HINAYANA AND MAHAYANA

There are two principle schools of Buddhism: the Hinayana or "Lesser Vehicle or Way," and the Mahayana or "Greater Vehicle or Way."  Both were born in India. 

In Hinayana Buddhism, found predominantly now in Sri Lanka and other Southeast Asian countries, the monk is the central figure.  The ideal of the monk is the attainment of arhatship (sainthood).  This state the monk can realize by his own efforts, without the aid of outside agencies.  In all of the Hinayana monasteries, solitary meditation is the rule.  Hinayana stresses the three Refuges--the Buddha, the Dhamma (teachings), and the Sangha (brotherhood of monks).  Hinayana claims to be the only form that follows the original teachings of the Buddha.  In this way, it is also called Theravada Buddhism, or Teachings of the Elders.  The monks, clad in yellow and with shaved heads, go forth in the morning to beg, just as in Gautama's day, and they follow the same daily schedule as in old times.  The whole emphasis of their lives as monks is the acquiring of merit toward salvation.

But while all this is in strict conformity to Gautama's original teachings, even the Hinayana doctrine has developed in the direction of the popularized Buddhism of  the Mahayana school.  For instance, all Hinayanists take a reverent attitude toward the relics of the Buddha, and have made images of him of every size, from the minute to the colossal.  Even Hinayana's Pali texts depart at times from Gautama's own views, and contain essentially many of the ideas elaborated later in the Mahayana.  They, for example, declare what Gautama may have said, although it is doubtful, that he had predecessors in other ages, and that he will have successors, such as Maitreya, a messianic, apocalyptic buddha.

By the time Buddhism, speaking now of the Mahayana, had established itself in countries beyond India, in China and its satellites especially, buddhas and other deities had multiplied to such a degree as to rival in numbers the Hindu gods whom Gautama had opposed as superstition.

An important development of the Mahayana school was the bodhisattva, or buddha-to-be.  Anyone could become at least an arhat, as in Hinayana Buddhism, but in Mahayana they could also become a bodhisattva.  The idea was that once a bodhisattva became a buddha, he could no longer be present to aid humanity, so therefore it was highly desirable and noble indeed for him to remain a bodhisattva.

Unlike Hinayana Buddhism, which stressed the individual and his own and solitary path to salvation, Mahayana offered everyone in the world salvation and in a far less isolated way.  This was accomplished by offering the Buddha's teachings on the one hand, but then, in some sects, by faith alone.  The point was, a person was not required to renounce the world and family and enter a monastery in order to gain salvation.  In the Pure Land sect, for instance, salvation required only faith in Amida Buddha.  One needed only say Amida's name to be saved, in this case to enter Pure Land's paradise.  Tibetan Buddhism, Shingon, and Zen/Chan are among the other Mahayana sects.

Where Hinayanists were lamps only to themselves, Mahayanists were to light the way for others, for the entire world if possible.  The rationale of Mahayanists is that no person lives alone, to himself and no one else.  The whole creation lives as one life and shares a common karma, a common working out of fate, to which every person contributes for good or ill.