Tenryu-ji. Norris Brock Johnson
that all beings, “animal” as well as “human,” inherently possessed Buddha-Nature. “Whether he is tall, average or short …, whether he is black, brown, or yellow,” a Truth experienced by Shākyamuni was that all persons in their lifetimes can experience an end to suffering.22 Shākyamuni presented to people a Middle Way (Eight-Fold Path) between the asceticism he experienced while living among forest and mountain-dwelling yogi in India and the indulgences and excesses of daily life he experienced before leaving the gates of his father’s extensive palace.
Gikū Zenshi presented Tachibana no Kachiko with a then fairly new practice of Buddhism. He taught her the Way of Zen (禅那, Zenna), from China.
Buddhism from India melded with the Daoism of China to form Zen Buddhism, which then passed to Japan. In the Dao de Jing, attributed to Laozi (ca. 500 B.C.), Daoism conceptualized nature as a Way, a way of Being, that humans ought to emulate. Daoists sought to live naturally, to be “supple and pliant like ice about to melt; genuine, like a piece of uncarved wood; open and broad, like a valley.”23 Nature thus was a vital aspect of the Zen practice of Buddhism passing from China to Japan.
Zen Buddhism held that experience of Buddha-Nature could occur suddenly in one’s lifetime, as “the immediate expression and actualization of the perfection present in every person at every moment.”24 Such awareness was not something for which one ought to strive, for “life is impermanent … Do not wait another moment to practice the Way. Strive not to fruitlessly pass this very moment.”25Emphasis on the unfettered experience of existence-as-it-is meant that, from moment to moment, Zen Buddhism was “an absolutely pure exercise from which nothing is sought and nothing is gained.”26When experienced, the Truth of Shākyamuni was said often to occur spontaneously as one’s moment-to-moment awareness of one’s inherent Buddha-Nature.
Tachibana no Kachiko and Gikū Zenshi met together as student and enlightened teacher (rōshi). The still-communal nature of Buddhism early on is present in this intimate student-teacher relationship. Tachibana no Kachiko defined a religious landscape in Sagano by constructing a family-temple complex as a sangha —an ongoing Buddhist community of believers. A sangha was one of the Three Baskets of Shākyamuni to which followers were admonished to adhere.27 A connotation of sangha was “the whole universe transformed into a spiritual community of Buddhas and Buddhas-to-be, in terms covering past, present, and future, and in terms of space extending in all directions.”28 As a Buddhist community of believers, a temple was both visible (present adherents) and invisible (past and future adherents).
Accompanying her intensive study of Zen Buddhism within Danrin-ji, Tachibana no Kachiko became known as Danrin. By 850, the year of her death, she had established a school at Danrin-ji for successive generations of the Tachibana family who were expected to study Buddhism and Zen within the compound. The Tachibana clan of families, though, eventually was eclipsed in power by a branch of the Fujiwara clan of families. After the passing of the Saga emperorship, Danrin-ji suffered neglect and lapsed into ruin.29
A Grass House and the Shadow of Mountains
In 975, Prince Kaneakira traveled into the region of the Mountain of Storms west of Kyōto to pay homage to the “spirit” of Turtle Mountain. “I wished to retire the bureaucratic world to have a rest,” he wrote, “and to end my life at a quiet place at the foot of Kameyama [Turtle Mountain].”30 Descriptions of the habitat constructed by the prince are sparse, but the compound apparently was small in size, what we might term rustic. As the prince wrote, “I had my grass-house built … at last.”31 Mirei Shigemori tells us “the mountain villa and the garden which stood near Mount Kameyama had a gate [torii] and bamboo fence and had woods in front and a bamboo grove behind. The mountain villa and the garden were very beautiful in every season.”32 The “house of grass” most likely was constructed from bamboo and thatch. Surrounding stands of bamboo perhaps stimulated Prince Kaneakira to experience poetically the area around Turtle Mountain as beautiful aurally as well as visually. Sound is prominent in the experience of bamboo grass. Amplified by hollow trunks, a variety of tones are produced when stalks move against each other in the wind. Extensive fields of bamboo surrounded the garden in the Tale of Genji, within the Shrine-in-the-Field (Nonomiya), and extensive fields of bamboo still are present within the landscape aspect of the Temple of the Heavenly Dragon.
The entrance to the prince’s compound was marked by “archways,” as they are termed in his writings (recall the “archways”(torii) through which Prince Genji passed upon entering the Shrine-in-the-Field in Sagano). Prince Kaneakira also constructed a modest building, the Shrine of Perfect Virtue, within his compound. Prince Kaneakira did not impose himself on nature but instead “asked” if he could cohabit, as it were, with the spirit (霊, rei) of Turtle Mountain—a place of felt beauty and tranquillity. The prince honored Turtle Mountain as a distinct animistic presence (存在, sonzai) by petitioning to form a relationship with the mountain as he similarly might petition to form a relationship with a person of high status.
Prince Kaneakira’s conception of and behavior toward Turtle Mountain was consistent with early Shintō conceptions of and behaviors toward nature. The prince visualized Turtle Mountain as the embodiment, the materialization, of a deity (甘南備山, the mountain as kannabiyama).33
Kameyama “means Tortoise Hill and, as the name implies, the hill is rather low and in the shape of a tortoise.”34 As a learned man, Prince Kaneakira undoubtedly was aware of isomorphic correspondences between the shape of turtles and the shape of the land, as turtles long had been vital to divination both in early China and Japan (see pp. 197–210). Perhaps Prince Kaneakira in part chose to site his retirement lodge on the piedmont of Turtle Mountain to share in, through the contagious contact of direct participation, the well-being ascribed to turtleness via the distinctive shape of the mountain.
The kami of Shintō at the time in part were experienced through affecting, emotional responses to nature-as-kami, as kami were ascribed authority by virtue of their ability to affect people via their felt presence.35 Shapes and physical features of nature were believed to be embodiments of kami—kami were trees and wind … and water.36 We read that Prince Kaneakira beseeched Turtle Mountain to usher forth water, to nourish the human-made garden aspect of the compound and “we learn from his poem in praise of the god of Kame-yama that his garden had a pond fed by water from a spring on the hill.”37 Kami were the generativity and vitality of life itself. The kami of a site were known and felt through the fecundity of the site and belief in kami conditioned one to visualize the land as animated. Vital.
The “grass house” and compound of Prince Kaneakira became well known among aristocrats in Kyōto for the affecting beauty of its landscape and surrounding lands. The prince was privileged by birth, “excelled in scholarship, achieved considerable mastery in literature and calligraphy, and is represented by poems in several extant anthologies.”38 Prince Kaneakira was renowned for his accomplishments in poetry, stimulated no doubt by the land and human-created landscape near Turtle Mountain to which he sought retirement—for peace of mind and heart.
Prince Kaneakira passed away in 987. The buildings and pond in the shadow of Turtle Mountain lay abandoned for several hundred years until Emperor Go-Saga began to incorporate aspects of the then-desiccated compound into his imperial villa.
A Taste Quite Elegant
The Turtle Mountain Villa on the Banks of the Rising River (Kameyama Dono) was constructed around 1255 under the guidance of Tachibana Tomoshige, a magistrate in the court of Emperor Go-Saga. Tachibana Tomoshige no doubt felt kinship with the area west of Kyōto through family ancestry traced to Tachibana no Kachiko. The emperor maintained a primary residence in the Imperial Palace in Kyōto. The Turtle Mountain Villa was a detached palace (rikyū) for prolonged retreats, and also was intended as the future retirement residence of the emperor.
FIGURE 34. An interpretative sketch of a Sleeping-Hall Compound (shinden zukuri style).