A Symphony of Colors – The Tenryu-ji Temple in Arashiyama
If you have only limited time in Arashiyama, I highly recommend three sites to visit: the bamboo grove, the Tenryu-ji Temple and the Okochi-Sanso Villa. After walking the bamboo grove, I entered the Tenryu-ji Temple via the North Gate.
One dominant theme of the temples in the Arashiyama region is that they are representatives of Zen Buddhism. The Tenryu-ji Temple in Arashiyama is considered the top temple for Zen Buddhism, specifically the Rinzai school of the Zen tradition. For this reason alone, you should definitely pay a visit at the Tenryu-ji Temple.
Needless to say, the environment at the temple is serene, as surrounded by the mountains of the Arashiyama area. I found its gardens to be one of the most beautiful I had seen in Kyoto in this trip.
As said below, most of the standing structures at the Tenryu-ji Temple were the work of the Meiji period in the 19th century due to many significant fires. However, the Sogenchi Garden was the very original that was designed by founding abbot Muso Soseki in the 14th century.
Indeed, the Temple suggests a scenic route for tourists to immerse in the beautiful nature at the temple grounds.
As said in my previous entry, the bamboo groves in this area were the garden adornment for the royal villas and temples. Some of the bamboo groves remain in the Tenryu-ji Temple. At this time of the year, the evergreen of the bamboo is juxtaposed with the unbridled flush of the red foliage, as if nature murmured joy through the curtain of bamboo stillness with the boisterous ruffles of a clever red muse. I soaked in the generous sunshine of the day and wished that I could stay.
A final word about sightseeing at the Tenryu-ji Temple. The Cloud Dragon painting lines the ceiling of the Hatto (the Dharma Hall), where the didactics of Buddhism took place between the master and the monks. There is an additional fee to see this painting, and I did not see it. The Dharma Hall of the Tenryu-ji Temple now serves ceremonial purposes.
A Pre-history of the Tenryu-ji Temple
Before the official founding of the Tenryu-ji Temple, the same site had a long history intertwined in both imperial and religious heritage. “In the ninth century Empress Tachibana no Kachiko founded the temple Danrin-ji, Japan’s first Zen temple, on the present site of Tenryu-ji. After the temple fell into disrepair the site was used by the emperors Go-Saga and Kameyama as a detached palace (in the 13th century).” (tenryuji.com). Due to Danrin-ji’s history as its predecessor, the Tenryu-ji is recognized as the first Zen temple of Japan, which really is an exceptional designation. Zen Buddhism is a philosophical practice that has far-reaching contemporary influence as it was introduced to Japan from China and then popularized in the west by Japan.
There were two significant names associated with the establishment of the Tenryu-ji Temple. The standard historic descriptions state that the shogun Ashikaga Takauji converted the former royal grounds into the Tenryu-ji Temple in memory of Emperor Go-Daigo, the year that Emperor Go-Daigo died.
In line with the theme of shogunate history in Kyoto, I wish to tell the briefest version of the story between shogun Ashikaga Takauji and Emperor Go-Daigo as the context in understanding the imperial-religious heritage of Tenryu-ji Temple. First of all, Emperor Go-Daigo grew up in the royal villa in Kameyama’s time and received his education on this very site. Emperor Go-Daigo successfully overthrew the first shogunate, the Kamakura shogunate, in 1333. Following his victory he founded the Kenmu Restoration, in which time a very short-lived imperial control of real power was instituted. That brief time of only three years would be the very last time that the Japanese emperors wielded actual power, until the Meiji period.
The shogun Ashikaga Takauji overthrew the Kenmu Restoration in 1336, as a result, establishing the Ashikaga shogunate, based in Kyoto. What followed was a split of the imperial family into the Northern Court in Kyoto and the Southern Court in Yoshino. Emperor Go-Daigo remained in the Southern Court until his death in 1339.
Emperor Go-Daigo, his name meaning “the latter Daigo,” chose his own posthumous name after Emperor Daigo of the Engi era (901-923). Emperor Daigo is the emperor that abdicated the throne and practiced Buddhism as a monk in present-day Daigo-ji Temple, also in Kyoto. This fact shows amply of the way that the Japanese emperors allude to their own royal history as a practice, showing the emperor’s admiration of their predecessors’ legacies that inspired them.
Photo: The Main Hall (Abbot’s Quarter)
The History of the Tenryu-ji Temple
The founding abbot of the Tenryu-ji Temple was Zen master Muso Soseki. Meaning the “Heavenly Dragon Temple,” Tenryu-ji is ranked first in the “Five Zen Mountains of Kyoto,” as the lineage of Muso Soseki had resulted in a flourishing of Zen literary culture.
Perhaps of particular interest to Chinese visitors would be the way that Muso Soseki sought to finance the construction of the Tenryu-ji Temple. Muso Soseki sent the ship named Tenryu-ji to China during the 14th century Yuan dynasty to engage in trade. This had resulted in the temple completing its construction by 1343 or so.
As with so many wooden temples in Japan, the Tenryu-ji had been destroyed by fire numerous times throughout its long history. Most of the structures standing today were the reconstruction of the Meiji period in late 19th to the early 20th century.
A Very Brief Word on the Rinzai Zen Tradition of Buddhism
Zen is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in Tang dynasty China. It emphasizes both meditation and teaching, in that one should develop insights into one’s own Buddha nature and practice the expression of such traits in daily life to benefit the self and the others.
In the practice of the Japanese Rinzai school, introspection is based upon a set of koan recitations. Monks are to “become one” with their koan. There are both intellectual and personal aspects to Rinzai meditation, including standard answers, but the masters do demand monks to have a spiritual understanding of the text. It is said that the traditional Japanese Rinzai koan curriculum can take 15 years for a full-time monk to complete.
Rinzai founder Myoan Eisai (1141-1215) traveled to China to study Zen as a separate school and returned to establish a Linji lineage. This might have been the beginning of Zen as a standalone Buddhist tradition in Japan.
Sources
The official website of Tenryuji (tenryuji.com).
The Wikipedia on Emperor Go-Daigo.
The Wikipedia on Daigo-ji.
The Wikipedia on Zen.