Shingon Precepts: Lotuses from Mud

The rainstorm beating Mt. Koya had turned the trail to Shimbessho, the venue for the annual Precepts Ceremony, into a gushing stream of mud. A priest ahead of me splashed his way along the brook in toothed sandals called geta, while I found myself regretting my decision to come in sneakers, which were soaked. In spite of the rain, someone had taken the trouble to come and light a thick candle before a stone statue of Jizo, seated on a lotus. 

After a slippery climb, the cluster of dampened priests I was walking with came to the boundary of Shimbessho's precincts. The temple is one of the great training facilities on Mt Koya, known for its strictness. While Senshugaku-in, the most prestigious dojo on the mountain, is more or less in the center of the small town of Koya, Shimbessho is several hundred meters removed, tucked away in the forest. It feels like a world apart, and that's exactly the point. 

The dojo's boundaries are marked with stone tablets reading, "Forbidden: meat, alcohol, and weapons," and these rules are still strictly enforced. For priests in Shido Kegyo at Shimbessho, as my teacher had done, even setting a toe outside is grounds for immediate expulsion. He once told me the story of a classmate who, driven senseless by the rigorous monotony of kegyo, climbed out his window and down a tree just to go buy a can of soda at a vending machine in town. As the story goes, he was immediately discovered by a staff member who caught him because he "smelled like town."

It felt like a fitting venue to participate in Jukai, "Precept Reception," the ritual bestowal of the precepts of a Buddhist monk required of every neophyte aiming for Dembo Kanjo. Needless to say, after hearing my teacher's many stories of the rigors of training there, I was pretty nervous. And true to form, shortly after arriving at the temple's main gate, from the shut windows of the dojo floated the enraged voice of a teacher admonishing his students. 

But outside the walls of such training facilities, Japanese Buddhism is a bit of a free for all. Just a few months earlier I'd accompanied a pilgrim who'd just done the entire Henro by e-bike to Mt. Koya. While she was slotted to stay in Eko-in, the pioneer of inbound-oriented temple stays on the mountain, her driver and I had reservations at a modest guesthouse. After settling down we walked up the road a ways to a little izakaya, run by a delightful older woman, that served decent sushi and cold beer. We treated ourselves to a couple of pints to celebrate the end of a very long and demanding tour. Behind us, a couple of priests drank and laughed with their wives as their kids crawled between their legs under the table. 

In the rest of the Buddhist world, "monk" is synonymous with keepers of the precepts laid down by the Buddha 2500 years ago. The most important of these are that monks are not to kill, steal, have sex, lie, drink, watch dancing or other entertainment, adorn the body, eat after noon, touch money, or sit/sleep on luxurious places. Though the interpretation varies by country, in most there is a social system both within monasteries and in broader society that encourages monks to behave like monks. 

I'm sure Japan is looked at as a bit of an oddball by these countries. Not only are the vast majority of clerics (in Japanese soryo) married, surveys of temple parishioners regularly report that they find married priests more approachable and trustworthy than unmarried counterparts. Elder priests tell horror stories about being pressured into drinking with their seniors, exactly like salarymen in Japanese companies, and many Japanese priests still enjoy a drink. Very few Japanese priests are vegetarian, and as begging and busking are highly regulated activities, most priests shop at supermarkets like everyone else. Meat and fish are frequently on the menu.

Apart from periods of intensive training like the monks being shouted at in the dorms at Shimbessho, lifelong monasticism was largely a victim of Japan's rapid modernization in the 19th century. For those interested in a deep dive into this topic, I cannot highly enough recommend the book Neither Monk nor Layman by Richard Jaffe. For the entry-level nerds out there, the long and short of it is this:

For most of Japanese history, officially ordained monks were socially expected to keep the precepts. That being said, there were always many "unofficial monks" who often had a casual relationship to the precepts, and in the middle ages a number of thinkers considered the precepts too difficult to follow in their times. The Shugendo sect, too, accepted both monastic and lay practitioners, creating a significant class of non-celibate religious specialists. In other words, while there was a social expectation for monks to behave well, there was also a social tolerance for non-adherent priests, and these "floaters" served an important role in their communities. 

With the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century, though, the Japanese government began to model itself on Western ideas of social equality as part of its effort to modernize. As part of this project, monks came to be viewed as no different from anyone else in society. Whereas before the state considered the magical protection afforded by an active, somewhat autonomous Sangha valuable enough to enforce legal consequences for precept breakers, now men were primarily seen as subjects of the state with a responsibility to aid in modernization. They did this by marrying and making more Japanese citizens, and beefing up their diet (literally) in preparation for military expansion. 

Within decades of the repeal of laws governing the behavior of monks, clerics had become almost indistinguishable from their lay counterparts aside from their shaven heads. By the 20th century, priests were passing their temples on to their sons, and the ordained were conscripted into military service just like everyone else.

With that context, it might make a little more sense why someone like me, who never had any intention of practicing total celibacy as a Buddhist cleric, might now be waiting in front of the gate of Shimbessho to receive the monastic precepts. While the political and social forces redefined the Sangha from a legal point of view, the Shingon sect approached the changes by maintaining ritual continuity, including the formal receipt of precepts in the traditional way. On the other hand, what priests do outside of formal ritual and training settings is their own business. 

The Jukai ceremony was spectacular: almost 150 priests, half from outside Japan, received the precepts. On the first day, the ceremony was preceded by 300 prostrations, each performed while singing the names of the Buddhas of the past, present, and future. The main hall was absolutely packed, and the chorus of voices chanting out the names of the Buddhas was hypnotic. 

The crowded hall made for some moments of comedy; at one point my head got stuck under the robe of the priest in front of me. With the velcro-like cling of my stubbly scalp, we did a prostration looking like two guys in a horse costume. I'm afraid I also kicked the person behind me a few times with my long legs. After the prostrations, the assembled priests and preceptors were counted with sticks in a ritual as old as Buddhism itself, and then we repeated our refuge in the Three Treasures and assented to the Precepts. The ceremony was similar on the second and third days, minus the prostrations, and the content of the precepts was different.  

By the third day, everyone's voices had begun to mesh, and the hall vibrated with our prayers. I shed tears of gratitude for the chance to finally participate in such a ritual, passed down from the days of Kobo Daishi, with so many fellow practitioners. 

On the last day, the officiant of the service, called the Ho-in, a yearlong ritual post in which one serves as the successor to Kukai himself, gave a sermon on how we ought to approach the Precepts. The gist was similar to what I had heard from my teacher; though in our modern world adherence to the precepts is as difficult as it's ever been, and the role of priests has changed, the lifestyle recommended by the Buddha still represents an ideal mode of practice which it would be foolish to throw out entirely. Even for those of us who cannot keep the precepts, to study them and orient our lives to them in whatever way possible, is a vital part of Shingon practice.

He then told a well-traveled legend of two monks from the days when the precepts were still practiced strictly in Japan: 

Two monks were walking down the road and came to a ford in a stream, swollen from the previous day's rain. A young girl sat crying on their side of the bank. Moved by compassion, they asked her what was the matter. 'My mother crossed the river and injured herself, and doesn't have the strength to come get me and take me across!' she cried. Without a thought, one of the monks picked up the girl and took her safely across the ford. His companion followed, but offered no help, as it is forbidden for monks to touch women. Leaving the girl with her grateful mother, the two went on their way. After walking in uncomfortable silence, the companion burst out, 'You're a disgrace, calling yourself a follower of the Buddha and touching a woman! You're not fit to wear those robes!' The other monk turned to him and said, 'Funny, I put the girl down on the riverbank, and here you are still carrying her.'

I'm sure that opinions on this approach are mixed throughout the Buddhist world. I have mixed feelings about it too, and spent sleepless nights of my novitiate wondering whether I had an obligation to give everything up and live full-time by the precepts to which I'd assented. 

On the other hand, it's that flexibility and non-legalism that has defined my growth in Shingon. As the abbot of Chikurin-ji in Kochi puts it, "The Precepts are like the stone markers on the pilgrimage path. They mark our way and our progress and keep us from getting lost." It's exactly because of this gentle, gradual approach that I have been able to grow as a person since I began practicing Buddhism. For myself, a rigid legalistic approach would have set me up for failure, as it did when I was a young Catholic with a very black and white view of morality. 

Unfolding the certificate passed out to all participants at the end of the ceremony, I was surprised to find not a full list of the precepts we had taken, but an abbreviation: the Ten Good Precepts. 

Often considered a distillation of the Bodhisattva Precepts which fully capture their spirit, this list appears in pretty much every Shingon prayer book out there as part of the a standard chanting service. I'd taken them on my first pilgrimage to Mt. Koya years before my ordination (an experience open to anyone interested). They are: 

Not to kill

Not to steal

Not to have improper sexual relations 

Not to speak dishonestly 

Not to speak to flatter 

Not to speak abusively 

Not to speak to cause discord 

Not to harbor thoughts of greed

Not to harbor anger 

Not to harbor delusion

Only Buddhas are perfect in these Ten Good Precepts; they are statements of aspiration, guiding all of us, lay and ordained, toward happiness and helpfulness by means of our body, speech, and mind. Jukai, as one priest put it, is a ritual of "planting the seeds of the precepts" in our minds. Though vast expanses of time may pass before these seeds find conditions to sprout in, with steady effort and faith, the seeds of these precepts bloom, in the mud of existence, into the lotus of awakening. I'm so grateful to have had this opportunity to plant those seeds.