Wind, waters, stupas, mandalas: Fetal Buddhahood in Shingon

Abstract

Buddhist medical theory often describes the early stages of human gestation in terms of five one-week long stages. Certain Shingon texts take this theory and make of it a spiritual motif in which these five weeks, and by exten­ sion the whole term of human gestation, is construed of as a privileged period of nirvanic experience spent in a pre-samsaric pocket universe. In its developed representations this notion involves the mandalization of the maternal womb and the divinization of the growing fetus. The formula­ tion of five steps further allows the motif to incorporate and deploy a num­ ber of other immanental pentads that ultimately implicate all of reality in a modality of nondual sacrality. This study examines five Shingon texts in which this theme emerges and develops.