774 lucia dolce and shinya mano
the ultimate secret practice of Taimitsu, the combination of the Womb
and Diamond Worlds (taikon gōgyō or myōgō ). The
theoretical background of such practice lays in the different emphases
that Tōmitsu and Taimitsu lineages placed on the two fundamental
esoteric scriptures. While Tōmitsu maintained their nonduality, based
on the myth of their simultaneous transmission elaborated by Kūkai,
Taimitsu considered them as distinct because they were transmitted
separately, but devised an “accomplishment class” (soshitsuji )
with the function of unifying the two. This teaching is usually identi-
fied with the Suxidi jieluo jing , a text belonging to the
Womb scriptural lineage, since this was the basis for Ennin’s combina-
tory hermeneutics.
Annen, on the contrary, relied on another Chinese apocryphon, the
Yuqi jing. The “discovery” of the associative nature of the Yuqi jing is
Annen’s original contribution to the Taimitsu threefold system. The
Yuqi jing, while considered a scripture in the Diamond lineage, con-
tains mudrās and mantras associated with both the three sections of
the Womb Mandala and the five sections of the Diamond Mandala. In
fact, scholars deem this sūtra to be one of the first texts to articulate
the concept of the unity of the two mandalic realities that emerged in
China by the mid-Tang period (Misaki 1988, 508 passim).
Annen considered the Yuqi jing “the accomplishment ritual
(soshitsujihō ) according to the Diamond reality” (T.
2228.61:485a). In the Kyōjigi, where he presented five “esoteric reposi-
tories” (shingon himitsuzō), he identifies the Yuqi jing as the core of
the two mandalic realities (ryōbu daihō no kanjin )
(T. 2396.75:441a). In this way, Annen created an alternative to the
Tōmitsu interpretation of the two mandalas as two and yet nondual
(nijifuni ), which both maintained the difference between the
two realities and unified them according to two distinct modes, one
informed by the Suxidi jieluo jing and one by the Yuqi jing. By posit-
ing the practices of the Yuqi jing as a more complete “accomplishment
ritual” than those of the Suxidi jieluo jing, however, Annen also high-
lighted the importance of the Diamond lineage vis-à-vis the Womb
lineage, which had so far been the concern of Taimitsu scholiasts.
Though it is considered one of the five great esoteric commentaries
(Fukuda 1995, 323), Annen’s Commentary on the Yuqi jing is not truly
a doctrinal exegesis. It is not a manual of liturgical procedures but is in
fact a ritual exegesis, focused on the practice of the Yuqi jing abhiṣeka
(Asai Endō 1973, 635; Misaki 1988, 530). In particular, it explores