Tōrin-in Temple

Overview

Tōrin-in (東林院) is a Buddhist temple in Ōasa-chō Ōtani, a district of the city of Naruto in Tokushima Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku. It stands on the slope of a mountain and carries a second name, Takamine-Daishi (種蒔大師), by which it is often known locally. The temple is the oku-no-in (奥の院), or "inner sanctuary", of Ryōzen-ji (霊山寺), which is Temple 1 on the Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimage. Tōrin-in is itself Temple 1 on the Shinshikoku Mandara Reijō (新四国曼荼羅霊場), a separate pilgrimage route, and it belongs to the Awa Hokurei Yakushi Reijō (阿波北嶺薬師霊場), a circuit of Yakushi temples in the old province of Awa. Its principal image is Yakushi Nyorai (薬師如来), the Buddha of healing.

History

Tōrin-in was founded in 733, the fifth year of the Tenpyō era (天平), during the Nara period (710–794). The foundation is attributed to Gyōki (行基), the monk who travelled through the provinces of Japan in the eighth century, building bridges, irrigation works and temples, and who is credited with the founding of many religious sites across the Kansai and Shikoku regions. The temple's main object of worship, Yakushi Nyorai, belongs to the same devotional world: Yakushi is invoked for the cure of illness, and a temple founded in the Nara period under his name would have served a community that looked to Buddhism for practical protection as much as for doctrine.

The temple also holds a seated wooden statue of Miroku Bosatsu (弥勒菩薩) dating from the Heian period (794–1185). Miroku is the bodhisattva who will appear in the future as the next Buddha; images of him were widely made in the Heian period, and this one has been designated an Important Cultural Property. The statue is the earliest surviving artistic treasure at the site and the clearest material link between the temple's legendary eighth-century foundation and its later life as a working religious institution.

What Stands There Today

The temple occupies a mountain position above the valley, which is what its alternative name suggests: Takamine-Daishi means roughly "the great teacher of the peak". Its status as the oku-no-in of Ryōzen-ji places it at the inner end of that temple's sacred ground. Pilgrims walking the Shikoku 88 temple route begin at Ryōzen-ji, and the oku-no-in is the point at which the devotion attached to Temple 1 is completed before the pilgrim sets out on the long circuit of the island. Tōrin-in also functions independently as the first stop on the Shinshikoku Mandara Reijō, a modern pilgrimage of temples in Shikoku, and as one of the Yakushi temples of the Awa Hokurei circuit. The seated Miroku Bosatsu remains in the temple's care.

The Name in Japanese

The temple's name is written 東林院. It is read in kana as とうりんいん, and in romaji as Tōrin-in. The long ō in the first syllable is a long vowel, held about twice as long as a short o.

The name breaks into three characters:

東 — read here as とう (tō). It means "east". This is the same character used in Tōkyō (東京) and in Tōkaidō (東海道), and it is one of the most common directional elements in Japanese place and temple names.

林 — read here as りん (rin). It means "woods" or "grove". On its own the character is read はやし (hayashi), which is also a very common Japanese surname; in compounds it takes the Chinese-derived reading rin, as in 林業 (ringyō), "forestry".

院 — read here as いん (in). It means "institution", "hall" or "cloister". In temple names it usually marks a sub-temple, a cloister, or a dependent hall rather than a great head temple, and it appears in the names of many small temples and monastic residences across Japan.

Put together, 東林院 can be understood as "the East Grove Cloister" — a name that describes a hall set among trees on the eastern side of a sacred site. The alternative name Takamine-Daishi (種蒔大師) is read たかみねだいし in kana; takamine means "high peak" and daishi means "great teacher", a title applied to revered monks. The characters 種蒔, literally "seed-sowing", are a separate written form attached to the same name.

Visiting and Context

Tōrin-in sits at coordinates 34.1614 north, 134.5360 east, in the Ōasa-chō Ōtani district of Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture. Naruto is on the eastern side of Shikoku facing the Naruto Strait, and the temple's mountain setting places it above the coastal plain. For readers of Japanese, the temple's name repays attention: 院 at the end signals a cloister or dependent hall, 林 supplies the image of a grove, and 東 fixes the direction. The same three elements recur constantly in Japanese temple nomenclature, so the name is a useful model for reading other temple signs. The temple's association with Gyōki, with Yakushi Nyorai and with the opening of the Shikoku pilgrimage at nearby Ryōzen-ji makes it a natural first stop for anyone tracing the geography of pilgrimage in Tokushima.