Kenninji Temple

This guide to Kenninji Temple in Kyoto follows the monk Eisai, who returned from China in 1201 with a handful of tea seeds and, against resistance from Kyoto's established Buddhist orders, founded the city's first Zen temple on land granted by a shogun. You'll hear how his writings on tea shaped a ceremony still held here every spring, and about the dragon-ceiling mural filling the Dharma Hall, painted centuries later by Koizumi Junsaku for the temple's eight-hundredth anniversary. Listen for how one monk's gamble on tea and meditation set the tone for everything built here after him.