8
THE DEVOTIONAL POWER of the Heart Sutra can be seen even today in the story of Yakushi-ji, the Temple of Medicine Buddha, in Nara. This temple was built in 698, at the peak of early Japanese Buddhism. Now it serves as one of the head temples of the Hosso School, along with Kofuku-ji.
At the center of the temple compound, inside the double hallways, was a two-storied Golden Hall facing south. Like other temples in Nara, when it was constructed Yakushi-ji had a main hall made of white plaster walls and wooden structures painted in bright green and vermilion. In front of this hall — which enshrined the Medicine Buddha — stood a pair of magnificent three-storied pagodas with lean-tos or additional roofs in between, so the pagodas would appear to have five stories.
A chronicle of Yakushi-ji provides a long list of buildings lost to fire, war, storm, and earthquake. It also documents the efforts to repair and rebuild the temple. The only building that has survived from the beginning is the East Pagoda.
By the time Gyoin Hashimoto was abbot of the temple and spiritual head of the Hosso School during and after World War II, the Golden Hall was in disrepair and the West Pagoda was gone. He wanted to restore the temple to its original form, but his dream required great funds, which were not available. Tourists and schoolchildren nevertheless continued to visit.
Gyoin noticed that one young novice mesmerized people when he showed them around the temple and explained the dharma to visitors. Gyoin trained this novice, Koin Takada, entrusting the abbacy to him in 1967 and asking him to continue the effort to restore the temple’s buildings.
Koin launched an ambitious drive to gather one million handwritten copies of the Heart Sutra, along with other short sutras. He traveled all over Japan and invited the public to make brush-written copies of the sutras and send them to Yakushi-ji with a donation. This request captured the imagination of a great number of people. The initial goal of collecting one million copies was achieved, and the sutra dedication kept growing.
Repair of the Golden Hall was completed in 1976. A new West Pagoda was erected in 1981, based on an old plan, with the highest quality carpentry and related crafts.1 It is amazing to look up at the resurrected pagoda’s complex geometry of gently upturned tile roofs, crowned with its decorated gold and silver spire. The fresh green copper and vermilion painted on wooden surfaces brings back the glory of the Nara Period (710–784). Walking up scores of steps, you cross the span of twelve hundred years between the weathered East Pagoda and the youthful West Pagoda. They stand side by side in harmonious contrast.
The West Pagoda is not only a restoration of an architectural masterpiece after four hundred and fifty years. It is also the embodiment of Koin Takada’s vision and passion, which initiated a mass religious movement and revitalized the essential Buddhist practice of handwriting sutras.2
Today at this Medicine Buddha temple, there is a new octagonal building commemorating Xuanzang. Above the front entrance of the shrine is a large horizontal sign. The board is inscribed with the two paradoxical characters “Not East.” This represents the traveling monk’s vow not to take even one step backward to China until he reached India and acquired the dharma. Indeed, this determination enabled him to bring countless Buddhist teachings eastward back home.
The honorary founder of this temple, Kuiji, who participated in Xuanzang’s translation of texts on Yogachara, completed a systematic summary of the Consciousness Only doctrine, and eventually founded the Faxiang School. The Hosso (the Japanese form of Faxiang) School became the most prominent of the six scholastic traditions of Buddhism that flourished in the Nara Period.
In the compound of Yakushi-ji, there is also a public dojo — a practice place — for copying sutras, to which everyone is welcome. In 2002, I had the good fortune to visit this hall. At the front office, I made a donation and received a model calligraphic print of the Xuanzang version of the Heart Sutra, an instruction sheet, and a blank sheet of high-quality rice paper. The man at the office also let me borrow a purple strip of cloth — a simplified Buddhist robe — to wear around my neck while copying the sutra.
A young woman led me through a hallway by a quiet garden, to the front of a room sheltered by an impressive number of shoji doors. She asked me to sit at a small table in front of the entrance, and showed me the procedure. I put a pinch of cloves into my mouth for purification and went into a large room, which was set up with many tables and chairs — perhaps enough for three hundred people. It was early in the morning, and only a few people were there, all immersed in calligraphy. At each section of the table was a piece of black felt on which to place the paper, a metal weight, an ink stone, a block of sumi ink, a small water container, and a brush.
Following the instructions, I stepped over the white jade icon of an elephant set on the floor. This signified the entry into a sacred domain. Then I took a seat, bowed, put the simplified robe around my neck, poured drops of water on the ink stone, and started to grind ink.
The model print had lines at the top and bottom as well as vertical lines that divided the columns of ideographs. The writing paper was strong but thin and semitransparent, making it well suited for tracing. I looked around and saw my neighbors tracing the printed models. To a lifetime student of East Asian calligraphy, tracing feels like cheating — it was the last thing I would want to do. But I realized that this system would be an expedient way for most people to engage in the practice of sutra copying. I decided to give up my pride as a calligrapher and do as others were doing.
I knew that my handwritten copy of the sutra would never be seen by anyone as a piece of art. This was a practice of copying simply for the sake of copying. I was there to make a small gift to the temple, but the temple was giving me far more — the gift of allowing me to join the vast spiritual practice of brush-writing the Heart Sutra in this sublime environment.
I started writing the characters, growing more and more joyful with each new moment, each new stroke. Time dropped away. Soon the ending came, with the complex Chinese spelling of “gaté, gaté . . . ” Then, on the designated spot on the sheet, I wrote my name, address, and age, the date, the sequential number of the copy I had just made (in my case the number one), and a brief prayer. As I saw some others do, I went to the central Buddha figure, dedicated my work to the altar, and walked away, having joined the ranks of countless sutra scribes.