SEEING CHEN-YEN BUDDHISMimplication, Chen-yen is recognized as a Chinese creation, a recognition which
is studiously ignored in most scholarship to this day. The convenient solution to
this problem is the implied demise both of Hui-kuo and, not long after him, of
the tradition in China.
On careful examination, one finds that the account is historically inaccurate
and dubious in several ways. First, Hui-kuo was neither the only successor to
Amoghavajra nor the first to receive initiation into the techniques of both texts.
Indeed, it is now known that Subhakarasirp.ha, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra
were promulgating the teachings both of the Mahiivairocana Siitra (MVS) and of
the Sarvatathiigatatattvasaf!lgraha (STTS).^5 Second, Amoghavajra's last will
lists six fully initiated disciples, Hui-kuo among them. But it was Hui-lang who
succeeded Amoghavajra as patriarch of the school, and he was recognized as
such by the emperor.^6 Third, Kukai's own account of his departure from Hui-
kuo tells us of I-ming, the disciple who would carry on the teachings in China.^7
Fourth, while Kukai was a brilliant young man, it is doubtful that he fully mas-
tered the complex Vajrayana teachings in six months. He certainly received the
initiations, but these are not tantamount to mastery. Kukai had studied the
Vajrayana to some extent before his trip to China. He received the initiations,
collected texts, and on his return he synthesized his own style of Japanese
Vajrayana over a period of the next twenty years.^8
Until quite recently what little work had been done on Chen-yen had been
influenced by Shingon tradition, which led to a passive acceptance of the
Shingon account, an account which elevates the uniqueness of Kukai and
focuses on him a special transmission, pure of taint and existing only long
enough on Chinese soil for the fortuitous transmission to Japan.^9 By this
account, Chen-yen could not exist before Hui-kuo or after him. This view is fun-
damental to some of the best scholarship on Chen-yen.^10 Chen-yen has thus been
portrayed as an appendage to the orthodox foundation of Shingon lineages. This
orthodox vision hinders us from seeing the important, influential, and unique
Vajrayana tradition which existed in China before the time of Kukai, continued
to develop after his departure, and which, to some extent, still exists today.
This narrow Shingon-centered view has recently been challenged by a
growing recognition of Shingon as a form of Vajrayana Buddhism and by overt
exploration by Japanese and Western scholars of the similarities between the
Indo-Tibetan Vajrayana traditions and those of China and Japan.^11 The Indian
link which was necessary for Shingon legitimacy, yet defiling in light of the
sexual imagery of the Indo-Tibetan Annutarayoga tantras, has at last been fully
acknowledged.^12 While this is encouraging, some of these studies now insist on
understanding Shingon in the light of the fourfold classification of tantras
employed in later Indo-Tibetan systems, in effect anachronistically replacing
Shingon's set of orthodox prescriptions with those of the TibetansY Further, as I
discuss below, most current interpretations of the Vajrayana with their lopsided
understanding of the path to enlightenment do little to help us understand its
forms and importance in China.