The Cardinal Directions

The isle of Manhattan, seen from a map, is a straight landmass with edges defined by parallel rivers, with a tilt of about 29 degrees east of true North. This tilt is the island’s natural axis, and any construction ought to acknowledge this geological starting point. The 19th century planners of Manhattan’s future layout, the Commission, decided that this would be the primary angle of its new rectilinear street plan, intended to promote the social equality and republican virtue that their new polity valued. Regions were to be rendered moot, all streets were essentially the same, and the uniformity would provide to each an equal starting point. Special measures were taken to ensure that the blocks were small enough that no large estate could be amassed, and the people of New York distributed themselves accordingly across the island. Petrus Stuyvesant was a notable dissenter, setting the street bearing his family name towards true north rather than the angle. But the grid’s directions define Manhattan’s space. North and South are the directions of the avenues, East and West the streets.

Walking today in Manhattan, the 29 degrees hardly matter as the cardinal directions guide all horizons. To get from 69th and 9th down to 14th and 2nd is a simple matter of South and East. I meet my friends with ease at a building on the Northwest corner of an intersection. Even the subways are in on the system, giving each exit a cardinal direction to guide the foot traveler. In Manhattan, you always know where you are and where you are going. While the ambitions of equality have been frustrated by the invention of skyscraper, some of that original dream survives in a layout which favors order over the old twisted street knowledge which dominates in older European cities.

These cardinal directions are not only manifested in everyone’s personal map, but the names of the neighborhoods. Up, of course meaning North, joins with West and East to form two neighborhoods divided by Central park. SoHo, South Ferry, South Harlem, make it evident that all the namers of New York have abided by the same system. The other boroughs do not have the luxury of a 29 degree rectangle, but they too have followed suit in many places with the grid proper to the city’s order.

Navigating Manhattan follows the way we think, ordered directions, universal in their applications across maps and civilizations, manifested directly in the natural geography of the island and man’s construction on top of it.

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After centuries of destruction and chaos in the empire, the Sui succeeded in restoring order and built the new capital of Daxing, just southeast of where the Han had their great imperial seat. The Tang were to rename it Chang’an (長安, Everlasting Peace) and its legacy would stretch far for centuries. The site was not chosen for its proximity to trade routes or rivers, but to properly restore China and the cosmic union between heaven and earth.

Chang’an was built as a square exactly on a North-South axis so that the harmony of the universe could be enacted in the Emperor’s restoration of order. There were 108 wards, a magic number throughout the world and the product of 1^1, 2^2, and 3^3. Each ward belonged to one of the nine districts, made by dividing the city into perfect thirds and called by their direction, North, Southeast, Center, and so on. Walls bound each side into its ideal shape and growth, a change in perfection, was not an appropriate consideration. The markets, palaces, and parks were all laid out to properly preserve the symmetry of the construction, and each given a role according to its cardinal direction. Everything had its proper place. And this was not an abstract construction of harmony. The city would have over a million inhabitants at its peak, making it one of the most populous in the world, and a center of all the empire’s culture.

Not wanting to be outdone, the outer kingdoms with their new pretensions to imperial valor made their capitals in the same image. Silla and Balhae, states on the Korean peninsula, modeled their capitals after the perfect layout of Chang’an, as did the Japanese with Kyoto. This capital of Japan was settled out on a plane to properly seat the imperial family and distance them from the ascendant Buddhist clergy in Nara. The palace was built first, up in the North, and the markets, parks, and official buildings all were given their proper direction from there. Unlike Chang’an, Kyoto did not have proper walls to surround the city and make clear its perfect square. After just a few hundred years, the swampy land in the city’s West by the Katsura river had been given over to farmland, whereas the East proved more conducive to building. Kyoto has continued to grow East over the past millennium, though traces of the now ruined square can be felt in the naming of the city’s intersections.

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Vulture Peak, or Gijjhakuta in Pali, is at the exact midpoint of the universe. It is the center of the five directions: North, East, West, South, and Center. To the West lies Amitabha’s Pure Land, where many of the faithful hope to be reborn, away from our sinful Saha world trapped in the cycle of samsara. The worlds are scattered throughout, with all their Buddhas and Boddhisatvas as myriad as the sands of the Ganges. Maps of our small world and spiritual mandalas serve much the same purpose, for part of karmic progress is finding the right location for perfection.

Kobo Daishi sought to bring the true knowledge of Buddhism back to his homeland of Japan. Before his return, he stood on the shore and threw his sacred Vajra East, vowing to build a temple where it landed. After several years of teaching and establishing his doctrine, he travelled South of the capital and found the Vajra. It landed on the Central peak of a great region of mountains, with 8 peaks surrounding it. Kobo Daishi realized these 8 peaks mirrored the Diamond World Mandala, and that this would be his Center. At this place he constructed a building exactly attuned to the directions, with each Buddha of the mandala represented by a giant wooden statue. The sacred had been installed in Japan.

Two thousand or one thousand years after the death of Shaka Buddha, the world entered an age of decline where only extreme practices would allow for rebirth in a more favorable land. Many of the Japanese looked to the West and prayed to Amida, but few traveled, for China and the rest of civilization lay that way before any deliverance. However it was also known that Fudaraku, the island mountain where Kannon-sama dwells, lay in the sea far to the South of Vulture Peak. If one were to have the right pure state of mind, perhaps one could reach this great Southern mountain and favorable rebirth.

Some of the Japanese faithful, after much meditative preparation, had themselves sealed inside small ships with no sails and no provisions save for religious instruments and sailed due South to their escape.