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he will then be able to receive Mahavairocana’s holy bright light
shining into his heart. This is called “granting the spiritual force”.
By feeling the spiritual force in his heart, the devotee is receiving
and keeping it. This expresses the unity of the Buddha's great
compassion and the faith of the practitioner.
The second stage is the “Yoga meditation on the Three
Secrets”. The bestowal of the force is like the sunlight from the
Buddha's radiance shining on the water-like mind of the
practitioner, and the receiving of empowerment is the feeling of
the sunlight from the Buddha. When the practitioner has mastered
the first stage, the light from Mahavairocana and the one from the
practitioner will be totally fused together. (Yoga = union). This is
the end stage of successful practice.
The philosophy of Shingon pays much importance to the
Three Secrets. All things have body, speech and mind. We tend
to think that only human beings can talk. However, in this world,
other living beings can also talk. We may not have heard them
and we do not seek to hear them, but they are not voiceless. We
cannot hear them because we do not know how to listen to them.
Shingon's idea is that the body, speech and mind of all beings are
the Three Secrets of the universe.
Trees, plants, grass, flowers, and vegetation do
communicate. The rustling and the cracking sounds of leaves and
branches sometimes sound like people singing, debating or
shouting in anger. When we have a chance to sit quietly in a
deep forest and listen closely, the trees sound as though they are
speaking with each other, and soliciting in many ways. For the
poet and the spiritual person the ripple of mountain streams
sounds like a soft melody, complete with tones and images. For
us, sitting on the beach, the waves seem to uproar or bustle
noisily as they slap against the shore.