Originally in Life Magazine (WQ update)
PHOTOS: 1. Mahayana "god" Amitabha in heaven (thezenfrog blog); 2. (yogilin.net); dogged Zen devotion (missfidget.com); iconic Japanese Buddha; mother goddess Western and Eastern form, Mariam and Kwan Yin.
From early times the type of Buddhism practiced in China and eventually in Japan (Zen) and Tibet (Lamaism) differed from the earlier practices of South and Southeast Asian Buddhists.
The difference was due to some extent to variations in national temperament. But it can be traced back to about 200 years after Gautama's passing, when a group of disciples disagreed on the interpretation of the Teaching and preached instead a doctrine that was less rigorous and more easily adapted to the needs of ordinary people.
This new, easier doctrine became known as Mahayana ("greater vehicle"). And its members disdainfully referred to the orthodox, original form of Buddhism as Hinayana ("lesser vehicle").
Shakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama), who became the historical Buddha (or "fully enlightened teacher"), taught a Path to individual emancipation from continuous-rebirth (
Samsara) and suffering (
dukkha).
Mahayana, like Christianity, developed a messianic message of a savior who would provide for the "salvation" of others (variously: Maitreya, the prophesied future-buddha; Amitabha, a buddha in a heaven known as the Western Paradise; or any number of bodhisattvas). This salvation would not be into nirvana (the complete freedom from all further suffering) but into a "pure land" (heavenly abode) or simply more and improved rebirths.
So vast was the difference between original Buddhist doctrines and popular Mahayana innovations that it constituted almost a different religion. Some say it was a vastly different new religion with a Buddhist appearance and substantively Hindu doctrines.
Some go so far as to say that Mahayana is simply "Chinese Christianity" since the similarities are so striking and in line with the Buddhism Jesus was exposed to in India. (See previous entries on the Lost Years of Jesus).
Mahayana Buddhism, matured mainly in the free religious atmosphere of Tang Dynasty China, sought a way to make Buddhism a religion of the masses. It found the ascetic life of India and Southeast Asia too austere and demanding for ordinary people. And it searched for a method by which
enlightenment might be achieved more simply than the historical Buddha had taught.
Whereas the new ideal of Mahayana was a saintly would-be savior figure known as a
bodhisattva who vows to forego enlightenment and emancipation until he or she saves all other beings, the ideal Buddhist of the Hinayana was the
arhat.
(Hinayana technically refers to sects like the
Sarvastivada school that no longer exist but are somewhat close in character to the oldest surviving Buddhist tradition, the
Theravada, or "Teaching of the Enlightened Elders," the
Theras being the immediate disciples of the historical Buddha).
An arhat is a meditator who realizes enlightenment in this very life. But the bodhisattva-ideal of the Mahayana school became someone still stuck in Samsara. This became acceptable with the counter-intuitive leap in logic that Nirvana is Samsara, that is, the old Hindu idea that liberation is here now for immediate realization within suffering and rebirth. Bodhisattvas (which faithful Mahayana practitioners vow to be) elect to remain unenlightened (or at least not fully-enlightened, which would entail emancipation).
Thus, they do not achieve the liberating goal of Buddhism, at least as taught by the historical Buddha, which was always nirvana. That is, they will not accept freedom until everyone else achieves the goal. The belief is that this is what perfectly enlightened teachers (samma-sam-buddhas) do, in spite of the fact that the historical Buddha established the Teaching and was emancipated from rebirth.
Since meditation and even temporary asceticism are thought too demanding for the average person, Mahayana teaches that faith and devotion are enough. Salvation-by-faith (as in Christian and Hindu worship [
bhakti]) became one of Mahayana's basic tenets. And the serene meditative example of Gautama was superseded by a glorious redeemer, a god known as the
Amitabha Buddha or "Buddha of Infinite Light," to whom the prayers of the faithful were addressed.
Unlike the Buddha, Amitabha was not an actual historical person. So the dominant virtue changed from an emphasis on detached wisdom to engaged compassion, which further popularized the new Mahayana religion. Now that it had a Jesus/Jehovah figure, it adopted a Madonna or Mary (Hebrew "Miriam") in the form of a human mother goddess -- the embodiment of compassion and mercy -- Kwan Yin.
