https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saigy%C5%8D
As a youth, he worked as a guard to retired Emperor Toba, but in 1140 at age 22, for reasons now unknown he quit worldly life to become a monk, taking the religious name En'i (円位).
He later took the pen name Saigyō (西行), meaning "Western Journey", a reference to Amida Buddha and the Western paradise. He lived alone for long periods in his life in Saga, Mt. Koya, Mt. Yoshino, Ise, and many other places, but he is more known for the many long, poetic journeys he took to Northern Honshū that would later inspire Bashō in his Narrow Road to the Interior.
Many of his best-known poems express the tension he felt between renunciatory Buddhist ideals and his love of natural beauty. Most monks would have asked to die facing West, to be welcomed by the Buddha, but Saigyō finds the Buddha in the flowers.
