The Great Vehicle, The Elder's Way, or The Diamond Thunderbolt? Questions from last time? Who was Gautama Siddhartha? What are some important episodes in his life? What's the meaning of Nirvana?
Uta, Sangha, Sannyata, Anatman, and Antia. What are the four noble truths? What's the Eightfold Path? Part 1 The spread of Buddhism?
When we left off, Gautama Siddhartha had just died sometime in the 5th or 4th centuries BCE. He had taught his nuns and monks, his Sangha, that the whole world, and everything in it, was empty. Shunyata.
Everything was impermanent. Antia. Nothing had a real, lasting self.
and Atman. The way out of this, the way to Nirvana, was the heart of the Buddha's teachings, the Four Noble Truths. The simple observation that because everything is empty and impermanent, the whole world was bound to suffer. But there is a cause to suffering.
We're attached to these things that are impermanent. And if there's a cause, there's a cure. And that cure is the Eightfold Path, the moderate road of neither excess nor deprivation.
That Eightfold Path seemed to demand many things which most people were either unwilling or unable to do in this lifetime. For just one instance, the Eightfold Path says those who follow it must have right work or right livelihood. Your occupation shouldn't lead to more suffering for yourself or others. So you shouldn't be working for money alone.
Well, most people don't really have a choice in that area. People need to provide, not only for themselves, but for spouses and children and elderly parents. So quitting your job to join up with a bunch of monks would actually cause suffering, not remove it. And some people, especially in, for instance, the pre-modern caste system, You can't just decide to give up and leave their jobs even if they wanted to. If you were a servant, you might as well in function be a slave.
You can't just leave. And vice versa, if you're a ruler like a king, you can't just leave either. Many other people depend on you to keep them safe and protect them from outside invasion.
So the Sangha could only consist of people who could leave behind their old lives and spend their time working towards nirvana alone. But, like clergy all over the world, they developed into a reciprocal relationship with their laity, those people who actually supported their efforts but couldn't themselves join up because they had other obligations. The Sangha would pave the road to liberation, and the laity would do what they could to patronize There were many different movements in the ancient subcontinent which worked this way.
Buddhism was just one more amongst them. Now, the major breakthrough for Buddhism came a few centuries after the time of the Buddha, under a man named Ashoka. Ashoka was a powerful emperor of the Morya dynasty.
He inherited rule over most of the subcontinent, and like all emperors, He needed to maintain his power by military force. In the year 261 BCE, Ashoka won a major victory at Kalinga in modern East India, but the war was bloody. In a single year, the stories say, over 200,000 were killed in order to keep Ashoka's empire growing.
And according to legend, Ashoka regretted all the suffering he had caused. And so, to atone for the suffering, Ashoka became a patron of a worldview whose very purpose was to end human suffering, Buddhism. Now, it's not clear if Ashoka became a Buddhist himself, but he did build a vast number of shrines and temples at important Buddhist sites, and he also sent missionaries to spread Buddhism to neighboring lands.
So, suddenly, the most powerful and perhaps most violent man in India was promoting the Sangha and its ideals. Now, Let's not be too idealistic. There was political value in Buddhism, too. It was probably useful as a strategy for ruling.
Ashoka had expanded his power dramatically. Then, after he had killed all the people that he wanted to, Ashoka decided to promote a non-violent worldview, which was unlikely to cause any further uprisings. Sure, he atoned for his sins, but in a way that conveniently promoted his own image and minimized future threats to his power. both within his domain and amongst his neighboring rivals.
Whatever the true motivations for Buddhism spread, as more people entered into the Sangha as clergy or supported them as laity, internal divisions and differences of opinion became more obvious and irreconcilable. Now, in truth, no significantly large community of any sort is a monolith. Buddhism probably always had internal disagreements, even in its earliest days.
But, as the size of the Buddhist community grew and centuries passed, those divisions became much more obvious and powerful. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of schools of Buddhism, most of which are extinct today. Some of them differed over orthodoxy, meaning the right or correct opinion. What are you supposed to think and believe personally? For instance, Are you supposed to follow whatever the Buddha himself is thought to have said?
Or should you just do whatever it takes to reach nirvana, even following a teaching or text that developed after the Buddha? Or, if there is anatman, no self, how does reincarnation work? What is it that's being reborn if even the self is impermanent? Or, how does the Buddhadharma relate to other non-Buddhist schools of thought? like Vedic religion, we would call Hinduism.
Likewise, Buddhist groups differed over orthopraxy, what is correct practice, what should you do. For example, how should the sangha be arranged? Like a democracy, where all the clergy were working as equals?
Or like a monarchy, where the oldest or wisest monk or nun could teach the others? If the Sangha needs food, do they literally have to go out and beg, or can they just accept donations like a charity? Can the clergy wear sandals, or are those just more worldly possessions?
What color should their robes be? Can they handle money? Well, there are lots of other questions of orthopraxy and orthodoxy, and for each of them, there was a different Buddhist tradition which stood for it. But all these opinions and practices generally fit.
into three major lineages. Part 2. Theravada. One of these lineages argued that it was best to stick to the original teachings of the Buddha himself. Because they were trying to follow the original Buddhist Sangha as much as possible, they called themselves the Elder's Way, the Theravada.
They were going to try to follow the path set out by the first Buddhists, the elders, the first Sangha. For these Buddhists, what the Buddha Siddhartha himself intended and thought is paramount. And, because the Buddha and his first disciples spoke the Pali language, Pali survived amongst the Theravada as the religious language of the educated monks. They tried to keep Siddhartha's teachings, or what they believed were his teachings, alive in the form of liturgies and sermons, or sutras in Pali suttas.
A sutra is a dialogue on an important topic which claims to either come from the Buddha himself or his immediate students, those believed to know his teachings particularly well. The collected body of Theravada's sutras are called the Pali Kada. the authoritative body of sutras in the Pali language.
Hence, this is the scripture of the Theravada. Now, remember that most people from most of history were not literate, so the overwhelming majority of pre-modern Theravadins would only have encountered this scripture indirectly, through a speech or a sermon in one's native language, through a personal discussion or through a story or through art. Like the original Sangha, the Theravadan clergy must still beg for food and rely directly on the laity for needed items like cloth.
toiletries. In return, the Theravadan Sangha offers public services like weddings, festivals, and funerals, and they provide charities like hospitals, schools, shelters, or animal rescues. This is also why the Theravadan Sangha usually lives where the laity do. Monasteries are often right in the middle of major cities.
The laity and the Sangha work closely together, including in politics and business. to make the relationship even closer. For Theravadan Buddhists, it's quite common to become a member of the Sankha for a temporary period, like a season or a year. It's something like a rite of passage. So many members of the Theravadan laity are themselves former monks and nuns.
While it's possible for a lay person to reach enlightenment, the Theravadans say it's highly unlikely. Lifelong Buddhist practice, study, and meditation is required to reach nirvana. So, for the most part, only a full-time clergy person could possibly do this.
The Theravadan Buddhist ideal is the monk who has attained nirvana, the arhat, the worthy monk. If you can't join the sangha now, you can support the sangha through offerings. And hopefully, in a future life, you can join the sangha yourself. and become an arhat. The Theravada today is most common in Sri Lanka and in the western half of Southeast Asia.
Part 3. Mahayana. There is a downside of making the ideal Buddhist an arhat, a perfected enlightened monk. Most Buddhists aren't.
and it's not because they're bad people. They have serious familial and financial obligations. So a second major stream of Buddhism was less concerned with idealizing monasticism and with the exact teachings of the Buddha himself. They argued that the path to enlightenment was supposed to be for everyone, and it wasn't just supposed to be about arhats or even just about the Buddha's teachings.
The truth is the truth. Regardless of who offers it, compassion for all beings, the alleviation of suffering, can be anyone's goal. And so this lineage of Buddhism was called the Mahayana, the great vehicle. Think of it like a big boat. The way across the raging river of samsara, of suffering, is a huge boat that can carry everyone across.
It's not just about the enlightenment of the professional Buddhist, the Sangha, the monk, or nun. the idealized arhat. It's about everybody. Everyone, and indeed every living being, has a Buddha nature.
We're all potential Buddhas. We're all candidates for enlightenment. And so, there's room in the boat for everybody.
Now, while it's still considered virtuous and useful to live the life of a monk, there are ways to attain liberation that don't necessarily entail celibacy, begging, or... being male. Compassion, the act of seeing the suffering in others and working to remove it, must be a universal ideal.
And compassion is difficult if you are radically removed from other beings who need compassion. After all, what good is finding nirvana if you leave behind all your friends and family like a monk would? Instead, the ideal being is a bodhisattva, the awakened being, or an enlightenment being.
A bodhisattva is a being who has attained nirvana, but instead of breaking away from the suffering world by not being reborn again, the bodhisattva takes a vow to return to the world in compassion to others. The bodhisattva is one who would leave the world behind and could, but chooses not to until all other beings are free from suffering too. So there are many enlightened beings, not just the one Buddha. There are lots of Buddhas.
in both the past and the future, and while this is true for the Theravada as well, it's particularly important to the Mahayana. It also means that you don't have to turn to the teachings of Siddhartha alone, although these are certainly important. You can look for wisdom, truth, and compassion in any number of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
Some of these are historical figures in the past, like Siddhartha, and some are historical figures in the future. Like the Buddha Maitreya, the next great Buddha will someday usher in a new enlightened age. Maitreya is that Buddha famously depicted in Vietnamese and Chinese art as portly, round-headed, and laughing.
He is the Buddha on his way, a Buddha yet to come. And some enlightened beings are transcendent, non-human figures. They are bodhisattvas who dwell in other realities and worlds.
but whose compassion extends to all worlds, including ours. The most famous one of these is Amita, or Amitapa. He resides in a beautiful western place called the Pure Land, where enlightenment comes to people particularly easy.
Therefore, if you're devoted to Amita, what is called Pure Land Buddhism, you might be born in his paradise, where you're nearly guaranteed liberation. And thus, that would allow you to come back to this world as a bodhisattva in order to save others. There's also the famous bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, whose cult exists in many places today. In India, he hears the pleas of those in need and sends them relief. In China, Avalokiteshvara is a she, called the one who hears cries, Guanyin.
She hears the cries of her suffering devotees and, out of mercy and compassion, helps them on the road to nirvana. And because wisdom and truth can come from many places, the Mahayana have a much wider, more porous notion of scripture than the Theravadan Pali canon. All Buddhists follow significant sutras, conversational sermons.
But for the Mahayana, the collection of particular sutras is a great challenge. particularly influential sutras continued to grow well beyond the original teachings of Siddhartha and Pali. Sutras could be written not only in ancient Indian languages like Pali and Sanskrit, but in other more common languages like Chinese or Korean or Japanese.
This act of decoupling Buddhism from the specific teachings, practices, and language of the first Sangha also allowed Mahayana to spread far beyond Buddhism's original home terrain in the subcontinent. Mahayana is common today in Vietnam, China, Korea, and Japan. And because the ties of Mahayana to Siddhartha's particular activities is looser, Mahayana tends to be more diverse, and acclimates itself particularly well to new cultural and religious situations.
We previously saw The Chinese image of the vinegar tasters. The interaction of the Buddha, Confucius, and Lao Tzu over the taste of vinegar. Well, thoughts like that, that Buddhism can overlap or at least interact with Confucianism and Taoism, as well as thousands of more regional cults, practices, and deities, has produced a great number of Mahayana Buddhisms. We already saw the Pure Land School, those Mahayana Buddhists devoted to Mita.
or Amitabha, the one who's able to give compassion to others so that they can in turn become his disciples and give them the ability to be born in a pure land, allowing them to become bodhisattvas. There's also Chen Buddhism, or as it's called in Japan, Zen, where particular attention is given to meditation as a principal means for enlightenment. Here, Practice, not devotion, is the priority.
The mind must be trained to see the emptiness, the shunyata of all things. That's the path to nirvana. A meditation master gives his student a riddle, called a koan in Japanese, which the student must meditate on.
It can be a mantra, something to be said over and over again, or a story, or an odd expression. And some of these... have passed into the Western imagination and have become quite famous.
So, for instance, two hands clap and they're... What is the sound of one hand? This is the famous question of what is the sound of one hand clapping?
Now, first, the student receives this koan and thinks about it, focusing, training the mind and the attention. The statement's illogical. It makes no sense.
The teacher said it, so it must be true. And so the student... meditates on the koan, taking it apart and putting it back together, looking for the trick that will make him or her get it.
Is it a joke? Puzzle? But in time, after much meditation, the student starts to realize that the problem here is the student themselves, not the koan. The mind is riddled with preconceived notions about itself and the world.
How the mind breaks things into false binary sets. Me and you. This and that.
True and false. One hand and the other. But what happens when the binaries go away?
What happens when there's no distinction between the other and the self? What if there is no self? When aren't there two hands? Well... And there's just one hand, one reality to everything.
Can you train yourself to hear it? How about another one that's a little famous? If you meet the Buddha in the road, kill him. What? Kill the Buddha?
Aren't you supposed to revere him and follow his teachings? Well, yes, but the Buddha is also part of the problem. He's just more of the impermanent materials of this world which we try to latch on to. He's just one more teacher or parent saying, do what I tell you to, I know what's good for you.
He's that voice in your head that claims to understand things. He is you. You're the one with the Buddha nature.
And you, yourself, is not true reality. Your self must be killed. Your self must be trained, conquered, and then cast to the side as just one more illusion, a fetter, something keeping you from illumination. Part 4. Vajrayana.
There is possibly a third major branch to Buddhism, although it's sometimes considered just one more variation of Mahayana. This is the Vajrayana, the diamond vehicle, or the vehicle of the thunderbolt. As its name suggests, the Vajrayana practice skills which are supposed to bring upon flashes of clarity and insight. The Vajrayana is most common today in the Tibetan plateau, in Nepal, and in Mongolia. In the 7th century of the Christian calendar, a certain interpretation of Buddhism, called Tantric Buddhism, appeared up in the Himalayas.
Tantric Buddhism, named after its own scriptures, the Tantras, argued that enlightenment could only happen in living bodies. The human body was the grounds for nirvana, and therefore experiences could play a key role in the road to liberation. Learning, art, music, and sometimes even sexuality could move you towards your awakening.
When Tantrism arrived in Tibet, it fused with the local religions. The gods of Tibet would become the gods of Vajrayana Buddhism. The local teachers or preachers, in Tibetan, Lama, became the clergy of the Vajrayana.
Indeed, the two cultures blended so thoroughly together that there was actually a reform movement in the 15th century to make the Lamas more clearly Buddhists. This reform was led by a party called the Gulagpa, or more commonly, the Yellow Hats. The Yellow Hats, called that because of a distinctive headgear they wear while doing certain rituals, took both religious and political control of Tibet, installing their leader as both the monarch and the spiritual master of the land.
They called this man the teacher as great as the ocean, or in Tibetan, Dalai Lama. It was said that this Dalai Lama was the manifestation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. As a Bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara postponed his own entry into nirvana in order to help others find liberation. And so, the Vajrayana believed he returns again and again in the Dalai Lama. Each Dalai Lama is a new birth of Avalokiteshvara, this Bodhisattva.
Present Dalai Lama is the 14th incarnation. Because Vajrayana Buddhism is also interested in the physical body as the grounds for illumination, material objects, things that you can see and touch, play a particular role which is much more powerful than what you would see in the other forms of Buddhism. The most famous example of this is in the Vajra, the Diamond Thunderbolt. A small metal scepter, which is held in the right hand, and a bell, which is held in the left.
These are ritually brought together as the union of compassion, meaning the vajra, and wisdom, the bell. Now, rituals like this, which are clearly linked with the indigenous religions of Tibet, act as a kind of pantomime. If you perform this seemingly arbitrary action with your body, using particular objects, it reflects a symbolic activity in your mind.
Likewise, the Vajrayana use their famous prayer wheels, metal or wooden cylinders on poles, which can be spun with the hand. On and inside of the prayer wheels are written or carved prayers and incantations. Again, by performing a seemingly random activity with your hands, spinning a wheel, You are symbolically doing something to your mind, praying.
Another famous activity of the Vajrayana, although it's also practiced by the Mahayana, is the construction of mandalas. A mandala is a circle which symbolizes the whole world. It's like a great circular map of the cosmos, filled with a variety of people, gods, demons, and bodhisattvas.
A team of monks slowly paints the mandala over the course of three or four days using a fine colored sand. Working sometimes around the clock, the monks paint the sand cosmos into existence on their hands and knees. And then, just as it's completed, the sand is all swept up and wiped away. The universe they spent so much time and effort constructing is destroyed. All is impermanent.
All is without a self. Buddhism, of all the religions we've met so far, has a particular aptitude for spreading from place to place. Hinduism is overwhelmingly found in the subcontinent, and Hindus almost anywhere else are usually people who either moved there themselves or are close descendants of those recent immigrants.
The same is true for Confucianism and Taoism, both of which are locked to the eastern side of the Asian landmass, Korea, China, and Japan most especially. Buddhism doesn't seem to act like that at all. Actually, indigenous Buddhism in modern India, the place where Buddhism first spread, is almost extinct.
But yet Buddhism itself is all over the place, and everywhere it goes it makes new scriptures and new practices. Why? Why is Buddhism behaved differently than Hinduism, Daoism, and Confucianism?
Here are some thoughts to bounce around in your mind. How did Buddhism spread? Why does it spread in such a way that many other traditions do not?
What is a sutra? An arhat, a bodhisattva, a koan, and a lama. What are the three major lineages of Buddhism? What are their noteworthy features and distinctions from each other?