Part Two The Mahayana

Chapter Fourteen The Origins of the Mahayana Tradition It must be said at the outset that, given the vastness of the Mahayana tra dition, we cannot hope to do more than introduce its major trends in the space of a few sho rt chapters. However, regardless of our personal inclinations toward or commitments to any one of the Buddhist traditions, we must recognize the fact that the Mahayana has contributed a great deal to Buddhist thought and culture. It has produced a vast literature, many works of art, and many different techniques for personal development. Many countries throughout Asia have been influenced by the Mahayana, and although it was neglected by modern scholars in comparison to the Theravada, there is now a trem endous interest in Mahayana literature and philosophy and in the path of the Bodhisattv a. It is therefore appropriate that we should devote eight chapters to looking at the ori gins and development of the Mahayana tradition. I have chosen to begin by considering the origins of the Mahayana because I beli eve that if we do not understand and appreciate the reasons why this tradition arose--it s seeds, so to speak, in the primeval soil of the Buddhist tradition--it will be difficult f or us to see the Mahayana from an objective perspective. I would like to look first at the v ery earliest period in the establishment of the Buddhist tradition, that is, at the life of t he Buddha Shakyamuni himself. The Buddha Shakyamuni taught for forty-five years at many places in north east c entral India. He is universally believed to have taught innumerable living beings. The y included not only human beings from all walks of life, but also animals and supr a human beings such as the gods of the various heavens and the under world. The Buddha is also acknowledged by all the Buddhist traditions to have performed many extraordinary and inconceivable miracles of various kinds for the sake of Enlightening living bein gs. The Buddha was not a man nor a god as He himself avowed. But if he was not a god, h e was certainly divine, exalted and supramundane, because he had made himself so over the course of countless existences. Indeed, all Buddhists believe that the Buddha i s far greater than any god, his qualities and activities more beneficent and immense.

The Buddha Shakyamuni set an example by his own career that people could emulate. Th e goal of this career was Enlightenment and Buddhahood and the way was the way of the Bodhisattva. The Buddha spoke of the goal of enlightenment and Buddhahood as wel l as of the goal of Nirvana. He himself had thoroughly taught the way of attaining t he goal of Buddhahood by means of the practice of the perfections of the Bodhisattva in th e many tales of his former existences. The Buddha Shakyamuni allowed his followers to accept and adapt his teaching to their own abilities and aspirations. While never abandoning the cardinal virtues of m orality and wisdom, the Buddha permitted a great deal of scope for individual expressio n. He encouraged free inquiry among the laity and democracy within the monastic community. This is evident in many places throughout his teachings. There is, fo r example, the famous doctrine he articulated in his advice to the Kalamas, when h e said that one should not rely on secondary means of verifying assertions about the na ture of things, but test such assertions in the light of one's own personal experience a nd only then accept them as true. In a similar vein, he said that one should test the truth of assertions in the light of the criteria of observation, reasoning, and self-consistency, the way a wise man tes ts the purity of gold by cutting, rubbing, and heating it. Again, toward the end of his career, the Buddha told his disciples to be lamps unto themselves, to light their own way wi th their own reasoning. His last words were, 'Subject to change are all compounded things ; work out your liberation with diligence.' The Buddha also encouraged self-reliance in his instructions to the community of monks regarding the code of monastic discipline. Consequently, he told Ananda that, af ter he himself had died, the members of the Order would be free to abolish the lesser r ules of monastic discipline if they saw fit. Indeed, it is significant that the Buddha e ven refused to appoint a successor to head the Buddhist community after his death. All these facts point to the climate that existed in the very early Buddhist community--a climat e of free inquiry, democracy, and independence. After the Buddha's death, his teachings were preserved in an oral tradition that was handed down from one generation of followers to another, maintained in their col lective memory. Literacy was a privilege of the elite in India at that time, and it is a nother indication of the premium placed on democracy within the Buddhist tradition that literary

formulation of the teaching was neglected for so long. Many people were not lite rate, so word of mouth was the universal medium for preservation and dissemination of the Dharma. During the five hundred years when the teaching was preserved orally, a number of assemblies or councils were convened to organize, systematize, and determine the commonly accepted versions of the doctrinal teaching and the monastic discipline , or Vinaya. There were certainly three and maybe more than six of these assemblies convened during this period at various places throughout India. The result was the emergence of a great many schools whose doctrines and disciplinary rules varied to a greater or lesser degree. The First Council was certainly held immediately after the Buddha died at Rajagr iha the capital of Magadha. There it was asked whether the council should proceed to abo lish the lesser precepts, as the Buddha had told Ananda the Order might do if it saw fit. Unfortunately, Ananda had neglected to ask the Buddha which were the lesser prec epts. This uncertainty led the presiding Elder, Maha Kashyapa to recommend that the as sembly retain all the rules of discipline without any modifications. This fact is signi ficant because it indicates that the question of disciplinary rules was debated at the time of the First Council. The question was to arise again at the Second Council and was the major issue there. In addition, the records of the First Council tell us the story of a monk named Purana who arrived at Rajagriha just as the assembly was concluding its deliberations. He w as invited by the organizers to participate in the closing phases of the council but declin ed, saying that he would prefer to remember the teaching of the Buddha as he had heard it f rom the Buddha himself. This fact is significant because it indicates that there were a lready people who preferred to preserve an independent tradition, to remember the Dharm a they themselves had heard from the Buddha. Both episodes indicate the degree of freed om of thought that existed at the time of the early Buddhist community. Let us now look at the record of the Second Council which was held about a hun dred years later. At this council, the issue that dominated the debate, and that pre cipitated the calling of the council was disciplinary. A number of monks had taken up practi ces which the elder monks considered breaches of monastic discipline. There were ten such practices, including carrying salt in a hollowed horn, which was considered a br each of the rule forbidding the storage of food; seeking permission for an action after the action

had already been done; and accepting gold and silver, which was considered a bre ach of the rule forbidding the accumulation of wealth. The erring monks were declared in violation of the orthodox code of discipline and censured accordingly. Again th e conservative stand of Maha Kashyapa was adopted by the Elders at the council, an d indeed the rules of monastic discipline have remained virtually unchanged over t he centuries notwithstanding many actual modifications in practice. In spite of the apparently easy resolution of the disciplinary dispute, the yea rs after the Second Council saw the emergence and proliferation of many separate schools such as the Maha Sanghikas who some regard as the progenitors of the Mahayana, Vatsiputr iyas and others. Consequently, by the time of the Third Council, held during the rei gn of Emperor Ashoka, in the third century B. C. E., there were already at least eight een schools, each with its own doctrines and disciplinary rules. Two schools dominated the deliberations at the Third Council, an analytical school called the Vibhajyavadins, and a school of realistic pluralism known as the Sarvastivadins. The council decided in favor of the analytical school and it wa s the views of this school that were carried to Sri Lanka by Ashoka's missionaries, led by h is son Mahendra. There it became known as the Theravada. The adherents of the Sarvastiv ada mostly migrated to Kashmir in the north west of India where the school became kn own for its popularization of the path of the perfections of the Bodhisattva. At yet another council, held during the reign of King Kanishka in the first cent ury C.E., two more important schools emerged--the Vaibhashikas and the Sautrantikas. These differed on the authenticity of the Abhidharma, the Vaibhashikas holding that th e Abhidharma was taught by the Buddha, while the Sautrantikas held that it was not . By this time, Mahayana accounts tell us, a number of assemblies had been conven ed in order to compile the scriptures of the Mahayana tradition which were already rep uted to be vast in number. In the north and south west of India as well as at Nalanda i n Magadha, the Mahayana was studied and taught. Many of the important texts of th e Mahayana were believed to have been related by Maitreya the future Buddha and ot her celestial Bodhisattvas or preserved among the serpent gods of the underworld unt il their discovery by Mahayana masters such as Nagarjuna. The appearance of all these schools each having its own version of the teaching of the Buddha clearly illustrates the immense diversity that characterized the Buddhist tradition at the beginning of the common era. Although differing in many particulars rega

rding the question of the authenticity of texts and teachings, the Buddhist schools contin ued to acknowledge a common identity as Buddhists. The single exception to this rule being the Vatsiputriyas who because of their adherence to the notion of an essential p ersonality were universally dubbed heretics by the other schools. The formation of the extant written canons of the schools, both in India and in Sri Lanka, is now generally accepted by scholars to belong to a relatively late period. The Mahayana teachings, as well as those of the other schools, including the Theravada, began to appear in written form more than five hundred years after the time of the Buddha. We kn ow with certainty that the Theravada canon--recorded in Pali, an early Indian vernacular language--was first compiled in the middle of the first century B.C.E. The earli est Mahayana sutras, such as the Lotus Sutra and the Sutra of the Perfection of Wisd om are usually dated no later than the first century C. E. Therefore, the written cano ns of the Theravada and Mahayana traditions date to roughly the same period. After the death of the Buddha, the views of the elders among the monks dominated Buddhist religious life, but by the first century C. E., dissatisfaction with th e ideal of the Arhat whose goal was the achievement of personal freedom had grown significantl y among the monastic and lay communities. The followers of the Buddha were presen ted with a choice between two different ideals of religious life--Arhatship and Budd hahood. While the aspiring Arhat is interested in gaining freedom for him- or hers elf, the Bodhisattva or Buddha to be is committed to achieving Enlightenment for the sak e of all living beings. The essence of the Mahayana conception of religious life is compassion for all living beings. Indeed, it is in this context that we should understand the increasing popularity of the Mahayana. It is hardly surprising if many devoted Buddhists chose to follow the example of the Buddha whose compassion and wisdom were infinite and not that of his prominent disciples, the elders and Arhats who for the most part seemed austere and remote. In short, the Mahayana, with its profound philosophy, its universal com passion and its abundant use of skillful means, rapidly began to attract an enthusiastic following not only in India, but in the newly Buddhist lands of central Asia. I would like to conclude this chapter by spending a few moments on a brief comparison of a few ideas from the canon of the Theravada tradition and some of the salient features of the Mahayana that appear prominently in Mahayana texts like

the Lotus Sutra, the Perfection of Wisdom Discourses and the Lankavatara Sutra. It is often forgotten that not only are there many virtually identical Discourses belonging to both canons, but also that there are traces in the Theravada canon of some of the cha racteristic themes of the Mahayana--such as the supramundane nature of the Buddha, and the doctrines of emptiness and the creative and luminous nature of mind. For example, in the Theravada canon we find the Buddha repeatedly referring to h imself not by name but as the Tathagata, one who is identical with suchness, or reality . Nonetheless, the Buddha is credited with the power to produce emanations for the edification of living beings. These passages contained in the Theravada canon suggest the transcendental, supramundane, and inconceivable nature of the Buddha, an ide a very important to the Mahayana. Again according to the Theravada cannon, the Buddha extolled emptiness in the highest terms, calling it profound and going beyond t he world. He said that form, feeling and the like were illusory, mere bubbles. Phenomena are nothing in themselves. They are unreal deceptions. This is a theme taken up an d elaborated in the Mahayana Perfection of Wisdom literature. Again, according to the Theravada canon the Buddha said that ignorance and imagination are responsible for the appearance of the world. He referred to the parable of the Demigod Vepachitta who was bound or freed according to the nature of his th oughts to illustrate this point. The original nature of consciousness however shines li ke a jewel, intrinsically pure and undefiled. These ideas are developed in Mahayana sutras l ike the Lankavatara Sutra. They are the very foundation of the Mahayana view of the na ture of the mind. Thus the origins of the Mahayana tradition can be found in the very earliest pha ses of the Buddhist tradition and in the Buddha's own career. The five hundred years after the death of the Buddha witnessed the emergence of differing traditions of interpret ation that, whatever their emphasis, all look back to the original, infinitely varied, and p rofound teaching of the Buddha. By the first century C.E., the formation of the Mahayan a was virtually complete, and most of the major Mahayana sutras were in existence. We will discuss three of these sutras in the following chapters.