Amoghavajra was a prolific translator who became one of the most politically powerful Buddhist monks in Chinese history and is acknowledged as one of the Eight Patriarchs of the Doctrine in Shingon Buddhism.

Shingon is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asian Buddhism. It is sometimes also called Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, or Eastern Esotericism. The word shingon is the Japanese reading of the Chinese word 真言, which is the translation of the Sanskrit word mantra.