KŌBEN

Kōben (Myōe; 1173–1232), a Japanese Shingon-Kegon monk, embraced traditional Buddhist practices in reaction to reformers like HŌnen (1133–1212), who founded the Pure Land school based on the rejection of all practices except for the recitation of the name of AmitĀbha Buddha. Orphaned at the age of eight, Kōben was raised by his uncle, a Buddhist priest, and lived a life of study and practice in monasteries. In 1204 he was granted his own monastery, Kōzanji, in the outskirts of Kyoto, and he spent the rest of his life there and at his hometown in Wakayama prefecture, studying, meditating, and writing.

Trained primarily as a Shingon monk, Kōben revived ritual practices and devised new ones for the purpose of transforming doctrinal teachings into actual experience and vision. He popularized Esoteric Buddhist practices, such as the Mantra of Radiance (komyo shingon), which is still chanted widely today. He was also a prolific poet and kept a diary of his meditative dreams over a period of forty years. Using poetry and meditation, Kōben transfigured the world around him into the idealized realm of his dreams, and he even cut off his right ear to prove to himself that he was not attached to this world.

His active imagination, however, did not prevent him from exercising his critical faculties. Kōben wrote a lengthy, scathing attack to show that Hōnen's exclusive practice of recitation not only rejected traditional Buddhism but also misrepresented the Pure Land tradition. Kōben is therefore remembered primarily as a defender and reviver of traditional Buddhism and the practice of ritual and meditation.

See also:Japan; Pure Land Buddhism

Bibliography

Brock, Karen L. "My Reflection Should Be Your Keepsake: Myōe's Vision of the Kasuga Deity." In Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context, ed. Robert E. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Morrell, Robert E. Early Kamakura Buddhism: A Minority Report. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 1987.

Tanabe, George J., Jr. Myōe the Dreamkeeper: Fantasy and Knowledge in Early Kamakura Buddhism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.

George J. Tanabe, Jr.