Let me introduce myself. My name is Gao chen. I was born in Fuqing, Fujian, China on January 7,1978. I am a second year student at Kagawa Junior College.My major is Management and Information. My hobby is listening to music.
The pilgrimage know as Shikoku Henro or O-Shikoku-san is the oldest and most famous in Japan . Circumambulating the island via the 88 Buddhist temples designated as the Sacred Places of Shikoku is meant to follow the trail Kobo Daishi (Kukai) 弘法大師（空海）walked in his youth for ascetic practice , searching for the Truth .
That is why the authentic pilgrims go on foot as the great saint did long ago . It takes sbout 60 days to hike the 1,647 km, going deep into rugged mountains, plodding along sandy beaches, rocky coasts, through fields and hills, villages and towns. Indeed, it is a walking Zen .
The Shikoku Pilgrimage is nonsectarian, though Kukai was the founder of the Shingon sect of Japanese Buddhism. Pilgrims seem to forget their Buddhist sects in worshiping Kobo Daishi who stands far beyond factionalism. Not all of the 88 temples are of the Shingon sect , either. It is impossible to discuss this pilgrimage without recounting the life of Kukai .
Mao (Kukai) was born in 774 in what is now Zen tsuji City, the seat of Zentsu-ji Temple 善通寺, the 75th Sacred Place of Shikoku , as the third son of Saeki Yoshimichi, the Lord of the County (p.46). The boy Kukai was so bright and gifted that his parents expected him to go into government service, the most respected profession at the time . When he was 15 , he was sent up to Kyoto, the then new capital, where he studied with his maternal uncle, a great Confucianist and tutor to one of the Emperor's sons .
At 18, he entered the university and studied hard. But soon he was disappointed with the curriculum offered there - the principles of government, history, poetry, filial piety and loyalty . What he had been searching for was the ultimate truth .
Then he happened to meet a Buddhist monk, who taught him to practice a meditation called Kokuzo-gumonjiho - to invoke Kokuzo, a deity of space wwhose wisdom is as vast as space, through mantra-reciting one million times according to the proper method - which was to enable hin to acquire a phenomenal memory of teachings and principles . This made hin choose Buddhism and the priesthood rather than Confucianism and bureaucracy . He left the university . It was a very hard decision for him , because of his ownclan . Yet he had to.
For many years he applied himself alternately to the intense study of Buddhist texts and to meditation deep in the mountains . At 19, in a cave at Cape Muroto, the southeastern tip of Shikoku Island, he finally succeeded in attaining enlightenment through performing Kokuzo-gumonjiho . What he had been seeing all the while was the sky and the sea - the Pacific Ocean . In memory of this great moment, he decided to call himself Kukai 空海 - Sky and Sea.
At 24 ,he finished Sango Shiiki, a drama in which he compared the three principles he had already mastered -- Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism -- to demonstrate the supremacy of Buddhism . It was his final declaration of turning to Buddhism .
Yet kukai was not satisfied with the Buddhism of those days in Japan .He was searching like the unity of the Buddha's teachings. Then he found the sutra that presented the Buddha Mahavairocana as idealizing the truth of the universe.
But there were passages so mysterious that no one in Japan sould tell him anything about them. So he decided to go to China. At 31 he succeeded in accompanying the envoy to T'ang China.
At the Chinese Capital,Ch'ang-an, the greatest cosmopolitan city at that time, he met Abbot Hui-kuo, the 7th patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism,who had already had no less than one thousand disciples. The moment he set eyes on the young man from Japan, the abbot knew he was the very person he had long been waiting for as his successor. All those years of hard study and ascetic practices had brought him so close to his Chinese master that, after three months of study under the avbbot, Kukai was ordained as the 8th patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism.
At the end of the vear (805), Abbot Hui-kuo passed away. Before his death, he had told Kukai to return to Japan as soon as possible to spread the teachings to increase the happiness of the people there. But how could he return soon? There were 18 years before another Japanese mission was to come to China．．．
Then the Emperor of the T'ang Dynasty died and a Japanese delegation came to Ch'ang-an to attend his funeral. Kukai was allowed to join their return journey. It was fortunate for the Japanese to have him back so soon, considering his great achievements in the ensuing years. In fact it was not until 34 years later that another envoy sent to China returned to Japan. Three years earlier Kukai had passed away.
After 16 months in Ch'ang-an, Kukai brought home from China 247 scrolls of precious sutras, 44 scrolls of Sanskrit mantras and stotras, 170 scrolls of scriptural commentaries, 9 kinds of ritual implements, and a number of religious images and objects. There must have also been some Chinese works of literature, language, medicine, calligraphy and art. It is generally believed that Kukai introduced measures and rules,Chinese-type medicines,varieties of seeds, as well as the arts of dyeing, of making Indian ink and writing brushes, and of building Chinese temples, bridges and embankments.
He is said to have been the first Japanese to grow tea and process it, to use coal and petrol, and to make Chinese cakes and candies.
He brought all these things to firmly take root in the soil of Japan, greatly raising her religious and cultural standard, until at last she bengan to produce her own Buddhism and her own culture . This accounts for why Kukai is often credited as a father of Japanese culture .
In fact , the first thing he did when he came back to Japan was to reread all those enormous volumes of sutras , trying to unite the two kinds of esoteric Buddhism - Kongokai (the spiritual principle) and Taizokai (the physical principle ) - into one . Thus he finally created a new esoteric Buddhism which he called the Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon .
Kukai was also fortunate enough to have the Emperor Saga , a scholar , poet and admirer of advanced culture from the Continent , as his patron and longtime friend .
He was granted possession of Mt . Koya in kii (wakayawa Pref .) , where he founded a monastic center for students of meditation . It was also his spiritual home , where he wrote many books of immense value , one of which was Jujushinron in which he examined all the philosophies and religions known at that time in the Eastern world , comparing them with his own Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon .
Latet the Emperor presented him with a state temple , Toji in Kyoto , as his headquarters in propagating his Esoteric Buddhism of Shingon . It focuses on this life , saying that men and women have the seed of Buddhahood within them , and that by following its precepts and ptactices , anyone can achieve enlightenment in this lifetime .
Then Kukai founded the first school in Japan open to the poor as well as to the rich . A dictionary in 30 volumes which he compiled for the pupils there was the first of its kind in Japan .