During an inspection of a hotel room in Sapporo last month, I was checking to see whether the TV received CNN when a report came on about Paris Hilton and her prison blues."Who cares!" I muttered, to the amusement of the woman showing me the room. Many of the celebrities in the news today will fade from the public's memory after their 15 minutes of fame. For a bit of perspective, try imagining anyone in the news today still popular after the passage of more than 1,000 years.
Kobo Daishi at Ishiteji Temple on Shikoku, one of the 88 temples in the pilgrimages Kukai, known posthumously as Kobo Daishi, lived more than 1,170 years ago, yet he still enjoys rock star status among his followers in Japan. One of the most beloved figures in Japanese Buddhism, Kobo Daishi was a charismatic priest who captured the hearts of the common people during his lifetime. His popularity has never waned, and today there are so many myths associated with his legendary life, it's hard to distinguish fact from fiction. What we do know is that he was born in Shikoku on July 27, 774, to a wealthy, local aristocratic family. I assume he displayed a remarkable genius at an early age and was a precocious child (which in this country might have earned him a diagnosis of being ADHD), for at age 14 he was shipped off to the capital to study under his uncle, who also served as a tutor to the Crown Prince. At 17 he entered the university, well on the path toward an illustrious career as an official. But then he did something college kids sometimes do: he rebelled. After meeting a Buddhist priest, he knew he wanted to change course and learn everything about Buddhism that he could. Years later he wrote about this life-changing event: "I climbed Mount Otaki and meditated at Cape Muroto. The valleys reverberated with the echo of my voice, and the Bright Star [Venus] appeared in the sky. From that moment I despised the fame and wealth of the court and the city. I thought only about spending my life in the midst of the precipices and thickets of the mountains."
Kobo Daishi at Ishiteji Temple on Shikoku, one of the 88 temples in the pilgrimages For the next decade, Kobo Daishi became a wandering ascetic and roamed over the countryside, presumably visiting the remote mountain top of Mt. Koya and traveling throughout his home island of Shikoku. Then, in 804 he traveled to China, where he spent the next two years in the T'ang capital, Chang'an (present day Xi'an), one of the world's most important cities of the time. Already fluent in Chinese, he proceeded to learn Sanskrit and then studied under one of Chinese most important Buddhist teachers. Expecting to spend 20 years studying Buddhism in China, Kobo Daishi instead learned the complex rituals in a few months (his teacher is said to have remarked that teaching Kukai was like "pouring water from one vase into another"). In 806 Kobo Daishi returned to Japan, where he eventually won the confidence of the Emperor, was entrusted with the task of praying for peace for the nation, and founded Mt. Koya as a place to establish his Shingon sect of Buddhism (more on Mt. Koya, as well as the Shikoku pilgrimage in his honor, in subsequent blogs). Today, Kobo Daishi is regarded as one of the most important figures in Japanese history and is revered as a philosopher, poet, educational reformer, and calligrapher. There are many myths related to the years he traveled the country to spread his teachings. One of the most popular is the story of a village suffering from a drought. A wandering priest asked a villager for a cup of water, and when his thirst was quenched, the priest struck the ground with his stick, producing water gushing from a spring. The priest, of course, was Kukai. Probably the most remarkable myth concerns his death on Mt. Koya on April 23, 835. His followers believe he is not dead but rather in a deep state of meditation. According to popular belief, priests opening his mausoleum decades after his death found his body still warm. Even those making the pilgrimage on Shikoku, following in the supposed footsteps of Kobo Daishi, believe he is walking with them. I can't think of anyone from our generation who is so revered, even after death. Ok, maybe Elvis.
