We live in an age where almost the entire corpus of Buddhist literature is at our fingertips and much is translated into our native languages. This was, of course, not always the case. Chinese monks like Faxian and Xuanzang spent years on harrowing journeys across mountains and deserts to bring troves of written materials, much of which they copied by hand, back to China so that they could be translated from the Indic languages in which they were written.
Later, Japanese monks like Kūkai and Saichō risked equally dangerous sea voyages to receive sutras, commentaries, and oral teachings and transmit them accurately to Japan. The imperial governments of each nation spent a tremendous amount of treasure on ensuring that these precious writings were accurately translated, copied, and preserved for use by following generations.
Inspired by the example of these Buddhist titans, the faithful in Japan transformed shakyō, the copying of sutras, into a devotional and meditative act available to anyone. The Hannya Shingyō, or Heart Sutra, was and is the most popular sutra to copy and offer to temples because of its brevity and depth.
Offering such a hand-copied text to temples was, at one point, considered a vital part of the rituals undertaken when visiting temples on the Shikoku Henro. Though modern pilgrims usually opt for dokyō (chanting sutras aloud), careful observers will notice a box at each temple marked with the characters for shakyō. A brief glance at the box’s contents reveals that the practice is far from extinct; boxes are often full of hand-copied Heart Sutras, along with hand-drawn images of Kōbō Daishi and other Buddhist deities. In fact, the nōkyō, the vermillion stamp one may receive at each temple, was originally a receipt showing that one had offered a copied sutra.
Such offered sutras, depending on the temple, may be offered to the Buddhas and cared for indefinitely, taken care of for a certain period before being ritually disposed of, or offered to a larger temple with facilities to store them. Regardless of the fate of our offerings, each time we copy the Heart Sutra carefully, letter by letter, we have an opportunity to more deeply probe the bottomless depths of its wisdom.
A verse from Kūkai’s Secret Key to the Heart Sutra, often recited before shakyō in Shingon Temples, describes the mantra at the sutra’s end thus:
The mantra is inconceivable.
Meditate on it and recite it, and ignorance is removed.
Each of its letters contains a thousand truths.₁
With such high praise from the saint at the center of the pilgrimage, it seems fitting to include reflection on this sacred text as part of our preparation for and undertaking of the pilgrimage. You might copy one to offer at the first temple, copy two to offer at the first and last, copy 88 to carry with you and offer as you go, or commit to offering one at each temple and copying along the way. You could buy a proper shakyō set to copy out the sutra in Japanese, or download a printable PDF of the same. If you'd like to copy the sutra in English, you can print out a version you like with the letters in gray and write over them.
Whatever format you choose, remember that we should cultivate the same motivation for copying the sutras as figures like Kūkai had: to deepen our understanding of the teachings of the Buddhas, and to share the benefits of encountering the Dharma with others.
1. Translated by Rev. Eijō Dreitlein, Professor Emeritus at Kōyasan University. https://www.koyasan-u.ac.jp/laboratory/pdf/kiyo24/24_thomas.pdf
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