- Saichō
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Saichō (最澄) 
Painting of SaichōSchool Tendai Personal Born September 15, 767 Died June 26, 822 (age 55) Senior posting Title Founder of Tendai Buddhism Religious career Teacher Gyōhyō (行表) Saichō (最澄, September 15, 767 – June 26, 822) was a Japanese Buddhist monk credited with founding the Tendai school in Japan, based around the Chinese Tiantai tradition he was exposed to during his trip to China beginning in 804. He founded the temple and headquarters of Tendai at Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei near Kyoto. He is also said to have been the first to bring tea to Japan. After his death, he was awarded the posthumous title of Dengyō Daishi (伝教大師).
Contents
Life
"Saicho was born into a family of devout Buddhists. At the age of twelve he went to study at the provincial temple in Omi. There he studied under Gyohyo (722-797), a disciple of Tao-hsiian (702-760), the Chinese monk who had brought Northern School Ch'an, Kegon (Chin., Hua-yen) teachings, and the Fan wang precepts to Japan in 736. Saicho's studies of meditation and Kegon "one-vehicle" (Skt., ekayana; Jpn., ichijō) doctrines during this period influenced his lifelong doctrinal predilections. Shortly after he was ordained in 785, he decided to climb Mount Hiei. He remained there for approximately a decade to meditate and study. During his retreat, Saicho read about Chinese T'ien-t'ai meditation practice in Kegon texts and managed to obtain several T'ient'ai texts that had been brought to Japan by Chien-chen (Ganjin, 688-763) in 754 but had subsequently been ignored by Japanese monks."
The capital of Japan was moved from Nara to Nagaoka in 784, and then to Kyoto in 795. Mount Hiei was located to the northeast of Kyoto, a direction considered dangerous by geomancers, but Saicho's presence on the mountain protected the new capital and brought him to the attention of the court. In addition, the court was interested in reforming Buddhism by patronizing serious monks without political aspirations and by supporting those teachings that would bridge the traditional rivalry between the Hosso (Yogacara) and Sanron (Madhyamika) schools. Soon various court nobles, especially those of the Wake clan, began to show an interest in Saicho."
Trip to China
"In 804 and 805 Saichō made an eleven-month trip to China, the aim of which was to bring to Japan the authentic transmission of the T’ient’ai Dharma lineage. During the last month of his stay on Chinese soil, while awaiting the arrival of his ship at the port city of Ming-chou, Saichō traveled to Yüeh-chou to collect additional Buddhist texts."
[2] This trip became the basis of Tendai Buddhism after he returned. He found in T'ien t'ai a compelling theoretical teaching based on the concept of Ichinen Sanzen (3000 worlds in a Momentary State of Existence) and the Lotus Sutra. From those teachers he collected Sutras and learned as much as he could planning to bring them to Japan. He founded what came to be called the Tendai School when he returned.
Relationship with Kūkai
Saichō traveled to China along with a number of other young monks, one of whom was named Kūkai. Saichō befriended him during his trip to China who traveled with him going and coming. This turned out to be pivotal to the future development of Buddhism.
"During the last month of his stay on Chinese soil, while awaiting the arrival of his ship at the port city of Ming-chou, Saichō traveled to Yüeh-chou to collect additional Buddhist texts. At Lung-hsing ssu 龍興寺 Saichō chanced to meet the priest Shun-hsiao"
,[3] and likewise returned with esoteric (tantric) Buddhist texts. Saicho was entranced with the new material and wanted to learn more. On the trip back he found that Kukai had studied these teachings in depth and had an entire library of tantric materials.
This friendship would influence the future of Japanese Tendai.
“ "SAICHŌ 最澄 AND KŪKAI 空海 are renowned as the founders, respectively, of the Japanese Tendai and Shingon schools, both of which grew into influential institutions of continuing importance even today. The two figures cooperated, moreover, in an effort to transplant the seed of esoteric Buddhism (mikkyō) to the cultural soil of Japan. Saichō, for example, prepared the way for Kūkai—still largely unrecognized after his return from T’ang China—to perform the Mikkyō initiation ritual of abhiṣeka (kanjō 灌頂) for the high priests of the Nara Buddhist establishment and the dignitaries of the imperial" Heian court.[4]" ” It was Saichō performed the abhiṣeka, or initiatory ritual, for the court. "Saichō also endorsed the court’s bequest to Kūkai of the mountain temple of Takaosan-ji northwest of Kyoto as the first center for Kūkai’s Shingon school. Kūkai, in turn, responded to Saichō’s wish to incorporate Mikkyō into the eclectic system of Tendai by training Saichō and his disciples in the esoteric Buddhist rituals and by lending Saichō various Mikkyō texts that he had brought with him from China.[5]"
Founding of Tendai
On his return from China, Saichō worked hard to win recognition from the court and "in the first month of 806, Saichō’s Tendai Lotus school (Tendai hokke shū 天台法華宗) won official recognition when the court of the ailing emperor Kanmu issued another edict, this one permitting two annual ordinands (nenbundosha) for Saichō’s new school on Mt. Hiei. This edict states that, following Saichō’s request, the ordinands would be divided between two curricula: the shanagō course, centering on the study of the Mahavairocana Sūtra (this was the Mikkyō curriculum, shana being the abbreviation for Birushana, the Japanese transliteration of Vairocana), and the shikangō course, based on the study of the Mo-ho chih-kuan, the seminal work of the T’ien-t’ai patriarch Chih-i 智顗 (538–597) (this was the Tendai curriculum, shikan being the Japanese reading of Chih-i’s central practice of chih-kuan [cessation and contemplation]) (Kenkairon engi, DZ 1, pp. 294–96). Thus from its very inception the Tendai Lotus school was equally based on Mikkyō and T’ien-t’ai. It was as a subdivision of Saichō’s new school that Mikkyō first received the official acknowledgment of the imperial court and became a proper subject of study in Japanese Buddhism.[6]"
"[I]n 813 Saichō composed the Ehyō tendaishū (DZ 1, pp. 343–66), which argues that the principal Buddhist masters of China and Korea all relied on T’ien-t’ai doctrine in composing their own works. By identifying numerous references to and quotes from T’ient’ai treatises in the works of Chi-tsang 吉蔵 of the San-lun 三論 school, Chih-chou of the Fa-hsiang 法相 school, Fa-tsang of the Huayen 華嚴 school, I-hsing of Mikkyō, and other prominent teachers, Saichō asserted that T’ien-t’ai formed the foundation for all major Buddhist schools in East Asia."
Previous to Saicho, all monastic ordinations took place at Todaiji temple under the ancient Vinaya code, but Saichō intended to found his school as a strictly Mahayana institution and ordain monks using the Bodhisattva Vows only. Despite intense opposition from the traditional Buddhist schools in Nara, his request was granted by Emperor Saga in 822, several days after Saichō died. This was the fruit of years of effort and a formal debate.[7]"
Exoteric Syncretic tradition versus esotericism
Japanese
Buddhism
Schools Hosso • Kegon • Ritsu • Tendai • Shingon • Pure Land • Zen • Nichiren Founders Saichō • Kūkai • Hōnen • Shinran • Dōgen • Eisai • Ingen • Nichiren Sacred Texts Glossary of
Japanese Buddhism
