Eisai

This article is about a Japanese Zen Buddhist. For the company, see Eisai (company) .

Myōan Eisai, founder of the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism, 12th century

Myōan Eisai ( Japanese 明 菴 栄 西 ; probably pronounced Yōsai at that time ) (* 20th day of the 4th month ( May 27th ) in the year 1141 in the province of Bitchū (today Okayama ); † 5th day of the 7th month ( 1st August ) in 1215 in Kyōto ) was a Japanese Buddhist priest who brought the Rinzai school of Zen Buddhism and tea from China to Japan. He is often referred to simply as Eisai Zenji ( 栄 西 禅師), d. H. Zen master called Eisai .

Life

Eisai began studying Buddhism at the age of eleven under the supervision of the priest Jōshin († 1157) in the An'yō Temple (An'yō-ji) in Okayama . Two years later he went to Hiei ( Hiei-zan ) Temple Mount , the center of the Tendai School, where he was ordained in 1154.

Dissatisfied with the teachings that were widespread at the time, he set out on his first trip to China in the Tiantai Mountains in 1168 . There he got to know the Buddhism of the Chan School, which later became known as Zen in Japan. This trip lasted only six months, but he moved back to China in 1187 and became a student of the Chan patriarch Xuan Huaichang (Japanese Koan Ejō).

After his appointment as a Zen teacher (chin. Chanshi ) and thus the achievement of the succession of the Dharma tradition of Linji, Eisai returned to Japan in 1191 with writings and all kinds of cultural achievements from China, including tea seeds. First he worked in Kyushu and taught in the Fukuekō Temple (Fukuekō-ji) and in the Senkō Temple (Senkō-ji). In 1194 he founded the Kannō Temple (Kannō-ji) in Izumi. The Shōfuku Temple ( Shōfuku-ji ), founded in Hakata in the following year , he made the first training center of the Zen school in Japan. This was also recognized by the Toba Tenno . Then he moved to Kyoto .

There he received a piece of land from the Shogun Minamoto no Yoriie in 1202 to build the city's first large Zen temple, the Kennin Temple . Eisai probably saw himself as a Tendai monk throughout his life and did not try to establish Rinzai as a separate school / sect (Japanese 宗 , shū ). This would have prompted sanctions from the powerful Tendai and Shingon temples. He wanted to reform Tendai Buddhism by particularly emphasizing the monastic rules of Chinese Chan. In the Kennin Temple he not only practiced meditation exercises of the Chan, but also those of the Tendai school and esoteric rituals of the Shingon school .

In 1199 Eisai left Kyōto to move to northeast Kamakura , the de facto center of power during the Kamakura period . Hōjō Masako, the influential widow of Minamoto no Yoritomo , allowed him to found the Jufuku Temple ( Jufuku-ji ), Kamakura's first Zen center. The Rinzai school soon experienced close ties to the shogunate government and the warrior nobility. The reasons for this were not that Eisai's teaching was martial arts- oriented, but his rigor. Then there was the role that the Rinzai monks played in conveying Chinese culture. At the same time, the protection of this school created a counterbalance to the already established schools of Tendai and Shingon Buddhism, which had risen to become powerful players through their lands and monk warriors ( sōhei ).

Eisai died in 1215 at the age of 75. His student Myōzen was a teacher from Dōgen . The two traveled together to China, where Myōzen died. Dōgen is considered the first patriarch of the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism in Japan.

literature

• Bodiford, William M. (2008). Soto Zen in Medieval Japan (Studies in East Asian Buddhism). University of Hawaii Press. pp. 22-36
• McRae, John; Tokiwa, Gishin; Yoshida, Osamu; Heine, Steven, trans. (2005). Zen texts , Berkeley, Calif .: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research (A Treatise on Letting Zen Flourish to Protect the State by Eisai)

Web links

• Literature by and about Eisai in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The dates refer to the premodern Japanese lunisolar calendar
2. ↑ Daigan Lee Matsunaga and Alicia Orloff Matsunaga: Foundation of Japanese Buddhism; Vol. II; The mass movement (Kamakura & Muromachi periods) . Buddhist Books International, Los Angeles and Tokyo 1976. ISBN 0-914910-27-2 . P. 183.