. zen and esoteric buddhism 931
just know that Zen temples promise donors the same kinds of worldly
benefits as Tendai and Shingon temples.^11
In some cases esoteric rituals have been imported into Japanese
Zen. Eigenji (in Saitama prefecture) offers one remarkable
example. Affiliated with the Sōtō Zen school, Eigenji also hosts one
of the most popular homa (goma ) fire invocation rituals in the
Kantō region (Payne and Orzech, “Homa,” in this vol.). The homa rit-
ual is performed exactly as it would be at a Tendai or Shingon temple,
except the celebrants are Zen priests. They present the fire offerings
to the Immovable Radiant King (Acalanātha Vidyārāja, Fudō Myōō
) and chant his dhāran ̣ī (Fudō Myōō shingon
). Perhaps the most notable examples of this phenomenon is the
ambrosia gate (kanro mon ) ritual performed at every Sōtō Zen
temple. “Ambrosia gate” refers to the ritual of feeding hungry ghosts,
which plays an indispensable role in Japanese ancestor memorial rites
and in the mid-summer Ghost Festival (Urabon or Obon
; Ullambana).^12
Since the early fourteenth century Zen temples in Japan have fol-
lowed the format of the ambrosia gate ritual described in the Huan-
zhuan qinggui ( ZZ. 1905–1912, 2: 16.503a–506d), a
Chinese collection of pure rules compiled in 1317. This text describes a
complex ritual program that combines elements from many disparate
sources. It begins with the great compassion dhāraṇī (repeated three
times), followed by two of the key dhāraṇī for feeding hungry ghosts:
one for sanctifying the food and drink with the unimpeded radiance of
innumerable virtues (repeated seven times) and one for bestowing the
ambrosia Dharma taste (repeated seventeen times).^13 The remainder of
the ceremony lacks coherence, jumping from the five tathāgatas who
liberate ghosts, to the dhāraṇī (repeated three times) of the Bodhisat-
tva Ākāśagarbha (who has no obvious relationship to ghosts), to the
(^11) Regarding the importance of worldly benefits in Japan and the attitudes of lay-
people toward them, see Reader and Tanabe 1998.
(^12) For the Chinese background of this festival, see Teiser 1988b. The Buddhist-
Hybrid Sanskrit word “ullambana” might be a back formation based on a term coined
in China (Teiser 1988b, 21–24), but it appears so often in the secondary sources that
it seems useful to include it here.
(^13) See Wuliang weide zizai guangming jiachi yinshi tuoluoni
and Meng ganlufa mi tuoluoni , in Shi zhu egui
yinshi ji shuifa ( T. 1315.21:467a).