Mahayana ordination platform
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Mahayana ordination platform
[大乗戒壇] (Jpn daijo-kaidan )
Also, Mahayana ordination hall or Mahayana ordination center. A place for conducting the ceremony conferring the Mahayana precepts. The first Mahayana ordination platform built in Japan was the one at Enryaku-ji temple on Mount Hiei. Before that, priests had been ordained exclusively in the Hinayana precepts. Dengyo, the founder of the Japanese Tendai school, repeatedly sought imperial permission to establish a Mahayana ordination center at Mount Hiei over the objections of the Buddhist schools based at Nara. Permission was finally granted in 822 seven days after Dengyo's death, and a building housing the Mahayana ordination platform was erected there in 827.
