The Many Schools of Buddhism
There is no single school or teaching that embodies ‘Buddhism’. Several strands and many schools make up the Buddhist tradition we have, and it helps to have a simple map to help you find your way around it.
The first reason for Buddhism’s variety is simply that it has a long history. It started around 2,500 years ago and went through several phases before it eventually disappeared from the subcontinent 1,000 years ago. It also spread across Asia and in each new culture where it arrived the different schools evolved into new forms.
Perhaps there’s a deeper reason. Buddhism is a movement of spiritual liberation, but there is no guarantee that this spirit will remain alive in the institutions and doctrines that seek to preserve it. Many of the changes within Buddhism came when later generations thought the original liberating spirit had been lost and set about restoring it.
The Early Tradition and the Theravada
By the time the Buddha passed away he had established a monastic community, and its members set about memorising his teachings and reciting them together. Eventually these ‘Discourses’ were written down. In the centuries following his death several schools developed with subtly different teachings but all focused on these scriptures and the individual’s path to Enlightenment. The Theravada school (meaning ‘The Way of the Elders’) lives on in the Buddhism of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos, where the Discourses, preserved in the Pali language, are known as the Pali Canon.
Mahayana - the Great Vehicle
Several centuries after the Buddha’s time a new movement developed among Indian Buddhists, protesting that the early schools had overlaid the spirit and real meaning of the Buddhist path with scholastic analysis and over-literal interpretations. They called this movement Mahayana or ‘The Great Vehicle’, and termed the Buddhism of the early schools Hinayana – ‘The Lesser Vehicle’.
New Mahayana scriptures called sutras declared that, beyond the words and ideas of the early teachings, there was an indefinable and radically different way of seeing the world. They called this sunyata, or 'emptiness'. They also saw the path as more than an individual search for liberation: it was a vast, cosmic journey that would take many lifetimes to complete and must be undertaken in a spirit of boundless compassion. They called this the path of the Bodhisattva – ‘the Awakening Being’. The Mahayana also envisaged a host of transcendental bodhisattva figures with radiant, god-like forms, who are the objects of reverence and devotion.
Mahayana Buddhism spread to China, and then Japan and Korea, becoming the dominant form of Buddhism in those countries. Many Mahayana schools developed, each emphasising a particular aspect of the path such as meditation, devotion or wisdom.
The bodhisattva Green TaraVajrayana - the Diamond Way
Several centuries after the Mahayana a new approach developed in India that incorporated the energies of shamanism, magic and the Indian religious movement known as tantra. This movement preferred symbols to concepts and took its name, Vajrayana, from the vajra or diamond, a Buddhist image for the indestructible power of reality. If the Mahayana path was open to all but took many lifetimes to complete, Vajrayana practices required years of preparation and initiation by a qualified guru, but promised a more direct route to Enlightenment thereafter.
Vajrayana Buddhism was taken up in various countries, and it survives in Japan’s Shingon school. But it is particularly associated with Himalayan region, and especially Tibet, where a unique Buddhist culture developed that also drew on indigenous shamanic Tibetan practices.
The bodhisattva PadmasambhavaA United Tradition?
In the modern period the various Buddhist traditions and lineages have been thrown together after centuries of separation. Many Tibetan teachers left their country following the Chinese invasion, and in cities around the world there are Buddhist centres representing followers of all the traditions.
Buddhists have long struggled to make sense of their differences. Some claim that their approach is the only true Buddhism because it is the earliest or purest version of the teaching; others say theirs is better because it stems from a later revelation that supersedes earlier ones. Others find complex ways to integrate the various elements of the tradition, for example placing their distinctive, ‘higher’ teachings at the top of a pyramid of practices, with earlier versions of Buddhism beneath them.
For all these differences, there is a strong tradition of tolerance between Buddhists of different schools. And ecumenical movements have arisen throughout Buddhist history that look for what unites Buddhism as a whole.
Triratna and the Buddhist Tradition
Triratna is such an ecumenical movement. Its founder Sangharakshita lived in Asia for two decades, receiving Theravadin ordination, Vajrayana initiation and studying Mahayana. He founded Triratna after years of studying and reflecting on these schools, and practising what he learned. Triratna draws on the whole Buddhist tradition in a spirit of ‘critical ecumenicalism’, and finds the heart of the Buddhist tradition in the spirit that animates it.
