harm; here, however, a lavatory promises ruin. Such beliefs much affected the lives of the inhabitants.
There was, for example, the belief that evil comes from the northeast. Confucious had slept with his head in that direction and so, consequently did a number of Japanese emperors. Shirakawa, insisted upon it, saying that by lying on his right side with his head to the northeast he could then emulate Buddha's posture as he entered Nirvana. But was this safe, someone wondered and someone else remarked that the great Ise Shrine lay to the south and questioned whether it were proper for the imperial highness to sleep with his feet toward the great shrine. No answer is recorded, but a decision was early reached to avoid the north. Sei Shonagon had included in her listing of Things that People Despise: "The north side of the house."
These geographical ordinances are in some sense still fundamental to Japanese architecture. For example, in any domestic building, on no account should the lavatory, the entrance, or the kitchen be placed on a northeast-southwest axis. The northeast is thought the home of evil and the southwest its compliment. It might be said that there was some original practical reason for this. Southwest winds would tend to fan flames from the kitchen. Whatever—in Japan such reason was not consulted and the Chinese rules were observed.
They still are. Even in a new house, the lavatory is found next to the entryway (and the living room) because this is one way to avoid the dreaded northeast-southwest axis. Even today the home architect consults the architectural soothsayer, who has been known to later sell amulets for points not in order. Even now many buildings in Kyoto (including the imperial palace) have their northeast corners cut off to deflect evil. But before we make too merry over this exhibition of superstitious ignorance it would be well to count the number of hotels in the West which (in by far the preponderance of cases) have no thirteenth floor.
One of the results of geomancy was that the northeast became the dangerous direction in general as well as in particular. The great militant monasteries on Mount Hiei were originally built on those heights because they are northeast of the capital, the palace, and the emperor, and could thus (in theory) protect them.
It is with one of these that the story of the Japanese temple begins.
The
TEMPLES
KYOTO
| Enryaku-ji |
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On the heights of Mount Hiei, northeast of Kyoto, sits the ecclesiastical city of Enryaku-ji, headquarters of the Tendai sect and a center for religious meditation, political indoctrination, and warfare since the Heian period (784-1185). Most of the founders of the major Buddhist sects rising during the following several centuries studied there: Honen of the Jodo sect; Shinran of thejodo Shin sect; Eisai who introduced the Rinzai Zen sect to Japan; Dogen, who did the same for the Soto sect; Ippen of the Ji sect of Jodo; Kuya of his own Tendai sect; and Nichiren, who founded Nichiren Buddhism—all were trained there.
Enryaku-ji grew as enormous as it was important. Though less than a twentieth of its former size, the temple is still one of the largest in Japan. It now faces Lake Biwa and not Kyoto, the old capital, but is still so big that only a third is readily visitable—in winter the roads to the two other main sections are closed and no buses run.
Originally, however, it was but a collection of mountain huts. These followed only the irregularity of their terrain. In such sites as this the formal Chinese layout was impossible—so was any sustained balance or symmetry. Thus in their very appearance the temples of the new religion constituted a rebuke to the luxurious compounds down on the plain. This is something which the Tendai founder, Saicho (later known as Dengyo Daishi) reinforced in his deathbed message. He advised a "cheerful poverty" on his followers, and thus implied a criticism of those soft and luxurious Buddhists down below.
Saicho had early built his hut in the snows and forests of Mt. Hiei and in the silence and the cold observed his austerities. Said to have been but a youth of eighteen, he had climbed the mountain and sought the way, relying on what he had learned while in Nara.
One day he came across a fallen tree at the very summit of the mountain. From it he carved an image of the Yakushi Nyorai, that manifestation known as the Buddha of Healing (Bhaisajyaguru Tathagata). This figure—788 is the date given—he then set up in his hut. The house became home to the image and turned into a temple.
This was beginning of Enryaku-ji, and the little dwelling itself was eventually to be transformed into the mighty Komponchu-do where, it is said, dus same image still stands outlined in the shadows by the "inextinguishable Dharma Light" that Saicho himself lit and which, says the temple, has been burning for over twelve hundred years.
It was in 804, after this impressive beginning, that Saicho traveled to China, returned with the precepts of what became the Tendai sect in Japan, and consolidated his mountain temple.
Tendai was broadly Mahayana and its basic scripture was the so-called Lotus Sutra. This purportedly contains the Buddha's final sermon, in which he revealed the potential buddhability of everyone. At the same time, it bolstered this with ecclesiastical authority, and was itself much concerned with doctrine, attempting a grand synthesis of all religious knowledge.
By 823 the place was so powerful that the emperor Saga was prevailed upon to confer it with the name of Enryaku-ji—after the year of its founding—and to announce its official role of protecting the new capital and his imperial highness from the malevolent forces of evil inhabiting the northeast.
Beside protecting the city, the purpose was also to promote this new Buddhism which would combat the narrow Hinayana influence of the Nara temples. Saicho called his monastery Ichiji Shikan-in, a name which refers to the possibility of attaining Buddhahood inherent in everyone, one of the tenets of Tendai. This was in pronounced contradistinction to Nara Buddhism which insisted upon the concept of Sanji, interpreted as the inherent inequality of people and the consequent acceptance of a hierarchical society.
It was here, in the nearby Kaidan-in, a smallish red-lacquered building, that a year earlier in 822 Mahayana Buddhism (to which Tenryu belonged) officially declared its independence from the Hinayana Buddhism of Nara. The ecclesiastical threat had passed—the new Buddhism was benevolent.
Its duties also included prosylatization. Saicho, on his deathbed, ordered his disciples: "Do not make images nor copy sutras for me. Rather transmit what I have taught you. Spread my teachings so they will be useful to all."
Enryaku-ji had other roles to play as well—these largely political. As this liturgical capital grew ever larger it began to exercise an influence upon the imperial government and consequently upon the country
