Myōe Kōben 明惠高辨 / 明惠房高辨 (1173–1232) — Late-Heian to early-Kamakura Japanese Kegon 華嚴 and Shingon 真言 scholar-monk, founder and lifelong abbot of Kōzan-ji 高山寺 at Toganoo 栂尾 (north-west of Kyoto). He is conventionally called Myōeshōnin 明惠上人 (“the venerable Myōe”) and the 栂尾上人 (“the venerable of Toganoo”). Born 21 February 1173; died 11 February 1232.
Myōe is one of the most distinctive religious figures of the early Kamakura, known both for his scholastic Buddhist commentaries (across the Kegon, Shingon, and Yogācāra traditions) and for his lifelong dream-journal Yume no ki 夢記 — the principal medieval Japanese record of dreams as a religious discipline. He was a vocal critic of Hōnen’s 法然 Senchaku hongan nenbutsu (in his Zaijarin 摧邪輪, 1212), advocating instead a Kegon-Shingon synthesis centered on the Avataṃsaka-sūtra and on the Esoteric 光明眞言 (Mantra of Light) cult.
His teacher was Eisai 榮西 (1141–1215, founder of Japanese Rinzai Zen) — recorded in his DILA authority entry as his teacher-relation — but his core scholastic formation was in the Kegon doctrinal tradition (the Daigo-ji and Tōdai-ji Kegon lineages), to which he added a deep engagement with Shingon Esoteric practice. He is regarded as the principal medieval-Japanese revivalist of the Kegon school after its long Heian eclipse.
His extant works in the Buddhist canon include:
- Bùkōng juànsuǒ pílúzhēnà fó dàguàndǐng guāngmíng zhēnyán jùyì shì 不空羂索毘盧遮那佛大灌頂光明眞言句義釋 (KR6j0192, T61n2245) — his phrase-by-phrase explanation of the Mantra of Light (光明眞言), composed 1222 CE.
- Kegon contemplative trilogy of 1220–1221, all composed at the Kamo Sub-Temple in a single fifteen-month period:
- KR6t0026 Huāyán xìnzhǒng yì 華嚴信種義 (T72n2330), 1 fasc., Jōkyū 3 (= 1221), composed for the Kamo shrine-officer Hisatsugu 久繼;
- KR6t0027 Huāyán xiūchán guānzhào rù jiětuō mén yì 華嚴修禪觀照入解脱門義 (T72n2331), 2 fasc., Jōkyū 2 (= 1220), composed at the Sekisui-in;
- KR6t0028 Huāyán fóguāng sānmèi guān mì bǎozàng 華嚴佛光三昧觀祕寶藏 (T72n2332), 2 fasc., Jōkyū 3 (= 1221), an explicitly esoteric Kegon-Shingon ritual-meditation manual on the Buddha-Light samādhi.
He is also the author of the Zaijarin (anti-Hōnen polemic), the Saijarin shōgon-ki 摧邪輪莊嚴記, the Kegon shintō myōgi shō 華嚴信種義抄, the Yume no ki dream-journal, and numerous Kegon-school lecture-notes and meditation manuals.
The catalog meta for KR6j0192 gives his name as 高辧 (with the bian graph in its non-standard form); DILA, modern reference works, and the CANWWW data give 高辨 (the standard form). Both refer to the same person; this note uses 高辨 as the canonical filename.
Source: DILA Buddhist Person Authority A001007; Wikidata Q2026000; Japanese Wikipedia entry for Myōe 明惠; standard medieval-Japanese-Buddhist biographical sources.