Eye-opening ceremony
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eye-opening ceremony
開眼供養 ( Jpn kaigen-kuyo )
Also, "opening of the eyes" ceremony.
A ceremony to "open the eyes" of, or consecrate, newly created statues or painted images of a Buddha.
It is performed in the belief that the image can thereby be endowed with spiritual properties.
Through this ceremony, in which a Buddhist teaching is invoked, the image is believed to become equal to the living Buddha.
This idea accords with the principle of the attainment of Buddhahood by insentient beings or the enlightenment of plants.
"Plants" here refers to all insentient things.
Nichiren (1222-1282) attributes the concept of the enlightenment of plants to T'ient'ai's doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life derived from the Lotus Sutra, and states that the eye-opening ceremony of a Buddhist statue or image is effective only when conducted on the basis of the Lotus Sutra.