Saichō
767 CE–822 CE · Mount Hiei (Enryaku-ji)
767–822 CE
Saichō (767–822 CE) founded the Tendai school of Japanese Buddhism, the Japanese form of Chinese Tiantai. Born in Ōmi province near Lake Biwa, he established a retreat on Mount Hiei—later the great monastery Enryaku-ji—and in 804 traveled to China, where he studied Tiantai meditation and doctrine (along with Chan and esoteric elements) before returning to transplant the tradition. Mount Hiei became the seedbed from which many later Japanese schools (Pure Land, Zen, Nichiren) grew, their founders having trained there. He is well documented.
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Mount Hiei (Enryaku-ji)
What they did here
DOCUMENTED: founded his hermitage on Mount Hiei, which grew into Enryaku-ji, the head temple of Japanese Tendai.
About Mount Hiei (Enryaku-ji)
Mount Hiei, overlooking Kyoto in Japan, is the site of Enryaku-ji, the head temple of the Tendai school founded by Saichō in the early ninth century. As a major centre of learning it trained many of the founders of later Japanese Buddhist schools — including Hōnen, Shinran, Dōgen, Eisai and Nichiren, all of whom studied there before establishing their own movements.
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Saichō’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
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Works
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