Mountain school (1) ［山門派］ ( Sammon-ha): Also known as the Mountain Order school. A division of the Tendai school based at Enryaku-ji temple on Mount Hiei in Japan. A rival branch centered at Onjō-ji temple (also known as Mii-dera) is called the Temple (Jimon) school. After the death in 985 of Ryōgen, the eighteenth chief priest of Enryaku-ji who is known as a restorer of the Tendai school, serious discord arose between those in the line of Jikaku (the third chief priest) and those in the line of Chishō (the fifth chief priest), as both sides claimed the vacant position of chief priest. In 993 those in Chishō’s line finally left Mount Hiei and established themselves at Onjō-ji temple. Thereafter Enryaku-ji temple called itself the Mountain school, and Onjō-ji temple, the Temple school.
  (2) ［山家派］ (Chin Shan-chia-p’ai;  Sange-ha): A branch of the T’ien-t’ai school in China. Ch’ing-sung, the eleventh patriarch of the school, had two major disciples, I-chi and Chih-yin, whose views diverged. I-chi’s teachings were transmitted to I-t’ung and then to Chih-li (960–1028), who called his group the Mountain (Shan-chia) school, asserting its orthodoxy as the school of Mount T’ien-t’ai where the founder T’ien-t’ai had lived. The other branch was pejoratively called the Outside-the-Mountain (Shan-wai) school by adherents of the Mountain school. The name was a double entendre referring to the school’s physical location in Ch’ien-t’ang, outside of Mount T’ien-t’ai, and to its presumed divergence from T’ien-t’ai orthodoxy. Though their points of controversy were rather complex, in essence the Mountain school asserted that practitioners should first master various preparatory meditations prior to perceiving the mystic truth of life, while the Outside-the-Mountain school asserted that one should aim to observe the mystic truth directly. The Mountain school criticized its opponents’ position as leaning too heavily toward the Flower Garland (Hua-yen) school’s position and deviating from the original T’ien-t’ai doctrine. The dispute between these two schools continued for decades. While the Mountain school prospered, the Outside-the-Mountain school gradually declined.