More on the Controversy and Mahayana Buddhism

So I’ve referred to the great Buddhist controversy and noted that the Mahayana tradition came out on top in India and eventually North Asia via Tibet and Afghanistan. But let’s examine what the actual controversy meant in real terms. It really comes down to Arhat v Bodhisattva and also to where Siddhartha might be today.

The Mahayanan Lotus Sutra tries to explain why there have needed to be these two Buddhisms. It gives the story of a man talking his children out of a burning building by offering them temptations such as beautifully carved rhinoceros toys as an aid. The idea here is that the idea of nirvana being desirable was the temptation humans needed to persuade us out of our old lives. It is certainly true that we can achieve nirvana but that man probably wouldn’t recommend that his children play with toys all day once the emergency has passed and neither did Siddhartha (in this role as a loving father) recommend that we all seek nirvana even though we may selfishly choose to (in our roles as ignorant children). This splitting also appears to be a feature of at least Christianity and Islam, to an extent (along the lines I mentioned in at least one earlier post – competing morality and wisdom traditions seem to coexist in most religions).

Far from being a simple and invented way out for laypeople to get more of the trinkets, the Mahayana School saw itself as offering the most mature way to be a Buddhist directly approved by Siddhartha. This partly gets to where Siddhartha is now and how there can possibly be new scriptures goes along with that. Apparently monks could still access him after his parinibbana (when they meditated).

I’ve mentioned the idea that the Mahayana view was a cult of some kind. One example of a version of Mahayana that may indeed be viewed as a cult is the mainly Japanese Ni Chi Ren Sho Shu Ha (日蓮系諸宗派 in Japanese) or NiChiRen Buddhism. Ni Chi Ren was a 13^th Century Buddhist who became its inspiration. This sect focuses today on the Lotus Sutra (the sutra from which the ‘burning building’ parable I’ve just discussed came). Pronouncing its short title in Japanese is said to have ‘magical’ results. In some sense this Sutra is also said to actually be Siddhartha (or perhaps some kind of composite of the Buddhas). Tina Turner has been a devotee of this cult. Things like levitation are possible according to various versions of Mahayana Buddhism especially.

A particular effect of the advent of the Mahayana tendency to innovate was that this vaipulya Buddhism could now cross-pollinate with indigenous religions such as Chinese Daoism, Japanese Shinto and Tibetan Bön even more easily. As a matter of authority, however, Mahayana belief is that their Canonical works are teachings of Siddhartha’s “second and third turnings” during his lifetime. What precisely that means isn’t entirely clear today but it appears that the second and third turning teachings were first taught in the order suggested by their names by Siddhartha during his lifetime after he had already been enlightened and teaching the “first turning” (often but not always accepted as the Tripitaka – sometimes Mahayana Buddhists prefer to exclude the abhidharma, often decried as too intellectualising, as any actual teaching of Siddhartha) for 16 years. The sravakas (hearers) were reckoned to only be ready for the idea of striving for Arhathood for the first 16 years. The second turning was apparently taught at one place but the third turning may have been taught much more widely. The Mahayana beliefs include the idea that the written teachings were hidden for many years by semi-divine snake-like beings called nagas (see below):

(From Wikipedia – guarding a temple in Vientiane)

The nagas are also known more generally in Indian religions as keepers of esoteric learning. The tradition continues that in around the year 1 BCE or CE around 500 teachers of what became known as Mahayana Buddhism held a conference at Mount Abu (now in Rajasthan in North West India) and there made the decision to reveal the hidden scriptures and begin to teach their meaning(s). To be continued...