Kumanokodo’s mysterious connections with India through Bodhisatva of compassion

Beside Nachi Taisha stands Seigantoji, a Buddhist temple closely connected with the shrine. Its brilliant red three-storey pagoda, with Nachi Waterfall cascading behind it, has become one of the most recognisable images of Kumano. Yet what interested me most was not the famous view, but a story connected with the origins of the temple.

According to tradition, Seigantoji was founded by an Indian monk known as Ragyou Shonin, who is said to have arrived in Kumano in ancient times. After undertaking rigorous spiritual practice near Nachi Waterfall, he experienced a vision of Kannon, the Buddhist Bodhisattva of compassion. A temple was eventually established here, and Seigantoji later became the first temple of the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage, linking thirty-three temples dedicated to Kannon across western Japan. Whether Ragyou Shonin was a historical figure or belongs more to the world of religious legend, I found it fascinating that the origin story of a temple deep in the mountains of Kumano reaches all the way back to India.

There is, of course, a much better documented Indian presence in the history of Japanese Buddhism. Centuries later, the Indian monk Bodhisena travelled to Japan and took part in the great eye-opening ceremony for the Great Buddha at Todaiji in Nara in the eighth century. But the story of Ragyou Shonin made me think about something broader: what happens to a belief when it travels?

When Beliefs Travel

When a belief travels across a continent, it never remains exactly the same. As it encounters different landscapes, traditions, languages, and ways of perceiving the divine, it gradually transforms into something new. That is what happened to Buddhism in Japan.

Buddhism travelled from India through China and Korea before reaching Japan in the sixth century. According to the official record, an Indian Buddhist monk named Bodhisena from Tamil Nadu travelled from India to Japan via China, and performed the eye-opening ceremony for the Great Buddha at Tōdai-ji in Nara in 752. It was more than 1,200 years ago, an Indian monk stood in Nara and opened the eyes of Japan’s Great Buddha.

There it encountered an already deeply rooted reverence for mountains, forests, rocks, rivers, waterfalls, and other forces of nature. Rather than simply replacing these older beliefs, Buddhism gradually became intertwined with them. One particularly beautiful example is Kannon. The Bodhisattva of compassion known as Avalokiteshvara in India eventually became Kannon in Japan. Even the name of Avalokiteshvara’s sacred abode travelled and changed. Potalaka became Fudaraku in Japanese.

In Kumano, another transformation took place. From ancient times, Japanese people imagined Tokoyo, a distant and eternal realm of the divine somewhere beyond the sea. When this ancient Japanese idea encountered Buddhist devotion to Kannon and the belief in the distant paradise of Fudaraku, the two ideas began to merge. Out of this meeting emerged one of the most extraordinary practices associated with Kumano: Fudaraku Tokai, literally “crossing the sea to Fudaraku.”

Crossing the Sea to Fudaraku

For some Buddhist practitioners, Fudaraku was not simply a symbolic paradise. They believed it might actually be reached by travelling across the ocean. From the Kumano coast, practitioners set out to sea in small boats with only limited supplies of food and oil. In some accounts, once they had boarded, the cabin was sealed, leaving them with no intention of returning. They entrusted themselves to the currents, believing that somewhere beyond the horizon lay Fudaraku, the sacred realm of Kannon.

The thought is difficult to comprehend from a modern perspective. This was not a pilgrimage with a planned route and a safe return. The destination lay beyond the known world.

The sea itself became the path

The story becomes even more intriguing when traced back towards India. Potalaka, the sacred abode of Avalokiteshvara, was imagined in Buddhist traditions in different ways, and over the centuries various places in Asia came to be associated with it. Some traditions have connected this sacred mountain with the Pothigai Hills of Tamil Nadu in southern India, themselves a landscape rich in ancient traditions of spiritual practice.

Standing in Kumano, I found this connection between India and Japan fascinating. An idea that had begun its journey in India travelled across Asia, changed languages and names, encountered the Japanese belief in a sacred world beyond the sea, and eventually became woven into the spiritual landscape of Kumano.

Perhaps this is what happens when beliefs travel. They do not simply move from one place to another like objects carried in a suitcase. They absorb something from every landscape they pass through. They acquire new stories and new forms, while becoming intertwined with beliefs that were already there. And in Kumano, that transformation did not remain an abstract idea. People were willing to entrust their lives to it.

Looking out from Nachi Beach towards the vast Pacific, I found myself thinking again about those small boats disappearing towards the horizon. From this shore, perhaps the ocean did not appear to be the end of the known world at all. Perhaps it looked like the beginning of another one.