Experience

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Buddhism and Shakyo

Shakyo is the act of copying sutras by hand. The teachings of the Shakyamuni Buddha were transmitted orally, but after Shakyamuni entered nirvana, one of his disciples, Mahakasyapa, appealed to his monk brothers the importance of properly copying down the teachings, and they were compiled for the first time. The compiled scriptures reached Sri Lanka in the first century BC in a Theravada form in the Pali language. Today, they are widely used in Buddhist countries in East Asia like Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar. In China, from the 2nd through 11th centuries, the scriptures were translated into their Chinese equivalent. The famous monks Xuanzang and Yijing, who traveled from China to India, as well as noted monks who translated the scriptures, like Kumarajiva and Bodhiruci, were active during this time. Subhakarasimha and Amoghavajra, considered among the great ancestors of the Shingon sect, also translated numerous scriptures, contributing to the spread of Buddhist culture. Because printing technology was still limited at the time, text could only be copied by hand, and the act of copying the scriptures came to be seen as one path to enlightenment.
Looking back to history, apocryphal sutras were deliberately composed in China, and the emerging need for translation, collection, and categorization of numerous texts, as well as differentiation between authentic and apocryphal documents, led to Dao An’s compilation in the late 4th century of a catalogue of scriptures. Sengyo contributed his own “Collected Records Concerning the Tripitaka” in the early 6th century. The works referenced therein were referred to as the “complete scriptures” by the Wei Dynasty (386-534) and the “Tripitaka” by the Liang Dynasty (502-557). By the time of the Sui (581-618) and T’ang (618-907) Dynasties, the custom of copying 17 characters to a line had taken root. The Nihon Shoki records that in 637 at Kawara-dera Temple in Nara, shakyo was conducted.
This is held to be the start of the sutra copying tradition in Japan. In the Nara period, the equivalent of today’s national libraries was created, and Confucian texts and Buddhist scriptures and images were stored there. These facilities were staffed by persons involved in copying manuscripts and binding them, pursuing the finest aesthetic refinements in their creation.
Sutra copying continued to spread as a model for language learning among laypeople and as a training method for the Buddhist practice. Along the way, a range of solemnities and rituals arose around this. In the Edo period, the practice went on to become a rite of passage for pilgrims, who would make offerings of texts they had copied. The practice became widespread at this time.