The Mahayana movement in northern India and what is now Afghanistan supersceded what was known as the "Hinayana" movement, or "lesser vehicle. Theravada is similar to the "original Buddhism", though it in reality represents centuries of reification, deification, and oral transmissions, that were probably added to. Mahayana represents something more radical. It is a basic reworking of Buddhism in the light of later people's perception of enlightenment put into the Buddha's mouth. One could say it is the work of the "Bliss Buddha" or the "light" that is within all of us. Working with the Judeo-Christian tradition, one could say that this is the reworking of the original material through revelation.
Revelation is basically similar to Samadhi. The difference is that Westerners attribute their revelation to transmissions through angels or God himself. Buddhism, tends to "conserve" the authority of it's human founder, while the religions spawned by Judaism tend to premise an authority that is "law" and "ineffable." Both are aiming at the same end of removing the "reification" and attachment to "images" of the believer. Counter to this is the popular tradition of just that -- personalizing the divine.
Thus, There is always a tension between the deeper, but more abstract realizations of thinkers and people who engage in revelation/spiritual journeys; the more popular conceptions, and the "priests" or institutionalized teachers who usually try to harmonize or control both groups -- often by pandering to the general populace's need for "reification"/ for images that express what people believe.
This is the process through which religion progresses -- Even relatively modern religions such as Bahai or Mormonism -- Most of them claim that their revelation is pure and unsullied by human rewrites. They will sometimes violently attack their competition as being impure and sullied by such things. The teacher Nichiren expressed this when he compared the priests of his day to cats stalking mice. Teachers can only embrace abstracts so long before they get hungry and have to explain their abstracts to the real world. When they do, they often fudge. Claiming infallibility, or making appeals to faith and calling their opponants "unbelievers."
Shakyamuni was cool in that he realized that enlightened beings don't have to starve themselves to death, punish themselves, and can exchange "dharma" for sustenance. He taught a religion that was aimed at liberation, available to all who joined the "body", and could be explained in similes and parables. This method was also used by Jewish teachers (Rabbis), the founders of Christianity (Jesu was called "Rabbi" by his followers) . And by Mohammed and his followers. When used legitimately it makes the highly abstract teachings accessable to ordinary people.
The other thing that teachers have to do is to teach "law;" rules. The actual rules aren't as important as the fact that there are rules. Buddhism originally centered on a philosophy of breaking attachment and following rules and proceedures that would enable this. But breaking attachments is not aimed at developing selfishness or detachment. It is aimed at liberating the mind to think strait, to "straitening" the mind and body. Eventually this Buddhism came under the control of teachers whose rigidity made them emphasize things that seemed at odds with this goal. That is how Mahayana came to be preached.
The rest of the story....
Mahayana initially was a "revolutionary" movement. It's premise was the importance of developing "loving kindness" or "compassion"; karuna and metta (mercy and love). Of course it too became corrupted with time, and spawned new religions, and even in many countries spawned a return to "true Buddhism" as Theravada, the "path of the elders" stepped into some countries that had once been Mahayana. Mahayana appealed to non Hindus because it offered something revolutionary, enlightenment and the notion of a heroic practice. Unfortunately this heroic idea led to the reification of the Buddha. And the initial ideas of "cutting" with the sometimes excessive and tunnel visioned practices of discipline, sometimes led to people cutting their "roots" with the vinaya and not developing something to take it's place. The statues and images that Buddhist prayed to eventually came to be seen, among the common folks, as "Gods" or "angels" that could serve as intermediaries between them and the "next life" or heaven.
Without the rules of "Vinaya" the more revolutionary forms of Buddhism eventually forgot how to "love" or express kindness or mercy. They degenerated into religions that could, as in the case of warrior Zen in Japan, be used to discipline the mind so that a person could be a better sculptor, or a better killer, or in the case of China, got confused with similar Taoist ideas to form equally depraved monstrosities. In Japan Buddhism declined so badly that when Buddhist sought for moral instruction they went to China to study NeoConfucianism. To get "precepts" they had to reintroduce the older scriptures, or go to Neo-Confucianism.
Thus Mahayana, Theravada, and the various teachings of Buddhism became corrupted and nearly moribund in most of the countries of Asia until the "West" discovered them. There is a reason why this is important to remember in transmitting Buddhism to the West. We need to analyze what went wrong and why if we are to avoid making similar or different mistakes in our own development of alternative "paradigms" (models or examples) of religion for our own culture. Blind imitation will not do.
Posted by cholte at October 4, 2004 08:13 PMThank you for a well written and insightful essay. It reminds us that Nichiren's Buddhism is nothing if not a Buddhism for everyone, that Buddhism is the Law and not the sayings of any teacher. Perhaps this is the reason for his severe criticism of other sects which placed Buddhism beyond the access of the common believer (Zen, Shingon, etc) or defined it as faith in a personal Buddha (Nembutsu).
In all religions there is a tension between the insights of the elites and the needs of the masses, between rigor and accessibility, and sometimes a loss of balance results. It seems that Buddhism has not been exempt from this and it certainly appears to be a difficulty as it spreads to western cultures. My hope is that we can achieve that difficult balancing act of developing a true Buddhism that is not an awkward grafting of eastern traditions onto western roots, one that can grow into an authentic global Buddhism.
Posted by: Harry at October 5, 2004 10:29 AM