Naigen was the abbot of the eastern branch of the Four Temples and leader of the anti-Perfect Land faction. He was allied with Iwa, the abbot of the southern branch of the Four Temples. [1]
Abbot[]
Naigen was born a member of the Phoenix Clan, who joined the Brotherhood of Shinsei and became abbot of the eastern branch of the Four Temples. He was entrenched in a theology that happened to support the status quo and his comfortable position within it. Naigen rejected out of hand anything that threatened to upset the balance of Rokugan. To him, the Perfect Land Sect was the greatest threat of his generation and condemned it as a heresy. [2]
Brotherhood's Conclave[]
In 1124 the Brotherhood of Shinsei held their annual conclave at the Mountain Song Temple under the hospitality of Mirumoto Daimyō Mirumoto Masashige, being its main agenda item a vote on whether to formally bestow the label of False Path on the Perfect Land Sect, with the risk to fall into a violent schism. Arrangements had been made for the Perfect Land delegation to be admitted to the conclave, but Naigen specifically interfered with those in the hope of keeping the delegation out. Hige, leader of the Perfect Land, had in his possession the founding sutra of his sect, which had never been properly examined by scholars. Naigen demanded that he produced it, Hige refused, but he was forced to surrender it. Fuchō, a scholar of the Temple of Celestial Knowledge, concluded that the sutra was false. [3]
Shinsei's Reborn[]
A delusional heretic who had been wandering through Rokugan approached the temple. Iwa intercepted and badly injured her, but a tengu attacked Iwa and carried the heretic off in the direction of the peak. After this incident the Mountain Song had fallen silent. A group of samurai found the allegued heretic, a peasant woman named Senzai, under the protection of Ajari, the tengu who had rescued her from Iwa's attack. Eventually it was exposed that such woman was Shinsei's reborn. At this very moment, the Mountain Song resumed. She told to the conclave the Perfect Land did not exist, and the words of the kie had no power to free souls from the wheel of rebirth. Bur his moral message was correct: the samurai of Rokugan had indeed lost their way, and the Empire as a whole; all of Rokugani society was out of balance. The very concept of the Celestial Order had been warped over time, becoming a too-rigid system used to justify the oppression of those below for the gratification of those above. The effects of her declaration would ripple far beyond the conclave itself over time. Some Perfect Land communities broke up, others vowed to create the Perfect Land in the Mortal Realm, by righting what had gone wrong. Naigen condemned Senzai as an unspeakable heretic with no understanding of the Celestial Order or the Tao of Shinsei. [4]
References
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