How Kūkai Viewed the Buddhist Panñca-sīla

Abstract

　The five precepts for lay practice that continue to be preached from the āgama or nikāya have, as time progresses, superseded the frame of applying only to lay people to be applied to priests as well and are expounded to both laypeople and priests alike. Descriptions of how the all-too-obvious premise that the five precepts had to do with lay practitioners have broken down in some cases have also been seen by later generations, and the transitions undergone by the five precepts within the long history of Buddhism are surprisingly far from simple. How might Kōbō Daishi have perceived the five precepts as they underwent such transitions? A strict and meticulous view of the precepts lies at the root of Daishi’s teachings.

　Daishi’s view of the precepts did not excise the various commandments such as those pertaining to hearing, self-enlightenment, and bodhisattvas but worked out the secret precepts of the samaya precepts (rules to be strictly observed before full ordination in the esoteric sects) while subsuming all others. However, in this article, I survey and discuss the nature of the position that these five precepts, which have been expounded since the beginning of Buddhism, occupy in Daishi’s teaching, from the āgama or nikāya to the scriptures and commentaries of esoteric Buddhism.