Mongaku

Mongaku

Needless to say, Buddhism, like other religions, helps to extirpate evil and to bring good fortune. Throughout its history in three countries, there are records of answers to prayer and of benefits received. If Your Highness will first pay strict attention to your own conduct and then proceed to put your administration in order, then when you offer prayer, an answer will come just as surely as sound follows when a word is spoken. There will be no failure. In these days, however, all religious works and rituals sponsored by the great are merely for the eye and are only an expense to the country and a burden to the people. Buddha and the deities do not accept them at all. Those who pray should know that Buddha and the deities accept only virtue and faith; material treasures have no appeal for them. It is with this in mind that Your Highness, at the head of your warriors, should guard the Emperor and become the mainstay of the whole nation…. It would be possible for me, without going into detailed reasons and unmindful of Buddha and the deities, to reply favorably to Your Highness and offer up prayers. But that would mean wasting the land’s substance without benefiting anyone and only harming Your Highness. I myself would have to pay the penalty also. How can I permit Your Highness to carry out a project so injurious to yourself? I say again that the Goddess of Ise and Hachiman and the other deities will never consent to be indulgent because of material offerings, they extend their hands only to those whose heart is pure and whose conduct is proper. The Bodhisattva Hachiman said, according to the oracle, “Even if I should have to drink molten copper, I would not accept offerings from those whose hearts are tainted.” He said again, according to another oracle, “Day and night I stand guard over the land If the ruler is evil, he will be unpleasing to the Three Treasures and to all the Devas. Such a thing would be most lamentable, most deplorable.”

Mongaku (1139-1203) was a Japanese Buddhist monk. Early on in life he learned about the emptiness of human selfishness. Mongaku was a strident defender of Esoteric Shingon Buddhism – which believe that enlightenment was obtainable by all, not just by the select few – but required true piety, as testified by his berating of the Shogun (who were military defenders of the emperor – and de facto rulers of Japan). The Shingon system also placed a premium on training under the guidance of earthly mentors and spiritual models. As part of this training, initiates are blindfolded before tossing a flower upon the Womb Realm mandala; the location of the flower upon landing determines which Buddhist figure pictured in the mandala will become a spiritual model for the initiate.