3.1 (a): The History of Mahāyāna Buddhism

[Full title: 3.1: The concept of Mahāyāna Buddhism (a): The History of Mahāyāna Buddhism]

Mahāyāna in Sanskrit is, literally, the “Great Vehicle.” As a school of thought it refers to the school of Buddhist practice and teaching that developed around 200 B.C.E., probably in northern India and Kashmir, and then spread east into central Asia, East Asia, and parts of Southeast Asia. Mahāyāna is generally seen as one of the two main schools of Buddhism–the other is Theravāda, or in terms of the Mahāyāna writers, Hīnayāna, or the “Lesser Vehicle.”

The way that Mahāyāna first developed is not clear. It probably started as a movement in opposition to the formal, scholastic approach to Buddhist practice. Mahāyāna stressed instead meditation and assistance of the spiritual development of others. Some theories suppose that it was influenced by the Theravādas emphasis on saddha, or faith. Another theory holds that it was an outgrowth of Hinduism. Just as the Bhagavadgãtā teaches the need to act, Mahāyāna emphasizes the importance of disengaged, non-selfish action. It is also possible that Iranian ideas, mainly the teachings of Zoroastrianism, influenced Mahāyāna. The Zoroastrian idea of a heaven of light ruled over by a deity of light is similar to the Mahāyāna concept of the Buddha Amitabha and his Western Paradise.

While there are an impressive number of concise studies on Śākyamuni, early Buddhism, and Theravāda, we lack a comprehensive presentation of Mahāyāna Buddhism as a whole. There are a number of reasons for this. Overshadowed by preferential interest in the Pāli Canon, research into Mahāyāna has moved forward slowly; moreover, the subject matter is extremely complex and difficult. Mahāyāna extends over a broad and widely diverging field whose historical and geographical horizons are not easily presented in an overview.

In fact, researchers have approached Mahāyāna from a variety of different angles and brought clarity to many areas. The materials gathered in the process would, if sorted out and organized, suffice at least for a provisional general study of Mahāyāna. But since such a study is unfortunately not yet available, for, the time being we shall have to be content with a brief look at some of the results of contemporary research that may aid us in locating dhyāna within the larger field of Mahāyāna.

First to be noted are the early Buddhist schools whose philosophical elements were a harbinger of later Mahāyāna developments. We have already mentioned the beginnings of these philosophical proposals. At the end of all these developments stand the two great Mahāyāna philosophical systems that have exercised a powerful influence on the whole of Mahāyāna: the school of the “Middle Way” ( Mādhyamika) and the “Doctrine of Consciousness” (Vijñānavāda), also called the “Course in Yoga” (Yogācāra). Both philosophical schools are closely linked with the Mahāyāna scriptures and later institutionalized sects. These schools emerged in final form quite late, only after Mahāyāna had been active in different regions for some centuries. ^[1]

The school of the Middle Way must be viewed as foundational for all of Mahāyāna. In it well advanced, typically Mahāyāna thought was for the first time organized into a system, and as such still exercises a normative influence today. The creation of the system is credited to Nāgārjuna, Mahāyāna Buddhism’s greatest thinker, a South Indian said to have lived during the second half of the second century of the common era. In this cursory presentation of Mahāyāna philosophy we can mention only a few of the key ideas of the Middle Way, though Zen masters will often be refemng us back to Nāgārjuna and his thought. As its name indicates, this school traces a “middle way” between being and nonbeing, between realism and nihilism. It holds that despite the “emptiness” (śūnyatā) of all existent things in this changing world, and despite the absence of all substance, qualities, essential characteristics, predicates, definitions, and rational conclusions, there remains the ineffable, final Reality, which can be seen only with the eye of wisdom (prajñā). Nārgārjuna’s thought is through and through dialectical, and dhyāna bears the impress of his spirit.

The doctrine of the Vijñānavāda, or Yogācāra, school was fixed in written form by Asaṅga and Vasubandhu (fourth and fifth centuries Ct)^[2] and can be described as an idealism of consciousness, in this changing world, no thing (dhanna) exists outside of consciousness. Psychological analysis leads in Yogācāra thought to the recognition of eight types of consciousness, of which the eighth is a higher-level consciousness that is used by Zen masters to explain the process of enlightenment. In this “storehouse consciousness” (ālaya-vijñāna) are said to be stored all realities and all impressions; in it is preserved the unity of the processes of consciousness. In its religious practice, this school makes use of Yoga elements;hence its other appellation, the “Course in Yoga.” Its tendency to an epistemological idealism has had wide influence on Mahāyāna and especially on the Dhyāna School.

The great Mahāyāna sūtras form the center of Mahāyāna; in them the new religious inspiration is crystallized. A massive and imposing body of literature, the sūtras differs greatly in content, but each and every one of them breathes the spirit of Mahāyāna. These widely scattered writings serve many religious communities. While individual sūtras or groups of sūtras take up particular themes, they concur and overlap at many points. Moreover, one and the same sūtra can give rise to different religious movements. They are often accompanied by explanatory commentaries, or śāstras. Nearly all the sūtras and śāstras of Mahāyāna Buddhism are written in Sanskrit, which means that they originated in Indian Buddhism. Translated into Chinese and Tibetan, these texts had a much more extensive influence in East Asia than in their Indian motherland. A majority of the texts are preserved today only in translation. Often their Indian origin is questionable, and in many cases it is possible that Chinese originals were given Indian origins in order to enhance their authority. In its imposing totality, Mahāyāna literature enjoys high esteem.

The Mahāyāna sūtras and their commentaries include the sūtras and tantras of the esoteric Buddhism of India and the Himalayan countries as well as the Amitābha sūtras of Pure Land Buddhism. The Prajñāpāramitā sūtras mentioned above are basic to all of Mahāyāna, since they not only bestow the authority of the Buddha himself on the school of the Middle Way but have had a definitive influence on many other Mahāyāna schools as well. The Vijñānavāda school also has its own scriptures and treatises, the most important of which are the tracts by the two brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu. Important Mahāyāna sūtras are also found in the collections known as the Avataṃsaka (“garland”) and Ratnakūta (“preciousness”) sūtras. The Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra has its counterpart in the Pāli Canon. As important as the entrance of the Buddha into nirvana is for the Buddha’s life history, the metaphysics it implies is every bit as important in Mahāyāna thought. The Suvarṇaprabhāsa (“golden ray”) Sūtra enjoys special affection among the common people in their cultic practices. Many other Mahāyāna sūtras could be mentioned. In the Buddhism of East Asia, the “holy book” par excellence is the Saddharmapuṇḍarīka sūtra (“lotus of the True Law”), accorded the highest place by some sects and greatly esteemed by all Buddhists.

Many Japanese Buddhist scholars have dedicated their life’s work largely to one sūtra. Their contribution to the study of Mahāyāna, together with the painstaking translations has done by Western scholars, merit high praise. The sūtras open the way to a total picture of Mahāyāna in all its different branches, but this is an undertaking of gigantic proportions, one that will require the collaboration of generations of scholars to see to completion. We have already noted the special ties that bind particular individual schools and sūtras. Because of the extraordinary significance of the sūtras for the practice of Mahāyāna, these relationships merit special attention. For this reason an entire chapter shall be devoted to the relation of dhyāna to individual Mahāyāna sūtras. Before that, however, we need to consider yet another path of easy access to Mahāyāna.

In their efforts to form an orderly overview, historians of Mahāyāna will also have to consider–last but not least–the process by which the various branches came to form the Buddhist tree. To be sure, the beginnings of such organization appear late in Buddhist history. In Indian Buddhism, Mahāyāna tendencies developed and gathered ever greater momentum without, it would appear, any deliberate attempt at institutional structuring. With the flowering of Mahāyāna in China there emerged a palette of different Mahāyāna schools, all of which were then transplanted to Japan, where they were further enriched through the Nichiren and other movements. Organizational forms, very loose in the beginning, changed in the course of the centuries. Already in China the different schools led a rather isolated existence, although they knew each other and tried to foster contact, as the various discussions on doctrinal issues show. With the diversification that took place in Japan the schools gradually came to take a clear organizational form. Only in the Edo period (1600–1868) did this organization achieve its final form. The six sects of the Nasa period (710–794)–Kusha, Jōjitsu, Sanron, Hossō, Kegon, and Ritsu–somehow manage to continue; ^[3] the once mighty mountains of the Heian period (794–1175), Hiei and Kōya, with their monastic compounds of the Tendai and Shingon sects respectively, have preserved their prestige; and the typically Japanese Buddhism of the Kamakura period (1185–1333)–beginning with the Amida schools, Zen, and Nichiren–continues to exercise a profound influence on the shape of religious life in Japan. These schools, forged in China (with the exception of the Nichiren sect) and lshioned in Japan, embrace the whole of Mahāyāna, with all its varied contents and forms of religious life. A study of the history of Mahāyāna can begin with these schools but must then trace the elements preserved in them through their many phases of development back to their roots. ^[4]

In this sense, the Dhyāna School exists as one of many Mahāyāna schools; it understands itself as one of them and seeks to foster continued, at times even intimate, and contact with them. The imposing significance of Zen Buddhism in Japan should not lead one to forget the place that dhyāna occupies within the broad and fertile history of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

H. Dumoulin. Zen Buddhism: A History, Vol. I. The Jātaka W. Heisig Paul Knitter. (trans.), Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2008, p. 34.

[2]:

The dates of the brothers Asaṅga and Vasubandhu are not certain, If Asaṅga had Maitreyanatha as his teacher–which would make this latter the school’s real founder–then the origins of the school can be placed in the fourth century. See H. Dumoulin 2008: 51.

[3]:

The enumeration of the six sects of the Nara period derives from traditional Japanese Buddhist historiography. Actually, these sects were “schools” only in the narrow sense–that is, organizations for studying certain treatises. See W. Gundert, Japanische Religions geschichie (Tokyo, 1935), pp. 41-52.

[4]:

Zen Buddhism: A History Vol. I. p. 36.