A Study into the Thought of Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban

Download or read book A Study into the Thought of Kōgyō Daishi Kakuban written by Henny van der Veere and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-07-26 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kakuban (1095-1144) is the second most important figure in the history of the Shingon sect of Esoteric Buddhism, but there are few studies about him in Western languages. This work contains a biography and a discussion of Kakuban's works, focusing on his doctrines. Although it is widely believed that Kakuban incorporated Amidist ideas and practices into Shingon, this study shows that Kakuban's aim was to explain the practices of other schools from an orthodox Shingon point of view. The translations of Kakuban's major works, the Amida hishaku and the Gorin kuji myô himitsushaku, clearly support this idea.