Master Ekan is a monk of the Shingon sect of Buddhsm in Japan. He has the title of Great Teacher, and is the Abbot of Saifukuji Temple in Kagoshima. The title of Great Teacher was first conferred on the founder of the Shingon sect, Kaiku Kobo Daishi, by the Japanese emperor. This was seven hundred years ago, and the lineage has continued without interruption to this day. Five hundred years ago, an ancestor of Master Ekan's became a member of the sect, and so have succeeding generations of his family. Master Ekan himself has had a notable career in Shingon, besides having distinguished himself in several martial arts, in flower arrangement, poetry and medicine. He is also famous as a healer in the Shingon tradition. The Shingon sect continues the tradition of tantric or esoteric Buddhism, which originated in India and came to Japan via China. Along with this tradition, it honours the ancestors, the mountain gods and the spirits of nature. It pictures the world as a macrocosm, the Great Universe, and a man or woman as its microcosm or Small World. These two are essentially one and the aim of Shingon is to make them so in practice according to Kobo Daishi's precept: We can all become Buddha in this life. In the same spirit, here devoted to world peace, Master Ekan says: If each of us can be happy, all of us can be happy. This is the Shingon way.