. the fourfold training in japanese esoteric buddhism 1027
Thirteenth and Fourteenth Weeks: Goma kegyō:
Repeat jūhachidō, kongōkai, and taizōkai, one in each of the three
daily training sessions.
Fifteenth Week: Goma shōgyō:
Practice of the goma rite itself.
During these hundred days of training, the practitioner is to continue
to attend the daily services of his training temple. There are two addi-
tional practices to be maintained at this time as well, a daily circuit
of the buildings of the garan ( saṃghārāma) and a visit to Oku
no in once every three days. The garan is the original core of
Kōyasan, being the location where the foundations of the mountain
complex were first established. It is the location of the kondō ,
daitō , and other historically important buildings, and continues
to serve as the symbolic and ritual center of Kōyasan (Nicoloff 2007).
Oku no in is perhaps the most famous cemetery in Japan, and includes
the mausoleum of Kōbō Daishi Kūkai , founder of the
Shingon tradition.^4
Completion of the one hundred days of training in the fourfold ritu-
als qualifies the practitioner for status as ajari ( ācārya). This
status is conferred in a ritual known as the denbō (ajari) kanjō
( ) (dharma transmission), or ajari i kanjō
(ācāryābhiṣeka).
The rituals of the fourfold training employ the metaphor of feast-
ing an honored guest as their fundamental organizing structure and
symbolism. While other religious traditions also practice making sac-
rifices or votive offerings of various kinds, the historical connections
for the Buddhist tantric rituals in this group lies in Vedic ritual prac-
tice. These practices were transformed in the late Vedic period (the
period of the Upaniṣads and the rise of the nāstika traditions, which
rejected the authority of the Vedas in favor of a lineage of teachers)
with increasingly internalized understandings (Samuel 2008), some-
times also referred to as “interiorization.” An explicit example of this
internalization of ritual is found in the interpretation of digestion as
an internal instantiation of the ritual fire. This creates a set of symbolic
(^4) See Tinsley “Kūkai and the Development of Shingon Buddhism,” in this
volume.