Saicho and the Lotus on Mount Hiei

Tendai is a major school of Japanese Buddhism, established in the early ninth century by the monk Saicho (767-822), who studied the Chinese Tiantai teaching in China and, on his return, founded the monastery of Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, north-east of Kyoto, receiving imperial sanction for the new school in 806.

Tendai transplanted the comprehensive Tiantai system to Japan and, like its Chinese parent, took the Lotus Sutra as the supreme and all-embracing scripture, teaching the "one vehicle" in which all beings are destined for buddhahood. But Saicho and his successors made Tendai more than a copy: it became a deliberately comprehensive tradition, integrating the doctrinal philosophy of the Lotus with esoteric ritual (mikkyo), meditation practice, and a rigorous monastic discipline under a distinctively Mahayana ordination that Saicho fought to establish independent of the older Nara schools. Mount Hiei consequently became the great training ground of Japanese Buddhism, and the breadth of the Tendai curriculum meant that monks encountered the whole range of Buddhist teaching there.