Mt. Hiei

Mt. Hiei.

Mt. Hiei is where most of Japanese Buddhism came from. In 788, the monk Saichō — who had recently returned from China with the Tendai school of esoteric and contemplative practice — established a small hermitage on this ridge overlooking Lake Biwa. Within a century the hermitage had grown into Enryaku-ji, which became, over the medieval period, the most important Buddhist seminary in Japan. Almost every major reformer of the next eight hundred years trained here first.

The list of Hiei alumni is the founding roster of Japanese Buddhist sects. Hōnen, founder of Pure Land, trained on Hiei. Shinran, founder of True Pure Land, was his student. Dōgen, founder of Sōtō Zen, trained on Hiei before his journey to China. Eisai, founder of Rinzai Zen, trained on Hiei. Nichiren trained on Hiei and developed his radical Lotus-centered doctrine partly in opposition to what he found there. Every one of these movements is, in some sense, a response to or a departure from the Tendai matrix that Hiei provided.

The mountain itself is small — 848 meters, low enough to walk in a day from Kyoto. But its religious infrastructure is vast. The Enryaku-ji compound stretches across the ridge in three main areas, holding over a hundred sub-temples at its peak. Even today, after the catastrophic burning of 1571 by the warlord Oda Nobunaga (who destroyed the temple complex in retaliation for its long-standing political-military power), the surviving structures cover a remarkable area. The Konponchūdō, the central hall, contains an oil lamp said to have been kept continuously alight since Saichō lit it in 788 — twelve hundred years of unbroken flame.

The Hiei tradition's most extreme practice is the kaihōgyō, the thousand-day mountain pilgrimage. The full practice is performed by a small number of Tendai monks over seven years. In the first three years the monk runs designated prayer routes around the mountain — about forty kilometers a day, 100 days per year. The fourth and fifth years extend to 200 days a year. After 700 days completed, the monk performs the dō-iri — a nine-day fast without food, water, or sleep, with consequence that includes the possibility of death. After dō-iri, if he survives, comes the sixth year: running 60 kilometers a day. The seventh year is 84 kilometers a day for 100 days, then 40 kilometers for another 100. The cumulative distance equals approximately the circumference of the earth.

Tradition allows the monk who fails partway through the kaihōgyō to commit ritual suicide rather than abandon the practice. Most begin the run carrying a short white rope and knife. A handful of monks complete the full seven years in each generation. The practice is not a stunt and not a museum piece. It is currently being performed.

What Hiei teaches, by being itself, is that practice is endurable. Twelve hundred years of unbroken flame. Twelve hundred years of monks who have done what looked impossible because the ones before them did it first. The mountain is small. The teaching is large.