Background
Saichō was born on 15 Seprember 766 in Omi Province. He was the son of a family named Mitsu-no-obito.
Saichō was born on 15 Seprember 766 in Omi Province. He was the son of a family named Mitsu-no-obito.
He entered the clergy in 780 under a monk named Gyohyo. In 785 he received formal ordination as a priest at Todai-ji in Nara, but thereafter immediately withdrew to a hermitage on Mt. Hiei northeast of Kyoto, where he devoted himself to strict religious observances.
Around 797, Saicho began to emerge from seclusion and to become active in society, gradually gaining fame as a religious leader. In 804 he journeyed to China along with his disciple Gishin and others.
Saicho returned to Japan in 805. In 809 he became acquainted with Kukai, another important Buddhist leader of the time, but in 815 the two broke off relations. In 817 Saicho set out on a tour to spread his teachings in eastern Japan. He became involved in a religious dispute with Tokuichi, a learned monk of the Hosso sect residing in Aizu.
He became interested in the teachings of the T’ien-t’ai, or Tendai, sect of Buddhism, which had previously been largely ignored in Japan. The T’ien-t’ai sect was founded by the Chinese monk Chih-i (538-597), who in his various writings set forth a world view and system of religious practice based upon the Lotus Sutra.
At Mt. T’icn-t’ai in Chekiang, he studied T’ien-t’ai doctrines and vinaya, monastic discipline, under Tao-sui and Hsing-man. He also received instruction in meditation from Hsiao-jan and in Esoteric Buddhism from Shun-hsiao of Yueh-chou. Thus Saicho’s Buddhism came to include four elements, Tendai doctrine, vinaya (ritsu), meditation (zen), and Esoteric Buddhism (Mikkyo), and this combination remained characteristic of Tendai Buddhism as it was transmitted in Japan.
To support his position, Saicho wrote such works as Shogon jikkyo, Shugo kokkai-sho, and Hokke shuku. In 818 he petitioned the emperor for permission to establish a Mahayana ordination platform on Mt. Hiei, the following year writing a work called Kenkairon to support his request, but he met with strong opposition from the older sects of Buddhism in Nara. It was only after his death in 822 that permission was finally granted.
Saicho’s thinking centers about these two issues of the doctrinal debate with Tokuichi and the question of the ordination platform. In the former, Tokuichi had upheld the Hosso sect’s teaching that the potentiality to attain Buddhahood differs according to the individual. In response to this, Saicho argued that human beings are all equally endowed with the potentiality for enlightenment. On the latter issue, he asserted that Mahayana Buddhism should have a set of vinaya, or rules of discipline, that was distinctively its own. The older schools of Buddhism in Japan, though teaching Mahayana doctrines, had followed the rules of discipline laid down in Hinayana Buddhism. As may be seen, Saicho was idealistic in his thinking and did not hesitate to expound view's that put him in direct opposition with the older factions in Japanese Buddhism. In this respect he stands in contrast to Kukai, his eminent contemporary who was likewise working to bring about revolutionary changes in Buddhism, but who was more tolerant and flexible in his attitude.
In the centuries following Saicho’s death, Tendai Buddhism flourished, with Enryaku-ji on Mt. Hiei as its chief center of activity. It produced such distinguished monks as Ennin and Enchin and served as the training ground for all the important religious reformers of the Kamakura period.