mida-no-jouin　弥陀定印

KEY WORD :　art history / sculptures

Also mida jouin. Lit. Amida's meditation mudra. Mida is an abbreviation of *Amida 阿弥陀 (Sk: Amitabha/Amitayus), and jouin is an abbreviation of *zenjou-in 禅定印 (meditation mudra). Also known as rikitan-in 力端印. A hand gesture formed by placing both hands in the lap with the palms turned upwards and the middle, third and little fingers of both hands interlocked; both thumbs touch the tips of both forefingers, which are bent with the third phalanges back to back. The mida-no-jouin is described in the KONGOUCHOU YUGA KANJIZAIOU NYORAI SHUGYOUHOU 金剛頂瑜伽観自在王如来修行法, and this has been thought to be the textual source of this mudra. But the original Sanskrit manuscript of this text has no known Tibetan translation. Therefore, in many other countries, Amida forms not the mida-no-jouin but the ordinary meditation mudra *hokkai jouin 法界定印 in Japan, and in China, examples of this mudra are very rare. With the emergence of Esoteric Buddhism mikkyou 密教, the meditation mudra became the distinctive feature of Amida in almost all expressions of Mahayana Buddhism. But in the Japanese Buddhist pantheon *Dainichi 大日 in the *Taizoukai mandara 胎蔵界曼荼羅 also displays the meditation mudra, and the need to distinguish between these two deities led to the differentiation of two types of meditation mudra, namely, Amida's mida-no-jouin and Dainichi's hokkai jouin .

REFERENCES:

*Amida kubon-in 阿弥陀九品印

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