A Vision of Ferocity: My Journey through Symbolism with Fudo Myoo

“This Fudo Myo-o, whose name means “Immovable Wisdom King,” is represented with a sword to cut through our ignorance and a rope to bind up our emotions.” – Miyamoto Musashi

Fudo Myoo, the One & Only

Personal journeys with religious symbols can be harrowing.

There is a figure in Japanese history known as Yuten Shonin (1637-1718), or Saint Yuten. Yuten was a Buddhist monk of the Jodo sect who was not considered very intelligent or gifted in any way. He was particularly terrible at learning his sutras and prayers. His teachers were giving up on him, and he was becoming more desperate, eventually praying to the Buddhist Wisdom King of Japanese Shingon Buddhism known as Fudo Myoo (‘Acala’ being his original Sanskrit name). When he fell asleep after praying to Fudo Myoo, he had a dream of the Wisdom King approaching him, wrapped in a cloak of fire and with a severe look on his face.

In most if not all depictions of Fudo Myoo, he is always holding a sword, Kurikara. This sword is known for cutting through ignorance and delusion, purifying those it touches. With a swift flick of his blade, Fudo had shoved the sword down Yuten’s throat, purifying his body and mind with the fires of awakening. When Yuten woke up the next day, his prayer had been answered. He was now a monk with clear mind and direction. In the ensuing years, he would become an expert on the sutras and a master-class exorcist, renowned throughout all of Japan during the Edo Jidai (1603-1868).

I have a deep fondness for Fudo Myoo. Out of all the symbolic deities and representations of Buddhism, Fudo Myoo is my very favorite. His grimace, the flames that surround him, the sword and noose he bears in his hands – he is not your usual image when you envision Buddhism. He is scary, tough, and unforgiving, attitudes at odds with the picture of serenity, peace, and equanimity associated with Buddhism, and Japan, nowadays. Though if you talked to a Buddhist monk or practitioner, they may tell you of a Zen Master or two they have met that fit Fudo Myoo’s personality. He is a symbol the Western mind does not usually associate with Buddhism, nor one that Western minds usually embrace easily. If there are any types of Buddhism the Westerner readily participates in, it is usually a form of Zen or Theravada that is counter to the symbol-soaked world of High Church Christianity and Sunday School illustrated Bibles.

However, appearances are not everything. While Fudo may appear to be a demon at first glance, his mission is far from anything malicious. He is indeed wrathful, but only for the sake of protecting the Buddha Dharma. These figures are known as “Dharmapali,” literally “Dharma defender.” Interestingly enough, he is also the flip side of the Cosmic Buddha Vairocana, who is considered to be the embodiment of the universal nature of emptiness, thus making him the highest-ranking Cosmic Buddha. What this means is that Vairocana and Fudo Myoo are Buddhist representations of the highest divine powers in the cosmology of esoteric Buddhism. If you were to pick a name to equate with the modern concept of the Judeo-Christian God when it comes to Japanese esoteric Buddhism, it would be Vairocana. If you wanted to go a little more Old Testament, then you would look to Fudo Myoo. But the two are never the same (two religions in general rarely ever are). Where the Old Testament God would turn people to pillars of salt or banish them in the desert for 40 years for breaking his rules, Fudo would not cast you there simply because you broke rules – in fact, he may never give a reason at all why he threw you in the desert. But both would be going it for your own good.

Fudo is not a wrathful or spiteful entity, but the embodiment of that aspect of the “I’m doing this for your own good” mentality existent within the Buddhist tradition. He is protector and guide, symbol of wisdom far beyond the reaches of our normal comprehension. Fudo and his counterpart Vairocana represent the inherent oneness of duality – the reflection of the anger and peacefulness, the silence and cacophony that accompany true enlightenment. Before all else, a symbol is a reflection of those deepest truths of mankind and of the forces within his nature that guide him on the right path without his knowing. Fudo is the fiery and grimacing face of what it means to be compassionate and wise in a world that is unforgiving – sometimes, we just need a good kick in the ass. In this regard, Fudo represents a high ideal for the Buddhist practitioner – the passion within the calm, the resolve and fury that drive us to attain peace and concentration. Protector and defender, warrior and immovable obstacle for all those who wish to defile the pure embodiment of Buddha’s teachings.

   Coming to Terms with the Symbolic

There is a Thomas Merton quite from his posthumous work Love and Living I quite like:

“The vital role of the symbol is precisely this: to express and to encourage man’s acceptance of his own center, his own ontological roots is a mystery of being that transcends his individual ego. But when man is reduced to his empirical self and confined within its limits, he is, so to speak, excluded from himself, cut off from his own roots, condemned to spiritual death by thirst and starvation in a wilderness of externals. In this wilderness there can be no living symbols, only the dead symbols of dryness and destruction which bear witness to man’s own inner ruin. But he cannot “see” these symbols, since he is incapable of interior response.”

As Westerners, we live in a society greatly influenced by severe Protestantism. During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, new Christian denominations railed against what they saw as the pageantry and idol-worship of High Church traditions, encapsulated within Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. In the process, they made their churches devoid of imagery, preferring a direct relationship with God through plain means instead of using any sort of ritualistic or symbolic aspects of worship as intermediaries of sorts. This is far different from esoteric Buddhism, otherwise dubbed as ‘Vajrayana Buddhism,’ which freely uses imagery, ritual, meditation, dance, and pageantry to relate to their world and better connect to the enlightened aspects of it. One way this is done is by meditating on images of buddhas and bodhisattvas, gods and goddesses, demons and local spirits. These come in the form of serene beings, multi-limbed deities of destruction, or as artistic representations of universal truths, using pictorial language to describe an indescribable experience. These revolve around exercises done to achieve a relationship with the powers these images represent where you are able to identify yourself with, and ultimately come to understand through meditative exercises, the true nature behind these symbols and the nature of the universe.

The East and West are therefore different in certain respects when it comes to how they embrace their religiosity. Eastern spirituality has the possibility to be more colorful and emotional, while Western religion can be more austere and polite but no less evocative. Both of them revolve around images to some extent, but the way both spiritual cultures have embraced their symbols have been decidedly different. The West looks to their symbols as representations of historical and corporeal reality, seeking to ground their beliefs and spirituality in realistic terms so as to be able to understand it in concrete terms. The East has decidedly rejected historical consciousness. The view of intention meaning more than historical accuracy has created a spiritual culture, especially in Buddhism, where it is more important to analyze the message being communicated through scripture and imagery instead of worrying about whether someone actually said the words or not or actually existed.

Because of these cultural differences, we see the embracing of symbols and their power in very different ways. Westerners have slowly but surely lost touch with many of their symbols and figures and what they may represent within a spiritual context because of how we have historically moved away from understanding their context or intention. This is due to no negligence on the part of those who try their very best to communicate these symbols; they simply have been overtaken by secular ones. Probably the most popular medium through which we recognize secular symbols is through the concept of brands. Brands choose symbols that come to represent ideology and even profit margins, the symbol hiding the reality of the operation that has created the symbol. Meanwhile, in a place like Japan, the image of Fudo Myoo and other religious symbols like him may be seen all too often due to his popularity. Hell, he may even exist in a kawaii anime form.

While the role of religion is rather ambiguous and losing sway in Japan, temples and shrines still stand as monuments in the way the churches and temples of the United States do not. Buddhist temples in Japan have withstood for five hundred years or more, while churches only one hundred years old or younger in the United States have already been re-purposed as bars or concert venues. Symbolic reality and the way we approach it has changed drastically, but it remains vital and relevant to the human experience in every new form. The role of symbol is decidedly different depending on what side of the Pacific Ocean you are on, but no matter the geographical location or context, these symbols make all the difference in how we come to terms with understanding ourselves and our world.

Having said all this about the supposed disconnect between the East and West concerning symbols, I must say this: The West is a very scientifically minded society, and spiritual symbols are definitely not of the scientific variety. Not to say religion and science are necessarily in different categories, but a large Buddhist god with blue skin emblazoned in fire may not exactly equate well with a neurological understanding of the brain. Neurology itself has been important in understanding much of the science behind spirituality, but keeping in line with Merton, it is not the scientific connection with ourselves we are looking for, but the symbolic one. If we do not understand the symbols around us, we cannot begin to understand ourselves. The mind does not communicate with us through our subconscious by means of equations and diagrams, but through symbols and events we barely understand at times.

The collective consciousness Carl Jung studied intently always communicated itself through universal means, ways that everybody could understand. Before we had diagrams, equations, 3-D representations, etc., we had paintings and drawings. On the Caves of Lascaux are representations of the natural the way man best interpreted and envisioned it, and it is that connection with the natural our relationship with symbolic meaning brings us back to in the end. The symbol asks us to consider to not forget the bigger picture, that we see the forest for the trees, but also the trees for the forest. Enlightenment is simply not understanding on a macro scale, but also on a micro scale. As Carl Jung said of the religious symbol:

“It is the role of religious symbols to give a meaning to the life of man. The Pueblo Indians believe that they are the sons of Father Sun, and this belief endows their life with a perspective (and a goal) that goes far beyond their limited existence. It gives them ample space for the unfolding of personality and permits them a full life as complete persons. Their plight is infinitely more satisfactory than that of a man in our own civilization who knows that he is (and will remain) nothing more than an underdog with no inner meaning to his life.”

The lofty symbol insofar as it provides grounding, provides meaning. Conscious rationality and external symbols seek to consolidate man’s journey outwards, to ever greater heights. As Merton and Jung understand it, the internal spiritual symbol does the opposite, putting us in tune with what it is that lies within ourselves and our own consciousness.  Merton himself, belonging to one of the more contemplative Catholic monastic orders, the Cistercians, was a man who knew well what it is that is conjured in the mind of men and women when all other distractions are taken away. The monastery, that silent retreat in the hills and forests and deserts of the world, are close to nature, this attuning the mind and soul to an deeper recognition of the real than what may be found among the concrete and ambitions of urbanity. For Merton and others who took up vows of silence, the closest home they may have ever had in their years of service was their own center. But where does this put Fudo Myoo? Fudo IS the center.

Fudo Myoo, more than any other Buddhist symbol during my years of practice, has come to represent the truth of man’s inner nature and the mission of the Buddhist. He is the “eternal and immutable diamond” of the Dharma. Not only that, he represents the fearful and enigmatic recognition of the power of the symbol for the Westerner who embraces Buddhism. The Western practitioner is usually the type of Buddhist who is seeking to escape the more fantastical trappings of traditional spirituality. This was true for me as well. Being a teenager who encountered Buddhism, the stripped-down, take-no-prisoners style of Zen was refreshing after having practiced only Catholicism for so many years.

For the past fifty to sixty years, Buddhism has been at the center of the liberal Protestant Reformation towards the East so many spiritual travelers embraced as the opposite of the rigid, image-rich, monotone religious traditions they had grown up with. As I studied the history behind these trends, the more I came to realize and accept what seems now to be an all-too-evident truth: Americans accept what they like and throw out all the things they don’t want to understand or be a part of their consciousness. Buddhism was not the stripped down, Eastern Protestantism so many hippies and yuppies had been looking for. Buddhism is not some sort of sleek iPad design where there is no reflection of your inner self except some sort of white serene landscape. Buddhism is a traditional religion as well, and nothing screams traditional and uneasy as Fudo Myoo does.

Visions of Fire and Gumdrops Dancing in My Head

Being a Western Buddhist is like being that guy who always attempts a diet. You stay on the diet for the first two to three days, maybe even a week, but you eventually fall off the horse. Such is the Western practitioner’s relationship to meditation, especially of the sitting variety. In between graduate school, working two jobs, and my internship, there is not much in the way of free time for…well, much of anything. The meditation group I have attended for the last five years was not a consistent option for me any longer as I had to work in the evenings when I did not have class. This meant I had to find different ways to engage with Buddhist practice and meditation, so I looked up a few methods. One that caught my eye was mantra yoga. I thought it was interesting and easy to slide into, as I was used to remembering and reciting prayers as part of my Catholic school upbringing. I could recite a few mantras here and there on a bus ride home, counting each individual bead on my prayer bracelets to keep track. “Easy,” I thought, “I can do this anywhere I am!”

So I did. Sometimes it would be om mani padme hum. Other times it would be om ma ra pa cha na dhi. I found one in particular I enjoyed, a mantra connected to the esoteric Buddhist tradition known as Shingon that I had started to study: Om Vairocana hum. As I wrote earlier, Vairocana is a Cosmic Buddha, the Supreme One, presenting the highest ideal. As I chanted this mantra, something strange started to happen – visions of a Buddha clothed in pure light started to fill into m head. These were never in my head before, and they did not represent anything I had seen with my own two eyes before. But I knew who it was – Vairocana. My mantra yoga had slowly seeped into dream yoga. As my dream yoga continued, something else started to happen as well. Vairocana started to slowly, but ever so surely, change into Fudo Myoo.

“What the hell is going on?”

In trying to understand what was going on in my head, I called up a friend of mine who is more knowledgeable about these matters and explained the matter to him. “It sounds like synchronicity, my brother,” he said. “Jung talked about it. You’re delving into some deep stuff.” The guru had led me on the trail of another spiritual journey, as he had always done. I looked into the matter and found information regarding what synchronicity exactly was. I had studied Jung before, reading up on his works that dealt with the collective unconscious and his research on alchemy, but I never thought one of his teachings would actually be a reality in my life. Jung described synchronicity as “temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” He put it in better terms when he later also described it as an “acausal connecting principle,” which meant that the fact that I was seeing Fudo Myoo in my dreams had no explanations from my daily life that would suffice. In a way, it was simply happening. There had been no conversion experience, no large upheaval i the way I approached meditation, even with the turn to different methods. There was simply a connection, a connection I had to accept. After practicing Zen Buddhism for six years, I had delved headfirst into a type of Buddhist practice and symbolism that I had never even been aware of  up until there was a blue ferocious deity all up in my face.

The more I delved into the experience I had with Fudo Myoo, the less it seemed like synchronicity and the more it appeared to be what Jung termed “Incoincident.” Incoincident is when you find out that at what first appeared to be coincidence turns out to be connected – “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward,” Jung had said.

Awe. Jung said I had a poor memory. How sweet.

I had thought he came out of nowhere, but when you start to chant the name of Fudo’s Cosmic counterpart, Vairocana, then some strange things are bound to happen. But why was it not Vairocana that came to me in these “visions” then? I had not done anything that was special of actually called upon certain particular deities, because I don’t believe the power to call upon deities to invade your membrane exists in the first place. Then I started to dig deeper…and deeper…and deeper…

I had typed “Fudo Myoo Japanese Buddhism” into Google. This is the page that came up.

Turns out there had always been a connection between Fudo and myself, I had just accidentally flipped the switch to ON. What Buddhist minks on Mount Koya intentionally attempt to do some complete doofus in Pittsburgh had accidentally done through years of floundering through Buddhism. Born in 1993, Fudo was considered my patron saint of sorts in the context of Shingon Buddhism. Fudo protects all those born under the sign of the Rooster. That being the case, Fudo had more right to be in my head than I had initially thought – my Chinese zodiac sign gave me a natural predisposition towards the visage and symbol of Fudo Myoo. Coming to those who called upon him, or those he deemed needed him, Fudo is the Buddhist Wisdom King that seeks to protect the world from evil spirits and convert nonbelievers. However, I was neither an evil spirit (at least I don’t think I am), nor was I a nonbeliever, having practiced and studied Buddhism since I was fourteen years old. But, I did just start learning about Shingon Buddhism.

Shingon Buddhism is the only other school of Vajrayana (Thunderbolt Vehicle) Buddhism that exists other than Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan and Shingon Buddhism have acclimated to their cultural trappings, but have their origin in the Yogacara school of Buddhism from Ancient India. While the practices of each have tended to become acclimated to their cultural surroundings, they both retain the practice of focusing on deities and sacred syllables. These manifest themselves in the manner of the Transformation Technique and Image-Manifesting Technique. The Transformation Technique begins with a practitioner focusing on a sacred syllable, in this instance it would be the sacred syllable of Fudo Myoo. After he focuses on the sacred syllable, he starts to transform it within his mind into an object associated with the deity, in this case it would be Fudo’s sword Kurikara. In this way, the practitioner themselves becomes Kurikara, embodying the nature of the sword to slice through evil and purify the Dharma. After the characteristics of Kurikara have been taken on by the practitioner, they then move on to visualizing Fudo himself. In visualizing Fudo Myoo, they learn to associate themselves with and gradually embody Fudo as well, merging themselves with the characteristics of the deity.

The Image-Manifesting Technique is itself a little more straightforward but more difficult to pull off. In this exercise, you subsume the body of the deity into your own. Imagine someone shrinking Fudo down to bite size and then eating him. After you have brought the deity into your own body, you are to imagine the deity taking your boy over, with the process happening in reverse, with the deity taking your body in his/her/it’s own. After you have gone through these two steps, they then merge – you are the deity and the deity is you. These are two different methods that are not supposed to make a human realize any sort of god-like powers, but to make the person more familiar with his or her own buddhahood, creating a conscious understanding of his or her own nature that leaves them more enlightened than they were before. Excluding any claims to enlightenment, I realized that I had fumbled my way into these two processes.

Utilizing visualization and chanting techniques as a way to supplement sitting practice, as well as using them in earlier instances of meditative practice throughout the years, probably helped lead to the moment where I started to envision Fudo Myoo. Fudo also being connected to me through my zodiac sign was only one of many other factors that may have brought the Wisdom King to the forefront of my mind. Focusing on sacred syllables and chants, which then turned into the bodies of Vairocana and Fudo perfectly fit the bill of the Transformation Technique, just not as it is usually achieved in the structured environment of the Shingon Buddhist Monastery. My own experiences have also made me realize how close the Transformation Technique is to the Image-Manifesting Technique, as the two easily bleed into each other if you stay conscious of the symbols your mentality has become accustomed to through practice. As the images of Fudo were always across from me in my mind, as the deity and practitioner usually face each other in the diagrams detailing the Image-Manifesting Technique, the practice of subsuming the other starts from there. This technique happens naturally through mindfulness and meditative practices, as long as your focus stays on the symbol that you have focused on or has revealed itself to you. Every time Fudo comes into my mind now, it is not simply Fudo himself that enters my mind, we are one and the same. Both covered in flames, both with blue skin, both carrying Kurikara. Words cannot express how awesome this feels!

If this sounds weird to you, do not doubt how weird it must have been for myself as someone who practices Buddhism but was never attracted to these esoteric practices. They always seemed far-fetched and rather antiquated techniques, ones that had their origin in what I believed to be outmoded forms of spiritual practice. I had been running away from symbols and their meaning, thinking they had no connection to my own experience and spirituality as I engaged with it from day to day. As with Jung, I came to see and experience symbols within the chambers of my own mind. As I engaged with these techniques more and more, I started to see Fudo as an expression of my own experience and consciousness, with Jung’s words once again ringing in my ears:

“…[this] light was my consciousness, the only light that I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest.”

Fudo Myoo was my consciousness expressing itself and making itself known through symbols that I could come to understand and accept more than it if it was a Hindu or Jewish symbol. Yet, I still had to learn how to interpret and come to know what message my consciousness was trying to communicate through the figure of Fudo Myoo.

Symbols as Messengers

“Lay practice is not like a monk’s job – it is how to help other people. First your family, then your friends, then your country and all beings: helping them is your obligation.” – Seung Sahn

As I stated earlier in this essay, Fudo is considered a Dharmapali, a defender of the Dharma and making sure it stays pure through the ages. Fudo comes off as ferocious to keep the evil-hearted at bay and strike fear in them for not following Buddhist teachings. As Fudo Myoo is described here:

“Fudo Myoo has a scary appearance to be able to frighten people into accepting…salvation…he converts anger into compassion and cuts the ties of negative feelings and demons to liberate us from suffering through self-control. He…battles evil with his immovable faith and his compassion.” 

Fudo represents the tenacity and passionate purity of the Dharma expressed through Buddhism as it is practiced by those who follow the path laid out by the Buddha himself. The path of the Dharma is not always peaceful and serene, just like everyone else, Buddhists can be angry and frustrated. But it is the duty of the Buddhist to use these feelings and transform them. Especially of the lay practitioner of Buddhism, of which I am one. We need to use all the various feelings that well up in us any given day and transform them into bodhicitta – the motivation for enlightenment and for all beings, brought about by great compassion we have for all beings. All the anger and hate the circumstances of our lives outside a monastery may well up within our being have to be tempered and transformed into mahakaruna – great compassion. Once we are able to make mahakaruna the center of our practice, of our discipline, of our daily action, we need to use this to bring the message of the Dharma to the world, a message that is supposed to bring peace and equanimity to all sentient beings. Just as Fudo Myoo did for Yuten he does for all those who he is a symbol of Buddhism for – he purifies the negativity within us so we can use it for goodness and the benefit of our fellow men. If anything, my mind was able to use Fudo as a symbol of what the purpose of my lay practice was supposed to be, and how the life a lay practitioner leads is one where he defends and propagates the Dharma through his or her actions in a world reticent to accept the teachings of the Buddha and let go of its ego-fueled illusion.

Fudo Myoo’s appearance also made me realize the importance of symbols and that running away from them in my life was futile. My brain, while eventually being able to comprehend and extrapolate upon abstract concepts, was never quite good at approaching the world through a logical and scientific lens. The religious, spiritual, and philosophical was always an easier way to approach the heavier ideas about life before I encountered them through the lens of science or math. Whether my mind veered one way or another, the symbols through which the abstractions of the universe are communicated would always be a constant. The idea of Fudo Myoo and what he represents being any less real than algebraic and geometric diagrams and symbols was false, a conclusion my post-modern mentality had already made about the older ways of the world. Just because a symbol seems less scientific or understandable makes it no less real and efficacious – in fact, if we have never encountered such a symbol, it may just give us the jolt we need. Symbols bring us back to the roots of a living, breathing tradition, the fruits of the human capacity to use inexplicable means to understand the world.

Symbols are a vital part of not only experimentation and communication with our own consciousness, but of grounding us in our experience of the world. We may spend days where we are grateful and selfless and others where we are selfish and angry, clouded by the needs and desires of our own ego-self. The symbols of our world can be archetypal, or as stated earlier, historical. They can lift us up out of the darkness of ego-self and make us realize the trials and tribulations of our own lives have been shared by others who have come before us. While we may not be monks or saints or great leaders of any sort, connecting with these symbols help us realize our capacity for greatness, to stand for truth and love in a world that desperately needs a lot of it. We can be the ones to give it to the world. Whether the symbol is an archetypal and metaphorical expression of certain aspects of our universe and our consciousness like Vairocana and Fudo Myoo, or an expression of real people, such as the saints or inspirational figures, they connect us with a fundamental aspect of life – ourselves and, in turn, each other.