Episode 548 – The Five Mountains, Part 2

Facing Backward Podcasts

This week’s footnote is a continuation of last week’s discussion of the gozan, or five mountain system for the ranking of Zen temples. What did the system look like at its height under Ashikaga rule, and how did its relationship to the Ashikaga begin to transform the practice of Zen within the temples themselves?

Sources

Collcutt, Martin. “Zen and the Gozan”, in The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol III: Medieval Japan.

Collcutt, Martin. Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan

Hoover, Thomas. The Zen Experience: The Historical Evolution of Zen Through the Lives and Teachings of its Greatest Masters.

Besserman, Perle and Manfred Steger. Crazy Clouds: Zen Radicals, Rebels & Reformers.

Images

Zuisenji, one of the jissetsu temples from the second tier of the Gozan.

Nanzenji, which got bumped from the second highest spot in the Gozan to a spot above all the others…to make room for a temple built by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.

The gardens of Tenryuji, the top-ranked Kyoto gozan temple. Tenryuji’s gardens (and all its massive sprawling complexes, which used to be much bigger than they are now) were financed by extensive trade with China, overseen by the temple (which also declared itself a vassal of China’s emperor to access trade directly).

A portrait of Ikkyu from 1447 (which would make him 53 by the Western counting). The text above the image is apparently Ikkyu praising his own wisdom (my eyes are not good enough to get anywhere near reading any of it).

Ginkakuji, Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s retirement complex and personal buddhist temple. It is an example of Gozan-inspired aesthetics in action.