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Hualin International Journal of Buddhist Studies 4.1 (2021): 215–255; https://dx.doi.org/10.15239/hijbs.04.01.07
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Buddhist Worldmaking Programs & Tiantai/Chontae/Tendai Buddhism)
From Tiantaishan to Hieizan: The View from the Keiran Shūyō Shū 渓嵐拾葉集
Bernard FAURE
Columbia University
bf2159@columbia.edu
Abstract: After its transmission to Japan, Chinese Tiantai Buddhism developed into a namesake school (Tendai) based not only at Enryakuji 延暦寺 on Mount Hiei 比叡山, but also at Onjōji 園城寺 (also known as Miidera 三井寺). While preserving the main principles of its origin in China, Japanese Tendai also took on remarkable characteristics under the influence of Esoteric Buddhism. This aspect was known as Taimitsu 台密 (the esoteric teaching of Tendai), by opposition to Tōmitsu 東密 (the esoteric teaching of Shingon 真言, based on Tōji 東寺 Temple in Kyoto). Taimitsu developed in particular a discourse on nonduality centered on the notion of susiddhi (‘perfect realization’). This study highlights some of these innovations, mainly using the evidence gleaned from a major Tendai compendium compiled in the early fourteenth century, the Keiran shūyōshū 渓嵐拾葉集 [Leaves Gleaned from the Mountain Streams].
Keywords: Keiran shūyō shū 渓嵐拾葉集, Kōshū 光宗 (1276–1350), Saichō 最澄 (Dengyō Daishi 伝教大師, 767–822), Tiantai/Tendai 天台, Taimitsu 台密, Hieizan 比叡山, Enryakuji 延暦寺, Onjōji 園城寺 (a.k.a. Miidera 三井寺)
About the Author: Bernard Faure is, since 2006, the Kao Professor of Japanese Religion in the Departments of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. Before that, he was the George Edwin Burnell Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in Asian Literature from the Institut National des Langues Orientales Vivantes (Paris) in 1984. He specializes in the Chinese and Japanese Buddhist Traditions. He is the author of a number of books in English and French, Including The Rhetoric of Immediacy, Chan Insights and Oversights, The Red Thread, The Power of Denial, Visions of Power, Unmasking Buddhism, and more recently, the first two volumes of a series of works on the gods of medieval Japan, The Fluid Pantheon and Protectors and Predators, both published by the University of Hawai‘i Press. He has also recently finished a book in French, The Thousand and One Lives of the Buddha—From Ancient India to the Modern Western Novels and Science Fiction.
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