738 pamela d. winfield
It appears, therefore, that Kūkai may have been the first to see what
Yixing and Huiguo (who studied both strains) had right under their
noses. That is, he is reputed to be the first mikkyō master to synthesize
and organize the Womb and Diamond Worlds into a single coordi-
nated religio-aesthetic system.
In Japan (though not in China), Shingon doctrine continually
stresses that the Womb World’s principle of potential enlightenment
and the Diamond World’s wisdom of acquired, perfected enlighten-
ment are nondual and complementary. The epithet richi funi
(“principle and wisdom are nondual”) expresses this sentiment
well, as does the Dainichikyō-shō. This eighth-century com-
mentary on the Mahāvairocana sūtra by Yixing states that “All is of
one essence because it is the essence of the Buddha’s enlightenment”
(cited in Yamasaki 1988, 125). This unity of buddhahood exists, Yama-
saki explains, “because the truth of the form and mind of all living
beings is, from the beginning, in equality with the wisdom body of
Dainichi nyorai” (125). According to the common Japanese Shingon
understanding, the mirror-image iconographic coding of central bud-
dhas in the Womb and Diamond World Mandalas symbolizes the
form and mind of Dainichi, respectively, and thereby mutually rein-
forces Kūkai’s message of nonduality.
Thus in Japan, the mandalas represent two nondual sides of Dain-
ichi’s same coin and symbolically encode his interpenetrating form and
mind in the realms of phenomena and noumena. In this regard they
can also be seen as reflecting familiar bicameral tropes for government
palaces and ministries that ultimately derived from the continent.
In China, the structure of the Chinese palace-city was designed
along matching institutions. As early as the Western Han dynasty, the
emperor alternated between the Changlegong Palace and the
larger Weiyangong Palace in fulfilling his ritual and political
functions (figure 12).^13
In Chang’an during the Tang dynasty as well (figure 11), the West
Palace and the Daming Palace to the northeast functioned simulta-
neously to run the affairs of state. Kūkai would have seen these two
structures firsthand during his studies in the Chinese capital from
804–806, though he would already have been familiar with such city
(^13) It should be noted, however, that the side-by-side double-palace model often
shifted to a north-south stacked arrangement during different periods in Chinese
architectural history.