Saicho 767 – 822

Saicho, posthumously known as Dengyo Daishi, was a Japanese Buddhist monk and the founder of the Tendai school in Japan. After studies in China at the great Tiantai monastery on Mount Tiantai, he returned to establish a comprehensive monastic and educational complex on Mount Hiei outside Kyoto, which would become for centuries the leading center of Japanese Buddhist learning. His thought emphasized the universal Buddha-nature inherent in all beings and the harmony of meditation, doctrine, esoteric practice, and monastic discipline. From Mount Hiei, the founders of Pure Land, Zen, and Nichiren Buddhism would later go out.