道元論6On Dogen, Part 6

We have, over several articles, observed the movements of a system that stirred into life in 794, the year the capital shifted to Heian-kyo—the site of modern-day Kyoto. The Heian period can be characterized as an era where the establishment of a governance system by the nobility began to eclipse the authority of the Imperial family, sparking a centuries-long struggle for actual power. In the birth and formation of any new system, there is always a convergence of diverse motives vying for new vested interests. The inexhaustible problem of human desire flows beneath all of history, but when examining the Heian period, one must pay particular attention to the existence of a massive power apparatus that used Buddhism—the dominant hegemony of the time—as its veil.

The initial design of Heian-kyo was, in fact, calculated with extreme precision. While we shall limit our scope for now, consider first the northeast—the direction known in ancient China as the kimon (鬼門), the demon gate, through which calamities and malevolent spirits were said to enter. To guard this point, the temple of Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, the seat of the Tendai sect, was established as the absolute protector of the Imperial and noble classes.

Thus, Mount Hiei—possessing the latest esoteric teachings of the Tendai sect among the various Buddhist schools already spreading in Japan—assumed the vital role of the capital’s ultimate safeguard. Simultaneously, the design of the city at the foot of the mountain was protected not by Buddhism, but by a specialized guild of onmyodo (陰陽道), the Way of Yin and Yang, practitioners. Rooted in Taoism, they wove a tapestry of the invisible world, casting spiritual barriers across the four directions. The urban planning of Heian-kyo was, so to speak, a multilayered structure: Mount Hiei served as the absolute esoteric authority to the northeast, while the city itself was secured in all directions by the arts of onmyodo. Shinto, too, played its part, though we shall set that aside for this discussion.

In other words, the Heian-kyo system—the system that flows at the source of Kyoto and continues to be inherited today—functions even now, maintaining a potent sense of confrontation with the invisible world. Indeed, the greatest allure of Kyoto lies in the exploration of this very system, hidden from the naked eye. However, when a system that has defined an age begins to suffer from exhaustion after several centuries, a profound social upheaval inevitably occurs. At such a moment, the people living within the tiny enclave of Heian-kyo—which was, for them, the entirety of Japan and the world itself—reach a transformative era where they must awaken from a colossal fiction. When the day comes that one must suddenly wake from such a fiction, those who have failed to face their own inner selves and have instead succumbed to self-domestication within the system will surely fall into confusion. I see the same phenomenon occurring today on a global scale.

Even now, we are all, to varying degrees, self-domesticated within a gargantuan system whose entirety is impossible to grasp. Movements to escape this system entirely and seek a life "outside" gained momentum around the late 20th century. However, considering our current state—one of exhaustion and retreat after failing to achieve anything—we can see that the very idea of stepping "outside" a system that has become this bloated was the original source of our error. Personally, I feel strongly that the notion of exiting the system is inherently flawed. We must first recognize that such an exit is impossible, and instead, embrace the perspective that there is no inside or outside to the system at all.

This is because history teaches us that even systems that seem to possess an absolute intensity—systems we experience day and night—have collapsed time and again. No system is permanent. Democracy is a classic example; just because a system has functioned reasonably well for a few centuries does not mean it should be regarded as a universal truth. However, the larger a system becomes, the more the speed of its collapse is delayed. This is because, as a system expands, its vested interests become complex and wide-ranging, and the time required to sweep away the "parasitic" old guard becomes exceedingly long.

In the century we inhabit, a global system is being established while, simultaneously, countless other systems—national systems or even more granular ones—coexist in parallel. This creates a reality in which there is no escape in any direction. From the perspective of a biological entity required to be always on, we are all living through an extraordinarily harsh era. In the last decade or so, much has been exposed regarding the reality of how these interests have become globally intertwined, yet this has not resulted in the complete collapse of the system.

Nevertheless, even these seemingly absolute systems are certainly undergoing institutional exhaustion and are currently in a state of decay. While we cannot know how long this collapse will last, we must surely sense that we will face a great transformation within this century. Such movements manifest in multifaceted ways—as minor daily shifts or the actions of specific nations—but history has proven time and again that when the interests of the old guard are swept away and new rulers of a new system emerge, great chaos ensues.

Such nodal points of time are numerous in Japanese history, but those representing truly seismic shifts are quite limited. Discerning the nature of those historical movements is a vital lesson for us. However, "movement" here does not refer to the signified recorded in history books, but rather the "technology of the heart"—the ability to grasp the movements of the human spirit as it was lived.

To be blunt, historical inquiry is almost meaningless—a mere act of reference—if it cannot reach this depth. Therefore, when looking at history, while we must assume the organized signified of the era as a framework, we must never look at it directly. Instead, we must grasp the chain of the signifier, through which meaning is endlessly generated. What is effective here is to fix one's focus thoroughly on an ambitious individual who lived through that era, and to intuit the movements of their heart within the context of their time. This is because such individuals always undergo a transformation of the heart at the junction between the old and the new. In short, whether or not one can transform their heart at the threshold of an era becomes the invisible boundary that determines who can move forward. Furthermore, this transformation of the heart is a crucial movement that leads to the creation of culture. It seems effective to view the accumulation and omnidirectional nature of these movements as history itself.

If we adopt this perspective, the true significance of a single individual’s appearance will emerge—an individual who triggered the sudden collapse of the massive power system of Mount Hiei, the shadow capital or the shadow Heian-kyo. History tells us that even Mount Hiei, the hegemon of several centuries, crumbled easily before the arrival of one man who carried the new era. That man, reigning at the pinnacle of the new age, was Taira no Kiyomori (1118–1181), who descended from the preeminent warrior house of Taira.

Until now, in order to reveal the reality of the fiction that allowed Mount Hiei to become such a massive power system, we have focused on the motives of the Imperial family and the nobility within the surface system of Heian-kyo. We observed how Taira no Tadamori (1096–1153), the father of Kiyomori, navigated this web of desire to build—in a single generation—the economic and political foundation essential for the rise of the warrior (samurai) class. For Taira no Kiyomori, who inherited this foundation, the greatest entity he had to dismantle was not the Imperial Court, but Mount Hiei.

As previously mentioned, the source of the "Mount Hiei system’s" power did not lie in religion. Rather, it lay in its form as a conglomerate that skillfully seized political and economic hegemony behind the scenes while abusing religious authority. Therefore, unless the vast sources of funding unified by Mount Hiei were cut off, its power could not be broken. Taira no Kiyomori took the radical step of altering the primary routes of the Japan-Song trade, developing and establishing a new main route that lay beyond the reach of Mount Hiei’s interests. Naturally, this led to a clash of interests, but the confrontation between Kiyomori and Mount Hiei had already begun in various forms. The first major event, which demonstrated a warrior’s resolve not to yield to the authority of Mount Hiei, occurred in 1147.

At the time, Taira no Kiyomori was thirty years old, and his father, Tadamori, was still alive. It is recorded that during this year, a retainer of Kiyomori caused a brawl at Gion Shrine, a subordinate shrine of Enryaku-ji. In essence, the sohei (僧兵), the armed monks, of Mount Hiei, knowing they were dealing with a Taira retainer, provoked him, and the retainer fell for the bait. This incident arose because the rise of the Taira clan was becoming an unbearable problem for Mount Hiei.

At this juncture, Mount Hiei attempted to stall the Taira clan's momentum by forcing the responsibility for the retainer’s actions onto the clan. They employed the cowardly traditional method of goso (強訴), the forced petition, attempting to shake the Imperial Court. They carried their mikoshi (sacred palanquins)—the symbols of Mount Hiei's authority—toward the capital. In those days, these palanquins were the substance of the Heian-kyo illusion.

The existence of the mikoshi was the primary reason the Imperial family and the nobility could not lay a hand on Mount Hiei. It was the symbol of a temple that enshrined the spirit of Emperor Kanmu, the architect of the Heian-kyo move, and served as the practitioner of incantations and prayers for the safety of the Imperial house. In short, the mikoshi was the symbolic source of the "Imperial-Hiei" power axis. It was the communal illusion made real, born in the Heian period. Toward this sacred object, which for centuries no one was permitted to touch, a single warrior—then considered a barbarian—loosed an arrow. Taira no Kiyomori shot the mikoshi, proving by his own hand that no curse or divine retribution would follow.

This was a major incident, the first of its kind since the founding of Heian-kyo, and it became the catalyst for Kiyomori’s fame. Above all, it exposed the powerlessness of the nobility, who could do nothing but flee in fear of religious calamity when thousands of armed monks descended on the capital. Kiyomori showed the people that the warrior was the rightful leader of the new era. Simultaneously, for the Imperial family, who were frustrated by the monopoly of interests held by the nobility and Mount Hiei, it provided the evidence they needed: the warrior might of the Taira was necessary to suppress Mount Hiei.

The single arrow loosed by Taira no Kiyomori truly transformed the era. This arrow, fired at the mikoshi of Mount Hiei, was the opening salvo in the dismantling of the fiction that sustained the power apparatus of the shadow capital.

Damaging the mikoshi of Mount Hiei was, in those days, a capital offense. However, the punishment for Kiyomori—the heir of the Taira clan—was a mere fine. In response to this lenient measure, Mount Hiei dispatched thousands of armed monks to the capital once more to perform a forceful protest, demanding Kiyomori’s exile. But the Court did not yield. The people of the Court and the capital, who were weary of Mount Hiei’s excesses, hailed Kiyomori as a hero who confronted power with force, unafraid of divine punishment. For Mount Hiei, this was a devastating "negative campaign." Their power was rooted in the creation of a fiction—that the illusion itself was real, and that it existed eternally with the radiance of gods and Buddhas. But with a single arrow from a warrior, that fiction collapsed. This had a powerful impact on the common people of Heian-kyo. Simultaneously, this became a major catalyst for the public’s estrangement from the Tendai sect of Mount Hiei.

Please keep the year 1147 in the back of your mind as a turning point. In this very year, when the centuries-old religious authority of the Tendai sect began its decisive collapse, the seed of a religious leader for the new era was already within Enryaku-ji. That was Honen (1133–1212).

The details of lives from this era are often obscure, but we know that Honen had ascended Mount Hiei by 1145 at the age of twelve. In 1147, Honen received direct teachings and the precepts from Gyogen (1097–1155), who was then the zasu (座主), the head of the Tendai sect. Thus, during his youth at Enryaku-ji, he witnessed the shocking event where the spiritual pillar of Mount Hiei was shattered by the warrior Taira no Kiyomori. Honen did not actually abandon Enryaku-ji and begin preaching the new sect of the Jodo school (浄土宗), or Pure Land Buddhism, until 1175, at the age of forty-three. This means that the thirty-year period from 1147 to 1175 was spent in the very midst of the collapse of Mount Hiei’s hegemony. This is the crux of the rise of Pure Land Buddhism.

When I contemplate Honen, I often overlap his life with modern Japan’s "Lost 30 Years." For Honen, 1147–1175 was the "lost thirty years" of Mount Hiei itself—a period of preparation for him to live out his ultimate mission. Indeed, during these three decades, Mount Hiei suffered total defeat at the hands of Taira no Kiyomori. The reason Honen left the mountain where he had trained for so long and awakened to the new faith of the Jodo school can be disclosed through the struggle between Kiyomori and Mount Hiei.

In modern Japan, the system is rigidly formed by "precedent-ism," where anything without a precedent is never attempted. However, an interesting aspect of a precedent-bound society is that once someone establishes a new precedent, the winds of the era change all at once. By shooting the mikoshi in 1147, Kiyomori created a new precedent—that one could confront power with warrior force without fearing divine punishment. This was the signal for the sudden disintegration of Mount Hiei’s hegemony.

As shown in the previous article, the outbreak of civil war in 1156 saw Taira no Kiyomori rise as the warrior force for the Imperial side. This made the image of the new era, where warrior power held the fate of the nation, definitive. From there, Kiyomori surged forward, and in 1167, he became the first warrior to reach the highest office of the Court, daijo-daijin (太政大臣), the Grand Minister of State. Yet, in 1168, Kiyomori took the tonsure, citing illness. However, by this time, the insei (cloistered rule) system—where an Emperor abdicated but retained power behind the scenes—had been established. Kiyomori applied this system to himself, maintaining his influence as a nyudo (入道), a lay monk, unbound by the rules of the secular world.

Subsequently, in June 1169, Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa also took the tonsure. Seeing this moment, Mount Hiei once again mobilized thousands of armed monks to reclaim their lost interests. The official reason for this protest was a conflict involving Fujiwara no Narichika, whose subordinates had clashed with a Hiei-affiliated temple. But this was really the explosion of Mount Hiei’s long-standing resentment against the rulers of the age: Go-Shirakawa and Kiyomori.

Mount Hiei’s intention was to shake the Court and strike both obstacles at once. However, Kiyomori immediately deployed thousands of Taira warriors to the Imperial Palace upon hearing of the protest. As the thousands of heavily armed samurai stood before the palace gates and the thousands of monks attempted to force their way through with their mikoshi, the warriors aimed their arrows and drew their swords, exerting a crushing warrior pressure.

This was a nodal point in history where thousands of warriors and thousands of monks faced each other directly. Struck by the intense, lethal intent of the Taira warriors, the armed monks were overcome with fear. In a pathetic display, the thousands of monks abandoned their sacred palanquins and fled back to Mount Hiei in total retreat.

This was the decisive blow to Mount Hiei’s decline. As a result, Kiyomori proved that the mikoshi—the spiritual weapon of Hiei’s rule—was utterly useless against the physical violence of a trained army. The people of Heian-kyo were convinced of the end of Mount Hiei and accepted the dawn of the warrior age. At this moment, the power of Mount Hiei collapsed, and the power of the Taira clan expanded exponentially.

Thus, Taira no Kiyomori delivered the finishing stroke to the weakened power structure of Mount Hiei. However, because this thorough purging occurred in such a short period, it would become a profound issue for centuries to come. In the next article, we shall look at the rise of the Pure Land movement and the fierce conflicts between warrior houses for hegemony in the new age.