The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2231 page)

 
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Shingaku
.

A popular religious movement, sometimes known as ‘Education of the Heart’, started in 1729 in Japan by
Ishida Baigan
(1685–1744), a self-taught scholar and chief clerk for a Ky
to commercial house. Shingaku appealed mainly to the urban merchants, but it also attracted devotees from the peasant and
samurai
classes who listened to Baigan's public lectures or were acquainted with the movement's many popular tracts and house codes (
kakun
). The teachings of Shingaku were an eclectic blend of
Confucian
moral precepts, Buddhist meditational practices, and worship of the national gods (
kami
).

 
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(Jap. pronunciation of Chin.,
chenyen
, ‘true word’, which represents Skt.,
mantra
). A school of esoteric Buddhism established in Japan by
K
kai
after his learning experience in China, especially from Hui-kuo. The ‘School of the True Words’
(Skt.,
mantray
na
, Jap.,
shingon
) emphasizes three mysteries or secrets which all possess, and through which the buddha-nature can be realized: body, speech, and mind. The secrets of the body include
mudr
s
and the handling of the
lotus
and the thunderbolt (
vajra
). The secrets of speech include
mantras
and
dh
ra
s
. The secrets of mind are the five wise ways of perceiving truth. These skills are transmitted orally from teacher to pupil, never in writing, and not as public teaching. The esoteric mysteries were expounded by the cosmic buddha,
Vairocana/Dainichi
Nyorai, for his own delight. In so far as its truth can be expressed at all, it can only be done in representational, above all
ma
ala
, form. Central are the two ma
alas, Vajra (Diamond) and Garbha (Womb). The first is active, with Vairocana seated on a white lotus surrounded by four transcendent Buddhas; the second is passive, with Vairocana on a red lotus, surrounded by eight buddhas and bodhisattvas. An initiate throws a flower on to the ma
alas and becomes the devotee of the buddha on which the flower falls. In K