Hibutsu - Zenko-Ji

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Secret Buddha Statues (hibutsu)

***** Location: Japan
***** Season: See below
***** Category: Humanity

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Explanation

secret or hidden Buddha Statues, hibutsu　秘仏

to show a secret Buddha Statue,
..... kaichoo, kaichoo 開帳

statue standing in front of a secret statue, substitute
..... maedachi　前立
This can be a replica of the original hidden statue or a different one altogether.

votive plaques
..... kakebotoke　懸仏



Small Tabernacle
http://www.rinnoji.or.jp/gyouji/chinjo/chinjo.html

Secret Buddha Statues are enshrined in special tabernacles called zushi 厨子 and are shown at regular intervals to the public. Some are shown every year, others every seven, seventeen, thirtythree or hundred years only. Some are never shown. (Japanese Link of the dates provided below.)

Usually a substitute statue ("stand before it" maedachi) is placed in front of this tabernacle and can be venerated in prayers at any time.


Look at some secret Buddha statues.

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The showing of the secret statue at
Zenko-Ji 善光寺 (Zenkooji) in Nagano is a

observance kigo for late spring.
April 6. See below for more.

go-kaichoo　御開帳, kaichou (かいちやう)
kaigan 開龕, 出開帳
Temple who shows a secret statue , kaichoo dera 開帳寺


© 2002,2003. Zenkoji Gokaicho Housankai.
http://www.gokaicho.com/


Zenkooji mairi 善光寺参り Zenko-Ji mairi pilgrimage
Spring Journey to Zenko-Ji

Zenkoji mairi (Pay a visit to Zenkoji temple).
Gorai, Shigeru. 1988. Tokyo: Heibon-sha Press.

. Pilgrimages in Japan .
- Introduction -

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observance kigo for all spring

kaichoo 開帳 (かいちょう) showing a secret Buddha statue
..... keigan 啓龕（けいがん）


dekaicho

ikaichoo 居開帳（いかいちょう）
to show a statue in the own temple
dekaichoo 出開帳（でかいちょう）
to go and see a displayed statue at another temple

In Edo, temples needed a special licence to display their secret statues
開帳差し許し, usually at the beginning of a new year. It always attracted a lot of visitors and was good business for the temple and the shops around it.


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observance kigo for the New Year

go han itadaki 御印文戴き (ごはんいただき)
"getting a honorable stamp"
..... 御判頂き（ごはんいただき） gohan itadaki

Between January 7 and 15.



The stamp is a substitute for the secret statue of Amida and will protect its holder, and lead him to paradise eventually.





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. 善光寺 東海別院 「招福だるま」
Shoofuku Daruma to bring good luck


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Sakuo Nakamura on the meaning of KAICHOO
in the haiku of Issa quoted below

The key word is [kaichoo butsu-- a Budha on display]
The most famouse [ kaichoo butsu] is the one of Zenkou-ji that is very near to Issa's native village.There are many [ kaichoo butsu] in Japane that are secret Budhas and specially opened to the public once a year.
When they are shown, there come many people and outlaw gamblers are specially allowed to use the temple grounds for gambling.
So Japanese [kaichoo] has two meanings.
One is to show secret Budha statues .

Sakuo Nakamura

The temples would even get their share of the money from the gamblers on their grounds, called "Temple Money", terasen 寺銭, now simply called : bribes, ピンハネ, wairo 賄賂。In a play with words, the Temple Money .terasen. sounds like .terasu　照 ., to light,　the money has also euphemistically been called "Light Charge" toomyoodai 灯明代.

善光寺（川口市）Zenkoji Temple in Kawaguchi

寺の本尊をご開帳する時に人が集まるから博打も行われたようです。取り締まりもこの時ばかりは大目に見てくれた。寺には博打の上がりからいくらかを支払いましたが、この金を寺銭と言うようになり、転じてピンハネの意味になりました。
ほかに「てら」は「寺」で宿銭（やどせん）とも、「照」で灯明代（とうみょうだい）の名義で徴収するお金の意味とも言われています。
http://www.ukima.info/bbs2/yyregi.cgi?mode=past&pastlog=3&page=40&bl=0

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In esoteric Buddhism the deity Kankiten (Kangiten 歓喜天) is often shown as two human-like figures with an elephant head, embracing each other.
The statues of these embracing deities are usually not shown to the public, because of the sexual implication. Thye are kept in separate shrines behind closed doors, the so-called Secret Statues (hibutsu 秘仏).

There are more than 250 temples in Japan, where Ganesh is venerated.
In Kamakura at the temple Hookaij-Ji 宝戒寺 is a Kangiten Hall where you find the oldest statue of a Kankiten in Japan. He is said to be especially powerful and therefore kept locked in a tabernakel since 1333. This is located in a separate hall for the deity.

More about Kankiten and Ganesh


The Secret Kankiten at Hookai-Ji
A Mysterious Story by Gabi Greve

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Zenkooji belongs to both the Tendai and Jodo Shinshu schools of Buddhism, and is co-managed by 25 priests from the former School and 14 from the latter. It enshrines images of the Amida Buddha, the primary one of which is a *hibutsu*, a hidden Buddha, which is not normally shown to the public.

This *hibutsu* is rumored to be the first Buddha statue to ever be brought to Japan. There is also a passage under the temple where worshippers, in complete darkness, try to touch a key hanging on the wall in order to gain enlightenment. The key represents the Key to the Western Paradise of the Amida Buddha.

The hidden Buddha statue is shown once every six or seven years, and attracts many worshippers. The last time it was on display, in 2003, Zenkooji joined with Motozenkooji and the Zenkooji of Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture, in discussions. The hibutsu will be on display next in 2010.

© Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenkoji

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Votive Plaques, kakebotoke 懸仏
"Kakebotoke" simply means "Hanging Buddha" and refers to a plaque hanging on the wall. It can also be written 懸け仏 in Japanese. Sometimes it is translated as "Hanging Disc", since it is mostly round in shape.

Kakebotoke were also put up in front of a tabernakel with a secret Buddha statue (hibutsu 秘仏), which was not to be shown to the public. The votive plaques with a copy of the secret Buddha statue, sometimes up to 50 cm in diameter, became the object of veneration. Since they were stolen quite often they were later hung up high in the inner sanctuary (naijin 内陣) to prevent theft.

The custom of reflecting a Buddhist statue in a mirror for a special ritual is still alive today. Here is a mysterious story I heared in a temple in Kamakura. For special exorcistic rituals of esoteric Buddhism heated oil is poured over a Buddha statue. The statue in question was a secret statue, so the Kakebotoke substitue had to be used. Since the Kakebotoke statue of this temple had just been newly made and was quite pretty, the priest wanted to spare it this fate. He decided to reflect the statue in a mirror and poor the heated oil over the mirror.

It seems the Gods accepted this sacrificial offer of a substitute with another substitute and peace returned to the poor soul for which the ritual was performed.
(Read the Mysterious Story qouted above for more on this.)

Read Gabi Greve about the Kakebotoke


. Gankake 願掛け wish-prayer, to make a wish .

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Secret Buddhas for 30 days
(sanjuunichi hibutsu 三十日秘仏)

The Lotus Sutra, Hokke-kyoo　法華経、describes various deities as Bosatsu concerned with light offerings.
They all belong to this group.

Light Offerings at Mt. Koya san, by Gabi Greve

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Worldwide use


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Things found on the way

Guze Kannon 救世観音 at the Yume-dono 夢殿, Nara

In 1884 Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908) and Okakura Tenshin (1863-1913) obtained permission to disclose the secret statue of the Yumedono at Houryuuji.

The Yume-dono (Hall of Dreams) is octagonal in shape, the building houses the Kuze Kannon, a truly majestic gilded wooden statue. Until recently, the figure, said to be the same height as Prince Shotoku or even modelled on him, has been a hidden image, or hibutsu, which no one had seen for centuries.
Even now the Kannon is kept hidden for most of the year, except for brief periods in spring and autumn.
http://www.yamasa.org/japan/english/destinations/nara/horyujiandchuguji.html

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The Kannon with 1000 Arms,
said to have been made by Shotoku Taishi himself.

This statue is only shown every 33 years. It is made of one piece of wood and about 72 cm high.
. Secret Buddha Statue in Onomichi .

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Japanese LINK to all Secret Buddha Statues and their time of showing.
http://www.geocities.jp/reminopage/hibutukaichou.html


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HAIKU

月影や四門四宗もただ一つ
tsuki kage ya shimon shishuu mo tada hitotsu

this moonlight -
four gates and four (Buddhist) sects
are also all the same
Tr. Gabi Greve

(This hokku has the cut marker YA at the end of line 1.
Just as the moon appears sometimes round, sometimes half, a sickle or not at all ... but is still tada hitotsu, the same one.)


Here in the moonlight,
the Four Gates, the Four Sects -
they'r all one.
Tr. Carter


the moon's light -
four gates, four sects
yet only one
Tr. Barnhill


in the moonlight
four gates and four sects
become one
Tr. Addiss


Des Mondes Schimmer!
Die vier Tore, vier Lehren
sind dennoch nur eins.
Tr. Dumoulin

With Enlightenment, all Buddhist sects share the same root.
Visiting in 1688.


Visiting Temples with
. Matsuo Basho - Archives of the WKD .


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婆々どのも牛に引かれて桜かな
baba dono mo ushi ni hikarete sakura kana

granny comes too
led by a cow...
cherry blossoms

This haiku seems to allude to a popular folktale in Issa's home province of Shinano. A sinful woman left a piece of cloth to dry in the garden behind her house, but a passing cow snagged it with a horn and trotted off. The woman followed the beast all the way to Zenkooji, where it disappeared and she found herself standing before the image of Amida Buddha. From that point on, she became pious.

Kobayashi Issa　小林一茶
Tr. David Lanoue

. Legends about
the Black Cow, Black Bull 　黒牛と伝説 kuro-ushi, kuroushi .


... inspired by this haiku ...


granny comes too
led by a cow —
Buddha's incarnation

Kumarendra Mallick, Hyderabad, India



暑き夜を唄で参るや善光寺
atsuki yo o uta de mairu ya zenkooji

a hot night's pilgrimage
with song...
Zenko Temple

by Issa, 1816
Tr. David Lanoue




花さくやとある木陰も開帳仏
hana saku ya to aru kokage mo kaichou butsu

cherry blossoms --
under every tree
a Buddha on display

Issa

hatta hatta ya bakuchi hajimaru

bet your chip on
gamble opening



Nakamura Sakuo
http://sakuo3903.blogspot.com/2006/05/gamble-opening.html

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散る花に巡礼帳も開帳哉
chiru hana ni junreichô mo kaichô kana

into the scattering blooms
pilgrims
and Buddha

Issa

An image of Buddha is being carried from a temple to be displayed outside.
Tr. David Lanoue


into scattering cherry blossoms
a pilgrim's stamp book and
a secret Buddha statue
Tr. Gabi Greve

junreichoo is the book where the pilgrim gets his stamp and inscription after visiting a temple of a pilgrimage.


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. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .


harukaze ya ushi ni hikarete zenkouji

spring wind
taking me toward
Zenkoji Temple
Tr. Chris Drake

This hokku is from the 2nd month (March) of 1811, when Issa was in and near Edo. There is no headnote in Issa's diary, but in one edition of the hokku Issa gives the headnote translated above about the showing of the Zenkoji Amida statue beginning on the 25th of the 2nd intercalary month, an extra month which came after the ordinary 2nd month in 1811. The original Amida statue at Zenkoji is never shown to the public, but occasionally another old statue of Amida flanked by the bodhisattvas Kannon and Seishi is shown. What Issa refers to is one of these public showings.

The hokku also refers to a legend about the temple that first appears in the 12th-century Konjaku monogatari collection. A 66-year-old woman has lived near Zenkoji Temple all her life but has no interest in it, when one day a bull runs through her yard and catches in its horns a long piece of cloth she's hung out to dry. The bull keeps running, and the woman, wanting her cloth, chases the bull until finally it goes into the main hall at Zenkoji and disappears. The sun has already gone down, but when the woman goes into the hall it is bright as day, and she sees that the glistening drool of the bull forms words telling her the bull was a manifestation of the merciful bodhisattva Kannon, who wanted to lead the woman to the temple. The woman quickly forgot about her cloth and spent the night chanting Amida's name at the temple. The next day she went to the hall devoted to Kannon and found her cloth hanging from the Kannon statue there. After that the woman became sincerely devout and entered the Pure Land.

This legend was widely known, since Zenkoji was extremely popular with women pilgrims from around Japan, and in Issa's time the words in the second and third lines of his hokku had become a common metaphorical proverb meaning to be led in a good direction by chance or unexpectedly. By adding a headnote, however, Issa shows he is also writing about the temple and its image of Amida as well as invoking the abstract meaning of the proverb. Two more years will pass before Issa will return for good to his hometown (located not far from Zenkoji) and receive his inheritance, and at the time he wrote this hokku he was writing many other hokku about his longing to return. The spring wind in the hokku is ambiguous, but I take it to suggest both movement and a strong power that pulls at Issa and increases his already strong desire to return to his hometown and to view Amida's image at Zenkoji: Amida and the Pure Land and his hometown seem to be almost overlapped at one level in his mind. Issa has heard about the rare showing of the Zenkoji Amida image that will soon be made, yet he is busy in Edo and has not yet done enough preparation to be able to return to Zenkoji and to his hometown and demand his inheritance, which is being kept from him by his mother-in-law and half-brother. The fresh spring wind pulls at him as strongly as a bull, and the hokku seems to be expressing his strong will to go to Zenkoji and return to his hometown as soon as he is able to.

Three hokku later in Issa's diary:

shinano naru uguisu mo hou-hoke-kyo kana

the warblers
in Shinano too
sing lo-lotus sutra

Shinano is the mountainous province in which both Zenkoji and Issa's hometown are located.

Chris Drake



朝寒のうちに参るや善光寺
asa-samu no uchi ni mairu ya zenkouji

making a pilgrimage
in early morning cold --
Zenkoji Temple
Tr. Chris Drake

This autumn hokku was written early in the 8th month (September) in 1822, when Issa was living in his hometown. "Morning cold" refers to the first real sign of autumn cold after the lingering heat and humidity of early lunar autumn. In the middle of September in Shinano the dawns and early mornings already feel slightly cold, though they still feel only cool in Edo and other lowland areas, where "morning cold" is used a little later in autumn. The slight yet clearly perceptible cold in this hokku is usually felt when people wake up in the morning. It is not frigid but rather delicate -- just enough coldness to give people a fresh, bracing feeling of aliveness and a sense that autumn is truly here. Basically this temporary coldness is caused by contrast: it's the comparatively large drop in temperature during the night that gives people the feeling of being cold the next morning rather than any actual very low temperatures. A couple of hours after dawn this feeling of being cold will be gone, and by noon the day will be warm or perhaps even hot.

Zenkoji Temple, a very famous interdenominational Buddhist temple and a destination for pilgrims from all over Japan, isn't far from Issa's hometown, and he made many short pilgrimages there. I take the hokku to be from Issa's point of view, since it's about a bracing feeling a person gets rather than an objective description.

Issa often visited several students who lived near Zenkoji, so he probably stayed the night at the house of one of them and made a dawn or early morning pilgrimage. The exclamatory ya probably expresses how grateful Issa feels for being able to make his short pilgrimage in such invigorating weather. He surely feels revivified by going to the large temple and praying to the ancient Amida Buddha statue there, which is so precious it is kept in a special vault -- and he is also surely energized by the sharp clarity of the air and the stimulating early morning cold, which may synesthetically suggest Amida's own soft, all-piercing light.

Chris Drake


花さくやとある木陰も開帳仏
hana saku ya to aru kokage mo kaichoobutsu

cherry blossoms --
beneath one tree
a statue of a Buddha
Tr. Chris Drake

This spring hokku is from Issa's handwritten hokku collection, and no date is given. Another version is found in Issa's diary for 1818, and still another version appears early in Year of My Life, where a headnote says, "Pilgrimage to Hoshina on 3/17." This headnote indicates that all three versions of the hokku are about the showing of a very old statue of the bodhisattva Kannon (Avalokiteshavra) carved by the famous wandering monk Gyouki in 742, when he founded Seisuiji Temple (清水寺) in Hoshina, an area that is now part of the city of Nagano, about ten miles from Issa's hometown.

The temple belongs to the Shingon school, but its mountain-name is Amida Mountain, so it must have been center of Amida worship -- and Kannon, of course, is one of Amida's two main helpers. The fragile old statue Issa went to see and pray to shows the compassionate Kannon with a thousand arms -- symbolizing infinite arms -- which she uses to aid and save suffering humans and animals everywhere. The statue was shown only rarely, and in the present case the showing was timed so it would coincide with the blooming of the cherry trees. When Issa made his pilgrimage to the temple he was at first impressed by the beauty of the cherry blossoms at the temple, but he was obviously much more impressed when he saw that the ancient statue of Kannon, no doubt inside a case, had been brought outside placed beneath one of the blossoming trees.

In most cases showings of famous old Buddha statues (a category that includes bodhisattvas and other important Buddhist beings) were made for several weeks, so at night and on rainy days the Kannon statue at Seisuiji Temple must have been placed inside the temple's main hall. The outdoors showing of this Kannon statue is one more example of how, in premodern Japan, blossoming cherry trees themselves were widely regarded to be visiting gods.

Chris Drake

. WKD : Kobayashi Issa 小林一茶 in Edo .


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開帳の秘仏や花の雨となり
kaichoo no hibutsu ya hana no ame to nari

the secret statue
shown only today -
rain on the cherry blossoms
(Tr. Gabi Greve)

笑止
Copyright(c)2001-2005, powerwings.net
http://www.powerwings.net/html/senryu/0604senku.html

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お上人の足袋の春泥ご開帳
o shoonin no tabi no shundei go-kaichoo

spring mud
on the socks of the priest -
showing the secret statue
(Tr. Gabi Greve)

Seiji せいじ
http://www.hb-arts.co.jp/haiku_html/030510kekka.htm

O-shoonin can be a Saint, but often also used for the head priest of a great temple.

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At Hinata Yakushi Temple, Kanagawa 日向薬師

薬師堂雨の桜に御開帳
Yakushidoo ame no sakura ni go-kaichoo

Yakushi Hall -
cherry blossoms in the rain
when the statue is shown

Kobayashi Aiko 小林愛子
http://cherry.ayu.ne.jp/user/suwa/sub9.htm

Yakushi is the Buddha of Healing. This temple is situated quite far in the mountains. It is usually very quiet with few tourists. I visited this place frequently for its quietude and spiritual atmosphere.
Look at some photos of the area.
Gabi Greve

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開帳や雲居の鳥の声こぼれ 　
kaichou ya kumoi no tori no koe kobore

Das öffnen der Flügeltüre -
Die Stimmen der Vögel
im Wolkensitz laufen über.
(übersetzt: UENO Yuhko)

showing a secret Buddha -
the voices of all the birds
filling the venerable sky
(Tr. Gabi Greve)

木　村　蕪　城 (1913～) KIMURA Bujou
http://www008.upp.so-net.ne.jp/kihakuso/html/04sai/haru05.html

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Related words

***** Pilgrimage (henro, junrei) Pilgrims.


***** . Namu Amida Butsu 南無阿弥陀仏 the Amida Prayer .

***** . Oojooji 往生寺 Temple Ojo-Ji .
Nagano - for a safe passage to the Amida Paradise in the West after death
Gokuraku oojoo 極楽往生　gokuraku-ojo　



***** . Hana no ame, rain on the cherry blossoms .

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