Mount Hiei stands as the sacred heart of Tendai Buddhism in Japan, serving both as its spiritual center and institutional headquarters. Northeast of Kyoto, it is home to Enryaku-ji, the main monastic complex founded by Saichō in 788, which became the head temple of the Tendai school. From its earliest days, this mountain was chosen as the place where the Tiantai-inspired vision of comprehensive Mahayana practice could take root. Supported by imperial recognition, it developed into a powerful religious institution, shaping the course of Japanese Buddhism as a whole.

For Tendai practitioners, Mount Hiei is not merely a historical site but a living field of practice and realization. Its elevation and relative seclusion create an environment understood as a kind of pure land, set apart from worldly distractions and conducive to intensive meditation, doctrinal study, and ritual. The mountain is renowned as a rigorous training ground, especially for the demanding kaihōgyō walking practices, in which monks undertake extended ascetic pilgrimages around the mountain as an embodiment of perseverance and awakening. Generations of practitioners trained there went on to found or deeply influence other major Japanese Buddhist traditions, so that the mountain’s legacy radiates far beyond its slopes.

The mountain also functions as a kind of living mandala for Tendai thought. The entire landscape is regarded as a three-dimensional representation of the Lotus Sūtra’s vision and of Buddha-nature pervading all phenomena, so that study, meditation, ritual, and even walking the paths of the mountain are woven into a single, integrated practice. In this way, Mount Hiei becomes a concrete expression of the Tendai ideal that the sacred is not separate from the natural world but revealed through it.

Finally, Mount Hiei holds a protective role within the sacred geography of Japan. Situated in the northeast, a direction traditionally viewed as vulnerable to malign influences, it has long been regarded as a spiritual bulwark for the imperial capital. The presence of Enryaku-ji and the ongoing cycle of Tendai rituals there are understood to safeguard both the Dharma and the surrounding realm. For practitioners, the mountain thus embodies at once a place of personal transformation, a symbol of doctrinal completeness, and a guardian of the wider spiritual and social order.