Byōdō-in Temple

Overview

Byōdō-in (平等院) is a Buddhist temple in the city of Uji, in Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It was founded in 1052, the seventh year of the Eishō era (永承), placing its foundation in the late Heian period (794–1185). The temple belongs jointly to the Jōdo-shū (浄土宗, "Pure Land school") and the Tendai-shū (天台宗, "Heavenly Terrace school"), two of the major streams of Japanese Buddhism.

Its setting is the town of Uji, south of Kyoto, and its most famous structure is the Phoenix Hall, which stands beside a garden laid out in the same period. The temple forms part of the group of sites inscribed as the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and it also sits on the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi (神仏霊場巡拝の道), a pilgrimage route linking Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines.

History

Byōdō-in was established in 1052, the opening year of the Eishō era. That date is not incidental: in Japanese Buddhist reckoning of the time, 1052 marked the beginning of mappō (末法), the "Latter Day of the Dharma," an age in which the teaching of the Buddha was thought to be in decline and salvation increasingly difficult to attain by ordinary means.

The temple's history is bound up with the town of Uji and with warfare fought through it. The Battle of Uji took place at the river crossing there, and the temple site was caught up in the destruction that followed. Over the centuries the complex was subject to renovation and to further destruction, so that what survives today is a fraction of the original foundation.

What Stands There Today

The centrepiece of the site is the Phoenix Hall, the building for which Byōdō-in is known throughout Japan. Beside it lies the Byōdō-in Temple Garden, laid out as part of the same design. The temple also includes the Byodo-in Museum Hoshokan, a modern museum building that houses and displays the temple's treasures.

The Phoenix Hall, the garden, and the museum together make up the temple's principal components as they exist now. The garden and hall are the elements that carry the Heian-period design forward into the present, while the Hoshokan serves the conservation and display of the temple's holdings.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 平等院. It is read in kana as びょうどういん, and in romaji as Byōdō-in.

The name breaks down into three kanji:

• 平 — read here as びょう (byō). The character means "flat," "level," or "even." In this compound it carries the sense of equality, evenness, or sameness.
• 等 — read here as どう (dō). The character means "equal," "class," or "rank." Combined with 平, it forms the word 平等 (びょうどう, byōdō), meaning "equality" or "equal treatment."
• 院 — read here as いん (in). The character originally meant "institution," "hall," or "cloister," and in Japanese temple names it typically marks a religious foundation or a cloistered residence.

So the whole name means something like "Temple of Equality." The word 平等, "equality," is a central Buddhist term: it describes the equal capacity of all beings to attain enlightenment, without distinction of rank or status. The name is thus a statement of doctrine as much as a place name, and it fits a temple founded at the moment when Japanese Buddhists were turning toward the idea that salvation was available equally to everyone, however degenerate the age.

Note that 院, the final character, appears in the names of many Japanese temples and sub-temples, so a reader who learns it here will meet it again and again. The reading いん (in) is the standard one in this position; the same character can also be read いん in words such as 病院 (びょういん, byōin, "hospital"), where it carries a related sense of an established institution.

Visiting and Context

Byōdō-in stands in Uji, a town on the Uji River south of Kyoto. The temple's coordinates place it at roughly 34.89° north, 135.81° east. Uji is reached easily from Kyoto, and the temple is the town's principal historic attraction.

For readers of Japanese, the site is a useful study in several directions at once. The name itself introduces the kanji 平, 等, and 院 in a fixed compound, and the reading びょうどう for the first two characters is not the most common one for either character alone — 平 is far more often met as たいら or へい, and 等 as など or とう. Learning the name as a single unit, rather than character by character in isolation, is the practical route.

The temple's date of 1052 also gives a foothold in the period vocabulary of Japanese history: the Heian period, the Eishō era, and the concept of mappō all belong to the same moment, and Byōdō-in is one of the clearest surviving monuments to it. Its inclusion among the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and its place on the Shinbutsu Reijō Junpai no Michi pilgrimage route, mark it as a site that Japanese institutions themselves treat as foundational.