Is mahayana Buddism?

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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Cittasanto
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Cittasanto »

:twothumbsup:
Ñāṇa wrote:
Ron-The-Elder wrote:Respectfully, Your "opinion" apparently does not agree with that of the author you personally cited. Next time choose someone, who agrees wih your views, instead of contradicting yourself. He states otherwise.
Since the Prebish paper is silent on the issue, you're probably referring to the Cousins paper. But Cousins doesn't contradict anything I've said. Regarding the historical associations he says (emphasis added):
  • The later literature on the schools reflects a later situation when the Mahāsāṅghikas had largely adopted the Mahāyāna. Sarvāstivādin writers may attribute Mahāyānist notions to the Mahāsāṅghikas in order to discredit one or both. Mahāyānist writers of a later date (e.g. Paramārtha) associate the two in order to show the antiquity of the Mahāyāna. Probably most later Mahāsāṅghikas believed that their particular tradition had always been Mahāyānist. It is however clear that the Mahāyāna cannot be this early.
Thus, he suggests some motives for later positions taken from various quarters. But he does not say that first schism gave rise to the Mahāyāna. Nor does he say that the Mahāsāṅghikas of this period are to be equated with the Mahāyāna.

Now, to go further into the issue, there is no doubt that certain later Mahāsāṅghika notions were prominent in the historical development of Mahāyāna ideas. But so were trends occurring in other sectarian quarters, most notably Sarvāstivāda sources. For example, Schrnithausen has shown that early Mahāyāna Yogācāra texts rely heavily upon the Sarvāstivāda Āgamas. And based on a number of Chanjing texts now only extant in Chinese translation, Deleanu, Yamabe, and Seton have each shown that there were a spectrum of proto-Mahāyāna & Mahāyāna ideas being articulated and developed amongst authors in the first centuries CE who otherwise indicate Sarvāstivāda doctrinal affiliations. Therefore, the historical development of Mahāyāna ideas is quite dynamic, and occurred in various diverse Indian Buddhist communities.
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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Dan74
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Dan74 »

tiltbillings wrote:
Dan74 wrote:
tiltbillings wrote: Also, keep in mind there is no "the Mahayana." "The Mahayana" was and is a collection of lines of thought and practices that share some general common features, but the various Mahayana schools have also had significant doctrinal variances and they argued among each other over probably everything, which seems to be a Buddhist trait that still plays itself out (but never here on this forum).
I beg to differ!...
You may beg to differ, but you really did not address what I said.
I am sorry, I was just attempting to make a joke in reference to your last sentence.

As is often the case with my humour, the only person amused is me.

:oops:
_/|\_
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by tiltbillings »

Dan74 wrote:
I am sorry, I was just attempting to make a joke in reference to your last sentence.

As is often the case with my humour, the only person amused is me.

:oops:
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Spiny Norman »

whynotme wrote:HiThis is a therevada forum, so I assume most of you are Therevadists. What do you think about Mahayana? Do you consider it part of Buddism? Do you consider ordination under those traditions?
Historically Buddhism has adapted to many times and places, and is a very broad church. All traditions have the goal of enlightenment, though the path and goal are expressed differently in differently schools.
Buddha save me from new-agers!
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Nyana »

mikenz66 wrote:And for a chatty discussion of some of the issues, you can listen to a talk by Ven Huifeng
(who occasionally posts here as Paññāsikhara), hosted by Ven Sujato, here:
http://www.dhammanet.org/download.php?view.435" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
An informative talk. The first hour is relevant to some issues under discussion here. Thanks for posting it.

BTW, Ven. Huifeng also mentions that he was involved in the writing and editing of some of the Wikipedia pages on these subjects.
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by mikenz66 »

Hi Geoff, Yes, Ven Huifeng is good value. I am only sorry that I only met him once (in Hong Kong) and didn't make enough effort to see him again. At that time he gave me a copy of Richard Gombrich's "What the Buddha Thought". He has an Engineering degree as well as his PhD in Buddhist studies...

:anjali:
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Kim OHara
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Kim OHara »

mikenz66 wrote:Hi Geoff, Yes, Ven Huifeng is good value.
Agreed.
And since we are encouraged to judge trees by their fruit, as Will suggested, that makes (some of) Mahayana good value too.

:namaste:
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by whynotme »

DarwidHalim wrote:Assuming Mahayana is not buddhism, how can it survive for so long and so wide?

Why in the history of buddhism in the past up to now, there are monks or scholars who are initially Theravada adopt Mahayana's view?

Although there are people who said Prajnaparamita Sutta is not possible to be stored in Naga's realm, they themselves contradict their own scripture that said Naga has protected Buddha during his meditation in Bodghaya.

The question is: If Naga can protect Buddha's body, why he cannot protect Buddha's teaching?

Up to now, I never see any scholars from any buddhist schools able to successfully challenge the content of Sunyata as explained in the Prajnaparamitta sutta.
Dear Halim,

Your questions are invalid:
Assuming Mahayana is not buddhism, how can it survive for so long and so wide?

Assuming Christianity is not buddhism, how can it survive for so long and so wide?
Assuming DarwidHalim is not admin, how can he survive for so long and so wide?

There isn't anything related between survive so long so wide and is buddhism. Also, the Buddha predicted Buddhism won't last long.

Here:
Why in the history of buddhism in the past up to now, there are monks or scholars who are initially Theravada adopt Mahayana's view?

Why in the history of buddhism in the past up to now, there are monks or scholars who are initially Theravada adopt Christianity's view?
Why in the history of Isham in the past up to now, there are jihad or scholars who are initially Islamist adopt Christianity's view?

Again, there is nothing related between being converted and is buddhism. A person can be convert from one faiths to another.

And here:
Up to now, I never see any scholars from any buddhist schools able to successfully challenge the content of Sunyata as explained in the Prajnaparamitta sutta

I can tell you, there is life on a planet xyz at billion billion km away. Can you challenge the content of that statement? Of course you can't but that state is still false because I just said that out of nothing.

As a normal person, I can't challenge the content of Bible, the Nikayas, the mahayana suttas.. I believe there are some truths in other religions as the Buddha already said they may have divine eye to see the invisible world, so part of bible or mahayana may be true

While I can not challenge the content of those sutta, they still have the posibility to be false and of course, true. But as a normal person I can judge the visible parts. I read about Christianity, Nikayas, mahayana suttas and compare them. I see the Nikayas is the best at the parts I can verify, so I choose it, and I am originally from mahayana. When I compare science and Nikayas, I still choose Nikayas..

That is how a normal person doing his homework. .

Regards.
Last edited by whynotme on Fri Aug 10, 2012 5:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by whynotme »

Thank you all for the history, but I saw many problems with modern mahayana.

There are branches of mahayana like Shaolin temple, the monks train and teach other martial art with weapons. That is the art to harm and to kill. I saw many mahayanist monks use money against the patimokkha. And I heard there are branches in Japan or Tibet where monks can have sexual intercouse (which by patimokkha automatic lose their ordination).

Do you show respect to those monks? I see many problems if someone with good dhamma reputation paying them respects.

1/ The masses without dhamma knowledge will have faith in them then seek false teaching and advice from those monks, which will harm them in the future.
2/ Those monks have people respects will become arrogant, doing false actions and in turn will harm them back.

So because of metta or happiness for the masses, one should point out clearly what is right. Also in patimokkha The Buddha also taught how a layperson should react when there is seperation in the Sangha.

To me, the problems of mahayana are:

1/ Many of their suttas are claimed that were taught by the Buddha but werent' (by the historians and they content contradict to Nikayas). So the mahayana original teachers must all lying about it. It is one of 5 baisc actions leading to hell, so by lying, the original authors of mahayana show a very low level of enlightenment.

2/ The Buddha taught about carefully making decisions, even when putting faith on him. But the mahayanists are very naive. They easily have faith in anything without carefully learning and comparison. They ignore the historians, the evidences, and science. That is totally against the teaching of the Buddha and will bring back suffering.

3/ The mahayana always makes things mystery and complicated, they like the unseenable world which a normal person cannot verify. This no way the teaching of a good teacher let alone the best teacher of mankind.

That is my opinion about mahayana, what do you think about it?.
I know that even in therevada there are views similar to mahayana. Or untill we are stream enterer, each lay person can have his own view include wrong views no matter what our teachers, so don't take it seriously because I just want to make it more simple using just a word mahayana. It is normal and commonly to discuss with label if everyone is mature enough.

Regards
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

Sects, sects, sects — that's all you people ever think about!

Mahāyāna, Theravāda — its all just Papañca

Just try to understand the Dhamma (i.e. the Four Noble Truths) and develop the path of insight.
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by whynotme »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:Sects, sects, sects — that's all you people ever think about!

Mahāyāna, Theravāda — its all just Papañca

Just try to understand the Dhamma (i.e. the Four Noble Truths) and develop the path of insight.
Sir, what is wrong with sects?

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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Cittasanto »

Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:Sects, sects, sects — that's all you people ever think about!

Mahāyāna, Theravāda — its all just Papañca

Just try to understand the Dhamma (i.e. the Four Noble Truths) and develop the path of insight.
:-)
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by Bhikkhu Pesala »

whynotme wrote:Sir, what is wrong with sects?
A sect has split off and deviated from the true Dhamma. There were no sects when the Buddha started teaching. Most of the monks followed the teaching diligently and gained personal realisation of the Dhamma for themselves. There was no danger for them to fall into wrong views again.

Devadatta created the first schism in the Sangha — the first sect. A hundred years after the Buddha's passing away, other monks started accepting money, and doing other things contrary to the Buddha's teaching. The Second Buddhist Council was held to re-affirm what was the true Dhamma and true Vinaya.

Nowadays, there are many more sects that follow their own ideas, not the Buddha's teaching. To learn how to discriminate between Dhamma and non-Dhamma, one should study the Dhamma/Vinaya carefully and practice in accordance with the teaching to the best of one's ability.

Don't pay any attention to what others do, one should follow the Sallekha Dhamma and try to develop the Noble Eightfold Path. If you keep to the path, you won't get side-tracked in the forest of views.
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

Post by retrofuturist »

Greetings,
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:Nowadays, there are many more sects that follow their own ideas, not the Buddha's teaching. To learn how to discriminate between Dhamma and non-Dhamma, one should study the Dhamma/Vinaya carefully and practice in accordance with the teaching to the best of one's ability.
:goodpost:

Metta,
Retro. :)
"Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
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Re: Is mahayana Buddism?

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retrofuturist wrote:Greetings,
Bhikkhu Pesala wrote:Nowadays, there are many more sects that follow their own ideas, not the Buddha's teaching. To learn how to discriminate between Dhamma and non-Dhamma, one should study the Dhamma/Vinaya carefully and practice in accordance with the teaching to the best of one's ability.
:goodpost:

Metta,
Retro. :)
Agreed!
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He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them.
But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion …
...
He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them … he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.
John Stuart Mill
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