What Is Acala (Fudō Myōō)

Acala (Fudō Myōō) is the Wisdom King most widely revered in Japan, the principal deity of prayers to ward off misfortune and calamity. At Byōdōji, on the night of the 28th of every month, we perform the Fudō goma before Acala. The goma is an esoteric rite in which the sacred fire of wisdom is kindled in a hearth.

Wisdom Kings (myōō) are deities who take a deliberately severe form to guide those who are hard to lead by gentle teaching alone. Acala stands at their center. Esoteric Buddhism teaches that he is the kyōryō rinjin of Mahāvairocana, the embodiment that carries out his teaching. Acala has a name and form of his own, yet in his wrathful aspect he shows Mahāvairocana's saving activity.

Acala dwells always amid flames, and with that fire he burns away every hindrance and the afflictions that torment the mind. With the sword in his right hand he cuts through delusion; with the lasso in his left he draws in those who are lost and leads them toward awakening. Seated firmly upon a great rock, he expresses a concentration that nothing can disturb.

In Sanskrit, Acalanātha. The name means "the Immovable One." He is also called Shō Mudō-son, the Sacred Immovable One.

One of the texts that call Acala a manifestation of Mahāvairocana is the Ritual Manual for the Secret Attainment of the Forty-Eight Messengers of the Victorious Acala. It was compiled by imperial command by the Tripiṭaka master Amoghavajra and Bianzhi (遍智), a Brahmin monk from India.

The ritual manuals describe Acala's form in detail. A single braid hangs down on his left, and one eye is narrowed. His right hand grasps a sharp sword, his left holds a lasso, and he sits upon a great rock. In Japan, images with the heaven-and-earth eyes (tenchigan), the right eye looking up to heaven and the left down to earth, became widespread, and his body came to be shown dark blue-black.

Goma is a rite in which the sacred fire of wisdom is kindled in a hearth and offering sticks and other offerings are given to carry prayers to the Buddha. The Mahāvairocana Sūtra teaches two kinds of goma, outer and inner. In another passage, the bodhisattva Vajrapāṇi, speaking to the Buddha, likens the Buddha's wisdom, which destroys delusion, to a fire that burns firewood.

The ritual manual sings of Acala's gaze in a hymn of praise (san), a verse that extols a buddha.

The Five Wisdom Kings place Acala at the center, with four Wisdom Kings guarding the four directions. The arrangement is well known in Japanese Shingon. The four are Trailokyavijaya (Gōzanze), who subdues the three poisons; Kuṇḍali (Gundari), who removes hindrances; Yamāntaka (Daiitoku), who overcomes enemies and evil; and Vajrayakṣa (Kongō Yasha), who crushes demons. In the Heian capital, powerful houses often sponsored the Five-Altar Rite (godanhō), in which the five deities are enshrined on five altars and prayers are offered for protection from calamity and for peace.

In its instructions for drawing the maṇḍala, the Mahāvairocana Sūtra places Acala's seat below Mahāvairocana, to the southwest. As the principal deity of rites for averting calamity, Acala has held a central place in esoteric practice.

Fudō is the Wisdom King most beloved in Japan, long revered as the principal deity of prayers for blessings in this life.

Byōdōji, the twenty-second station of the Shikoku Eighty-Eight Sacred Sites and a temple of the Kōyasan Shingon school, holds deep devotion to Fudō and performs the Fudō goma on the night of the 28th of every month. The 28th is Fudō's ennichi.

The Acala enshrined at Byōdōji is a seated image in joined-woodblock construction (yosegi-zukuri), held to date from the Edo period. He grasps a sharp sword in his right hand and a lasso in his left, with the heaven-and-earth eyes and bared fangs of a wrathful form.

Byōdōji also performs the Shō Hassenmai-ku, a great goma in which eight thousand offering sticks are cast into the flames, as a major rite with Acala as its principal deity. The eight-thousand-stick goma has been handed down as one of the great practices of the Fudō rite. The twelfth-century Shoson yōshō sets out its procedure, and the Gojikkanshō of the late-twelfth-century scholar-monk Kōnen records the same procedure. The Hishō kuketsu records an oral teaching that, of the many separate rites in the ritual manuals, the only ones handed down at Tō-ji are Fudō's eight thousand sticks and the Kokūzō gumonji practice, in which the mantra of Ākāśagarbha is recited a million times.

The Shō Hassenmai-ku is a rite performed chiefly for averting calamity (sokusai). The monthly Fudō goma is the center of everyday devotion to Acala.

At Byōdōji, we offer prayers on the wisdom-fire of the goma for warding off misfortune and calamity, for protection from harm and long life, and for every wish to cut off disaster and guard the body. The links below explain how to attend and how to apply. You can also take part online.