http://www.serve.com/cmtan/buddhism/Misc/budd_mahayana.htmlDid Shakyamuni Buddha Preach the Mahayana?-- Dr. Richard St. Clair Faith. Ceremony. Ritual. Worship. Devotionalism. Pietism. Are these what Shakyamuni Buddha (563-483 BCE), the historical founder of the religion called Buddhism, really had in mind? Were his teachings even remotely related to these states of mind and practices which are associated with Mahayana Buddhism? Theravadin Buddhists make a plausible claim that their Tipitaka, also called the Pali Canon, is as close as possible to the actual, literal teachings of Gotama the Enlightened One, the Buddha. The Sutta Pitaka (Part II of the Tipitaka) is a sprawling yet essentially logical presentation of the nature of karma, how karma is at the root of suffering, and how karma can be overcome through austerities that came down in the form of the Vinaya Pitaka, or the Buddhist Monastic Codes (Part I of the Tipitaka). The third Pitaka, the Abhidamma, represents the efforts of later Buddhists to clarify and further systematize the Suttas and Vinayas. Just how does Mahayana Buddhism square with this palpable lineage of authenticity made for the Pali Canon? Having grown up in the West (United States) and raised from infancy in a Christian household, I think the lessons I learned from that upbringing may shed light on the apparent discrepancy between the Mahayana and the Theravada which continues to be debated down to our own times. Christianity like Buddhism had its roots in a prior religious matrix. With Christianity it was Judaism. With Buddhism it was the Vedic traditions and perhaps an earlier form of Hinduism. Buddhism was also contemporary with Jainism and there is arguable evidence of cross-fertilization of doctrinal concepts with all the contemporary faiths and Buddhism itself. It was less confusing in the case of Christianity, which started as Judaism and was practiced as such, the difference being that the Christians felt they had their messiah in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, while those Jews that rejected the claim made for Jesus as messiah continued in the Judaic traditions from which Christianity quickly veered away, particularly when it was exported to the rest of the Roman Empire and beyond. Yet even within Christianity there were numerous streams of belief often severely at odds with one another after the passing of Jesus. These beliefs often clashed violently. It was only through the fiat of a converted Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, that the doctrinal features of Christianity were essentially set in stone at the Council of Nicaea and have largely remain unchanged for the past nearly 17 centuries, as opposing doctrines were methodically and permanently stamped out as heretical. The only major change to occur in Christian doctrine was not a fundamental one - the Reformation instigated by Martin Luther in the early 16th century. Luther was an ordained Catholic priest (all Christians were Catholic at that time, of course), but his aim was to create a simpler folk religion that involved the laity and made the matter of their individual salvation the internal process of faith in each individual rather than through the intercession of the priest class of the Catholic Church. At that time, for example, only ordained priests were permitted to read the scriptures (and in Latin, not the vernacular tongue of the people). Luther translated the Bible into vernacular German, and other reformationists made similar translations into their own tongues. The Catholic Church responded with its Counter Reformation. Even with all this, the basic tenets of Christianity were unchanged and all Christian churches invoke the so-called Apostles? Creed. Then what lesson can Buddhism gain from the historical experience of Christianity? In Christianity there were two ways an individual could proceed. As a layperson, or as a priest or monk. As in Buddhism, the Christians also debated over the primacy of faith alone over the primacy of good works. This sounds much like the difference between the faith of Pure Land Buddhism (or ?easy path?) versus the bodhisattva path (or ?path of sages?) of acquiring merit through meditation, detachment, virtuous deeds and avoidance of evil. But even more, there was a major monastic tradition in Christianity that operated completely out of the sphere of lay people. This was a life of total renunciation of all attachment to worldly things - essentially identical to the monasticism of both Theravadin and Mahayana Buddhism. In the secular sphere, the congregational lay Christianity was presided over by the priests who were said to be the conduit, so to speak, of the lay person?s deliverance to salvation in the hereafter. In Buddhism, the lay person was considered to gain merit by supporting the monks and nuns (or lama), thereby gaining auspicious rebirths towards eventual enlightenment. What would Jesus of Nazareth have said about these developments in the religious movements in Christianity which his ministry spawned? Would he even think of himself as part of a Trinity with God? What would Buddha Shakyamuni have said about the proliferation of Theravada and Mahayana, which often depicted him having fantastical magical powers and past-lives, and a triple body (not unlike the Christian Trinity)? In the case of Christianity, the written record of Jesus? ministry is almost contemporaneous to his actual life on earth. The extra-canonical Gospel of Thomas is considered to be almost a close record of his teachings. Such is not the case with Buddhism, whose canon was not committed to writing for many centuries after Gotama passed away. Any assurance of what Lord Buddha really preached and how literally his teachings were captured can only be conjectural at best and in the last analysis come down to faith - which form of Buddhism do you truly believe best represents the essence of Shakyamuni?s teaching? In Christianity, one of the canonical texts - the Revelation of St. John the Divine - sets a finite duration for the peoples of the earth to come around to believing in Jesus as savior, after which there will be a cataclysm of judgement and all nonbelievers will end up in permanent hell, while all believers will end up in eternal heaven. Buddhism does not have this kind of time sense. Buddhism considers time in vast cycles called kalpas, or aeons of billions of years, and the human being does not live just one but innumerable lives on earth (or in other realities) for innumerable kalpas. This gives a human being a much longer ?string? to eventually come to the truth of the Dharma (Dhamma), the only caveat being that until that takes place the human will continue to be reborn in the undesirable states ad infinitum (a kind of hell, itself, since the process of attachment, suffering, death and rebirth constitute a miserable and vicious cycle). It was the arbitrary ?Repent now or else face eternal damnation? aspect of Christianity which made me lose confidence in it several decades ago, though I still fondly remember the compassionate words Jesus had for the suffering multitudes. But on balance, I could not conceive of a God that could be so arbitrary and even cruel as to summarily save or condemn people who were basically caught up in normal human predicaments. Buddhism depersonalized the cosmos for me - it made the cosmos something rational that I could, and even had to, face on my own, without either the help or hindrance of an unseen and ruthless-sounding deity with an obscure agenda beyond human imagining. Since the recorded teachings of Jesus come from roughly his own era and likely from people that knew and walked with him, we can see him teaching different approaches to salvation for different kinds of people. He invited certain people to give up everything and follow him based on his assessment of their ability to handle the task of helping him spread his message. This is like the Lion?s Roar of the Buddha, and his call to those who listened for them to give up this world and seek nirvana by ?going forth? as a monk or nun. But at the same time, the Christian canon records Jesus teaching ordinary folk, giving them a simple faith they could rely upon, particularly after he was gone. He showed by example the qualities of mercy, unselfish help, kindness towards children, going the extra mile for people in distress, and he engaged them in a sense that their simple trust in and following the intent of his teaching was enough for them to find a blessed life hereafter. The Buddha is characterized over and over again as compassionate. It seems to me that in order to form a successful religion that will help all sorts of people to find ultimate truth and deliverance from suffering, a great teacher must necessarily approach different people in different ways. Now Gotama was committed to establishing a dedicated core of followers to maintain the monastic path in order that the teachings be accurately transmitted after he was gone. However, it is my contention that the monastic order tended to preserve and transmit only those teachings that were germane to following the monastic path. This was certainly the case in Christian monastic movements, which were completely renunciant enclaves that preserved their traditions come what may in the outside world, and I believe this pattern of monasticism is common to many religions. Yet another kind of thing must have happened in the early days following the Buddha?s passing. Just as he preached different ?upaya? (or skillful means) to different people according to their capacities and karmic conditions, it is logical to assume that those people that were touched by his wisdom and compassion all came away from the experience with slightly, or greatly different impressions of the Dharma. The monastic order would have been interested mainly in preserving the code laid down by the Master and attracting others to their order. But for those lay people who gained another perspective, that of a sense of deep faith and trust in the capacity of Buddha himself to vouchsafe their eventual liberation from karma and suffering, another tradition must have congealed among them in those confusing decades after his passing, when many of his followers were in some way trying to compile a sense of the totality of the Buddha Dharma. What is striking to me is that both the Mahayana and Theravada canons were set down in writing at about the same time. There was clearly a competitive tension between these two dramatically different paths. One was claiming a rigorous spiritual lineage back to Buddha himself, just as Catholicism claims the papal lineage goes back to St. Peter, Jesus? favored disciple whom he anointed as the founder of his church. What happened in the Theravadin monasteries in the decades after Gotama?s passing is considered fairly well established, i.e. that there were chanting schools each of which committed to memory a certain portion of the canon which were transmitted by Gotama directly to his monks. Again, I believe that those portions of the canon dealt overwhelmingly with the issues of the monastic order rather than the issues of the laity. The Mahayana seems to me to have evolved as folk (and folkloreistic) tradition of Buddhism, and as such must have had a more colorful and certainly far less methodical transmission, accounting probably for the noticeable escalation of grandeur from the more subdued methodical sutras like the Prajnaparamita and Surangama, to the openly pro-laity Vimalakirtinirdesa sutra, to the Mahaparanirvana sutra, to the Pure Land and Lotus sutras, and ultimately to the most fabulously dazzling religious scripture of all time, the Flower Garland Sutra. The key theme common to all sects of the Mahayana is faith in the teaching contained in each of these scriptures. Even the Zen tradition has faith in a scriptural basis in the Pali Canon - and Soto Zen teaches faith in sitting as direct realization of one?s buddha-nature. Mahayana scriptures claim to transfer a particular merit to those who, through faith and diligence, preserve and disseminate them. There seems to be a tremendous driving force of evangelism in the Mahayana, to bring as many people as possible into the blessed sphere of faith in the Buddha Dharma. While these scriptures seemed to have snowballed in their intensity and salvific claims, they do, I feel, contain the essential message Shakyamuni Buddha was teaching to the lay people who were desperate for comfort and assurance of deliverance but who, for whatever reason, could not or would not give up everything, take the tonsure and beg for food with a bowl in a saffron robe. The Mahayana may have at first asked, then later demanded that it be considered as valid an extension of Shakyamuni?s teaching as the Pali canon and the monastic order. It is often stated as fact that the Mahayana is a corruption of primitive Buddhism, a deliberate compromise to be able to compete with the faith (or bhatki) of Hinduism, which was a very popular religion in ancient India during the birthing of Buddhism. I see it differently. I believe that the early Buddhists who took the Mahayana view of Dharma had no such insidious motive but were simply following the pious attitudes that Shakyamuni had deliberately instilled in the lay people who trusted him as their spiritual guide. They were not out to spite or co-opt Hinduism. They wanted the deliverance that the Buddha Dharma promised. While it can be intelligently argued that certain Hindu influences crept into Buddhist practices and doctrinal language, I believe they did not change Buddhism?s essential character and message. Buddhas, according to an axiom of Dharma, are all-seeing, all-wise beings. Such is the nature of their enlightenment. I suggest that if he were here today observing all that had taken place in his name, Shakyamuni Buddha would not be particularly shocked at what we see as a bewildering profusion of sects all claiming him as their ultimate authority. But, more than merely suggesting, I propose that something like the extant Lotus Sutra was actually delivered by Shakyamuni Buddha, particularly regarding the second chapter on Skillful Means. It is in this chapter that Shakyamuni seems to foresee every form of sect that will emerge in his name and the name of Dharma in the coming centuries. And he says, in the Lotus Sutra, that all of these practices or faiths will assurely lead to eventual enlightenment and Buddhahood. This is why I believe the Lotus Sutra says there is only one Buddha Vehicle. It is the great uniter of the Dharma, a jewel of many facets. I have followed Japanese Pure Land (Shinshu) Buddhism for some time now. It regards single-minded faith in Buddha (in particular, the Buddha Amida, also known by the two Sanskrit names Amitayus and Amitabha) as the true, even the only cause for enlightenment. There are reasons for this which Shinran (Japan, 1173-1262) laid out systematically in his Kyogyoshinsho. I have found his words compelling and the call of the Shin faith irresistible. Even so, I feel in my heart of hearts that it is the quality or trueness of one?s faith, or one?s practice, that is the cause for enlightenment. I believe the single- minded pursuance of the monastic path of Theravadin Buddhism can and will lead to enlightenment, just as will the single-minded devotion of Nichiren Buddhism in the Lotus Sutra, the single-minded faith of Shingon Buddhism in mudras and other esoteric practices, the single-minded focus on emptiness of the Zen meditator, and the single-minded faith of Tibetan Buddhism in the lama. I feel that Buddha Shakyamuni sowed the seeds of all these practices and faiths. I think his only regret would be that people have warred with words (and worse) among each other over differences in their view of the Dharma he taught, instead of trying to see how much alike those of true faith in the path really are. Shakyamuni Buddha respected us all by creating many ways to approach Buddhahood. Let us respect him by respecting the choices others make in the Dharma, even if we do not agree with them. 1998 Richard St. Clair ------ Biographical sketch Dr. Richard St. Clair was born in North Dakota, USA in 1946. He studied music at Harvard University, where he obtained a doctoral degree in composition. He has studied Buddhism through the off-campus program of the Asian Classics Institute (New York City) and has a Certificate of study in Dependent Origination under Geshe Michael Roach. Among his over 100 musical works, he has composed vocal settings to Buddhist texts, including parts of the Sutta Nipata, the Lotus Sutra, poems of Honen Shonin, and wasan of Shinran Shonin. He lives at 781 Somerville Ave., Somerville, Massachusetts, 02143 USA.