The Kaikyōge

The kaikyōge is the verse recited before entering the body of a sutra. Because it is the verse for opening the sutra, it is called the kaikyōge, the sutra-opening verse.

In four lines of twenty-eight characters, it says what it means to encounter the teaching. The verse runs as follows.

The first two lines praise the preciousness of the teaching and the difficulty of encountering it. The last two express the joy of having encountered it now, and the wish to understand it. A Ming-dynasty commentary, the Annotated Essentials of the Ritual Exposition of the Diamond Sutra (Xiaoshi jingang jing keyi huiyao zhujie, Xuzangjing (X) No. 467), explains it the same way: the first two lines praise how hard the wondrous Dharma is to meet, and the last two are the joyful arising of the vow. Read in order, the four lines move through the heart of monbō, hearing the Dharma: praising, lamenting, realizing, and aspiring.

The kalpa of the second line is the unit the sutras use for very long stretches of time. The sutras describe its length with illustrations. Imagine a great rock, one yojana on a side. Once every hundred years a heavenly being descends and brushes it once, gently, with the sleeve of a celestial robe. Even when the rock has been worn away to nothing, one kalpa has still not ended. This is the illustration known as the rock kalpa. A yojana is an ancient Indian unit of distance. In the same vein there is the mustard-seed kalpa: an iron citadel filled with mustard seeds, with a single seed removed once every hundred years.

The kaikyōge says the teaching is hard to meet even in "a hundred thousand myriad" such kalpas, and so expresses how rare it is to encounter the teaching.

The sutras also have a parable about the difficulty of the encounter itself. A single log floats on the great ocean, with one small hole in it. At the bottom of the sea lives a blind turtle that surfaces only once every hundred years. As the turtle lifts its head, its neck happens to slip into that hole. To be born in human form and encounter the Buddha's teaching is harder still. This is the parable of the blind turtle and the floating log. After telling it, the Buddha continues: "And you have now obtained all of these things so hard to obtain." The parable is told to make us notice what we already have. The "I now" of the kaikyōge's third line is likewise the realization that we have encountered the teaching now.

These are illustrations to help us picture the length of a kalpa. In its proper sense, a kalpa is one cycle of the world: the world takes form, living beings come to dwell in it, it eventually breaks apart, and it returns to empty void. This one cycle is called a mahākalpa, and the Abhidharmakośa divides it into four stages: formation, abiding, destruction, and emptiness. It is this mahākalpa that the kaikyōge multiplies a hundred thousand myriad times.

Who composed the kaikyōge, and when, is not easy to answer. If it were a passage from a sutra, naming the sutra would settle the matter, but the kaikyōge does not appear in this exact form in any sutra. In China it is said that Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang composed it.

So we searched the surviving Buddhist literature for the four lines and for the phrases they are built from. The search centered on the full-text databases of the Chinese Buddhist canon (CBETA and SAT) and extended to the Pāli Tipiṭaka, critical editions of Sanskrit texts, the Tibetan canon, the documents recovered from Dunhuang, and the Complete Works of the Jōdo School.

The oldest book containing the kaikyōge with all four lines is the Commentary on the Diamond Sutra of the Southern Song, with a preface dated 1179. The four lines do not appear together in the literature up through the Tang dynasty, and no text records an author's name. On the other hand, the wording of three of the four lines comes from three different sutras.

The wording of the first, second, and fourth lines comes from Mahāyāna scriptures that have long been widely read. The "I now" of the third line is also found in the Lotus Sutra. Here are three of the main sources, with their original texts.

A full-text search of the Chinese Buddhist canon shows fairly clearly when the kaikyōge with all four lines appears in the literature.

The oldest surviving book is the Commentary on the Diamond Sutra by the Southern Song Chan monk Yefu Daochuan (Yabu Dōsen in Japanese), with a preface dated 1179. At its head, as the preliminaries performed before reading the Diamond Sutra, it gives the mantra for purifying the karma of speech, the invocation of the Eight Vajra Beings, and the sutra-opening verse. The kaikyōge first appears in the popular practice of reciting the Diamond Sutra. In the Yuan dynasty it was taken into the monastic codes of the Chan and Vinaya schools, the Chanlin beiyong qinggui (author's preface dated 1311) and the Lüyuan shigui (1324). In the Ming it entered the books of daily recitation and reached its present form.

One account of the kaikyōge's origin says that Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang composed it out of joy when the new translation of the Flower Garland Sutra was completed. The story is widely cherished in China.

The written record shows the following. The preface the empress herself wrote for the Flower Garland Sutra (699) survives in full, and the kaikyōge is not in it. No Tang or Song record attributing the verse to her has been found in the Chinese Buddhist canon. The four lines first appear in the literature about 480 years after the translation of the Flower Garland Sutra. The story itself enters the written record in the modern era. The oldest confirmed record is a remark in the Shuǐchàn shēnyì shū (Commentary on the Meaning of the Water Repentance Liturgy) by the late Qing and Republican-era Tiantai master Dixian (1858–1932): "by tradition this verse is said to be a composition of Empress Wu." Dixian, too, records it as a tradition (相傳).

The legend has a root. The verse on which the second line is modeled, "hard to hear even in a hundred thousand myriad kalpas," is in the eighty-fascicle Flower Garland Sutra translated by imperial decree of Empress Wu. Moreover, the preface the empress wrote with her own hand says, "in this latter age, long after the Buddha's passing, I have unexpectedly encountered the golden words of the Buddha" and "one glimpse of the precious verses filled my heart with joy." The second line comes from the empress's Flower Garland Sutra, and her preface speaks of the joy of encountering the teaching. I believe these two came together, and so it came to be told that the empress composed this verse.

The wording of the kaikyōge differs slightly by period and place.

The Yuan-dynasty Chanlin beiyong qinggui gives the second line as "hard to meet even in a hundred thousand myriad of myriads" (百千万億難遭遇). The Ming-dynasty precept-recitation manuals have the form "hard to meet even in a hundred thousand myriad of myriads of kalpas" (百千万億劫難遇), and some recitation books in modern China close the line with "hard to come upon" (難得値). The Qing-dynasty Repentance Liturgy of the Compassionate Medicine Buddha recasts the fourth line as "may I understand the meaning of the Tathāgata's repentance rite" (願解如来懺法義), making it a verse for the repentance liturgy.

The form used in Nichiren Buddhism, "may I understand the foremost meaning of the Tathāgata," does not appear in the Chinese Buddhist canon. It derives from an Edo-period printed text, the Dokuju Hokke yōjinshō (1681), and is a form that arose in Japan.

In each setting of recitation, the verse has changed little by little, toward forms easier to voice aloud and forms suited to the purpose of each Dharma assembly. The variations in wording show that the verse has been used in recitation all along.

The kaikyōge is a verse born in Chinese-language Buddhism. No original text that corresponds to it word for word has been found in the Pāli, Sanskrit, or Tibetan literature.

The heart of the verse, however, goes back to the oldest Buddhist scriptures. The Pāli Dhammapada says, "hard is the arising of buddhas"; the sutra of the blind turtle and the floating log says, "you have now obtained these things so hard to obtain." The Sanskrit Gaṇḍavyūha has a verse built the same way as the second line: "even through a hundred koṭis of kalpas."

This heart, inherited from India, was passed down in different forms in each language sphere. In the Chinese-language world it became a four-line verse recited before the sutras. In Tibet it became a subject of practice: the repeated contemplation of "the freedoms and endowments so hard to obtain," that is, how hard it is to gain this human body with all its freedoms and favorable conditions. In the Pāli world it has been passed down as a teaching told in parables.

From here we turn to how Shingon Buddhism reads the verse. The kaikyōge took shape after the time of Kōbō Daishi Kūkai. Yet the same heart as this verse is clearly written in the Darijing shu, the foundational commentary of Shingon Buddhism, and in Kōbō Daishi's own works.

The Darijing shu (Commentary on the Mahāvairocana Sutra), expounded by Śubhakarasiṃha and recorded by Yixing, fascicle two (Taishō No. 1796), reads two meanings into the word kalpa that appears in the second line: time, and deluded attachment. It calls the three delusions, coarse, fine, and extremely fine, the "three kalpas," and teaches that one who transcends these three delusions within a single lifetime becomes a buddha in that very life. This leads to the teaching of sokushin jōbutsu, attaining buddhahood in this very body. Read as delusion, the kalpa is no longer a story of unimaginable time but a teaching about going beyond the delusions of this moment.

In the order of service of the Shikoku Eighty-Eight Sacred Sites, the kaikyōge is recited after the verse of repentance, the Three Refuges and their confirmation, the Ten Good Precepts, the mantra of arousing the aspiration for awakening, and the mantra of the samaya precepts; the Heart Sutra follows it. One repents of one's sins, takes refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, keeps the precepts, and arouses the aspiration for awakening. With the heart made ready, one opens the sutra with the kaikyōge.

Please recite it slowly, keeping in mind its meaning: "a teaching so hard to meet, and I am meeting it now." Then go on to the Heart Sutra. Whether you come by car, by bus, or on foot, the visit begins with the same verse.

Byōdōji is the twenty-second temple of the Shikoku pilgrimage. When you recite these four lines before the main hall, we hope you will remember that these words have come down to you over more than a thousand years from the Lotus Sutra and the Flower Garland Sutra.

The kaikyōge is recited in many schools, but the form of the verse and the occasion for reciting it differ from school to school.

The kaikyōge is a verse whose author's name has not been handed down. Built on words from the Lotus Sutra and the Flower Garland Sutra, and carrying on the custom of the Tang sutra lectures, it came together as four lines in the Diamond Sutra recitation of the Southern Song, and has been refined through recitation ever since.

Because its author's name is not handed down, this verse is recited as the words of everyone who opens a sutra. The "I" of the third line, "I now," is always the person reciting it. Those who read the Diamond Sutra in China more than eight hundred years ago recited "I now" as their own words, and so do you, sitting before the Buddha today. The next time you recite a sutra, try keeping this in mind: "a teaching so hard to meet, and I am meeting it now."