84. THE FOURFOLD TRAINING IN JAPANESE
ESOTERIC BUDDHISM
Richard K. PayneContemporary priestly training in Shingon (Tōmitsu ) and the
esoteric portion of Tendai (Taimitsu ) is organized around four
main ritual performances, as indicated by the name, “the fourfold
training” (shido kegyō ). The term kegyō renders the San-
skrit prayoga, understood as “joining together” and “practice” (Todaro
1988, 7). The four are the jūhachidō , kongōkai , taizōkai
, and goma. This is the order in which they are practiced
in the Shingon tradition, while in the Tendai the middle two are per-
formed in the reverse order, with the jūhachidō being performed last
(Toki 1899, 2). The early form of the Shingon training sequence as
recorded in the Shingon denju sahō, attributed to Kūkai, included an
additional rite between the jūhachidō and the kongōkai. This was the
issonbō , a rite devoted to a single deity. Sometime around the
middle of the twelfth century, prior to the end of the Heian era in
1185, the issonbō was dropped from the training sequence, and the
current fourfold structure was mandated (Todaro 1988, 7–8).
The jūhachidō and kongōkai rituals evoke the deities of the Vajradhātu
Mandala, while the Taizōkai evokes the deities of the Garbhadhātu
Mandala. The two sets of deities are then brought together in non-dual
union in the goma. This idea of non-dual union of the two mandalic
systems in the ritual training is typical of Shingon conceptions built
around the semiotic pairing of the Vajra and Matrix realms. The con-
ceptual structure of the Taimitsu system is informed by the teaching
of the three truths (santai ) developed by Zhiyi: emptiness (kūtai
), provisional (ketai ), and middle (chūtai ) (Abé 1995,
Swanson 1989).
As an initiatory sequence, the practitioner is expected to have com-
pleted three initiations prior to beginning the training.^1 Kechien kanjō
, which is intended to establish a karmic connection between
(^1) In large part the description here is based on my own training at Yochi-in
temple (see http://www007.upp.so-net.ne.jp/yochiin/english/index.html ) on Kōyasan