Kūkai as an enlightened transculturalist: Reweaving cultural threads from the universal womb in this life1

Abstract

Transculturality presupposes an existential crisis even at one’s so-called zenith of success. It summons its bearer to dare take a vertical fall into a wormhole whereby any excess materiality validating one’s identity becomes undone. In fact, in the aftermath of this very bodily constraint, one can arrive at an evolutionarily critical threshold of clarity towards liberation. No longer measurable by convention, this realm is at once simple and profound as nature itself.