand-gestures. The fire is thought to purify one’s mental defilements, burn away past karma too, and also certain sticks are added to the fire with people’s aspirations and wishes written on them.

At our temple here locally, the priest conducts the Goma ritual as well, and people receive blessings from the ceremony one by one, and we also receive small o-fuda talisman that we place next to our Buddhist altar at home for protection. These are larger than omamori charms, made of wood or cardboard, and usually enshrined, not carried on your person.

The origins of the Goma-taki ritual are taken from Indian religious practices of the past, but gradually underwent “Buddhification” (absorbing practices, and making them Buddhist) and this is why, I believe, that esoteric Buddhism arose in later generations of Buddhism in India.2 The deities portrayed in esoteric Buddhism also have origins in India, but transformed as they were brought through China to Japan.

Goma-taki rituals are frequently held for the public in larger Japanese temples, so you can easily drop and just observe, but be aware they can take up to an hour or more. But it is a pretty interesting experience and well worth observing.

Namu Daishi Henjo Kongo
(Praise to the Great Teacher Vairocana Vajra, a.k.a. Kukai / Kobo Daishi)3

1 the other is Tendai Buddhism, which calls it taimitsu (台密), not mikkyo. What are the differences? Not sure. Both lineages come from the same Chinese-Buddhist tradition of the time, but beyond that, no idea.

2 Seen from one perspective, the earliest texts and traditions in Buddhism did not feature any esoteric practices and rituals, so if you’re looking for “pristine” Buddhism then esoteric practices don’t fit this. From another point of view, Buddhism continued to innovate across generations, first Mahayana Buddhism, then esoteric practices, so in that light esoteric Buddhism solves problems of practice and teaching that earlier Buddhism struggled with. I don’t know which viewpoint is the right one, personally. I am a big proponent of easy, accessible Buddhist teachings and practices (hence the nembutsu, precepts, etc), and esoteric Buddhism doesn’t make this easy. And yet, it is surprisingly popular in Japan (2nd only to Pure Land Buddhism), so maybe there’s something there that I’ve failed to notice all this time? 🤷🏼‍♂️

3 This is often recited in Shingon tradition the way namu amida butsu is recited in Pure Land traditions in Japan.