HINAYANA AND MAHAYANA BUDDHISM

There are two principal schools of Buddhism: Hinayana or "Lesser Vehicle," and Mahayana or "Greater Vehicle."  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.  Ideally the monk attains arhatship i.e. sainthood, a state he 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 or teachings, and the Sangha, the brotherhood of monks.

Hinayana claims to be the only form of Buddhism that follows the original teachings of the Buddha.  Accordingly, 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 of 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.

Mahayana Buddhism established itself in countries beyond India, and in China and its satellites, where buddhas and other deities had multiplied to such a degree as to rival in numbers the Hindu gods, whom Gautama had opposed as mere 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 for him to remain a bodhisattva.

Unlike Hinayana Buddhism which stressed the monk and his solitary path, 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 also by faith alone.  In this way, 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 enter Pure Land's paradise.

Tibetan Buddhism, Shingon, and Zen/Chan are among the other Mahayana sects.