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.
