The Schools of Tibetan Buddhism

The place to start in any survey of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism is with the Nyingma school. This is the only one which traces its origin back before the later diffusion of the dharma, back to the time of Padmasambhava. The word Nyingma means “the old school”. The name refers to the early phase in the history of Tibetan Buddhism.

Because of the gap between the first diffusion of the dharma and the later diffusion, the connection between Padmasambhava and this later Nyingma tradition has always been pretty problematic. To establish the continuity with Padmasambhava, the members of the Nyingma school claim to have discovered secret texts that Padmasambhava left behind in Tibet written in the rocks, hidden in the mountains or sometimes buried in the mind of his disciples. They have attempted to discover these texts, interpret them and promulgate them in the present era.

Termas and Tertons

These texts are known as termas, a word that simply means treasure. Some of the most important authorities in the Nyingma history are people who discovered these termas and have been able in some way to disseminate them.

To look at the development of the Nyingma tradition it would be helpful to look at the lives of the Tertons, the people who discovered termas and made them available to others in their community.

A good example of the practice of the discovery and interpretation of the termas is a figure by the name of Jigme Lingpa. He claimed to be the reincarnation of Trisong Detsen. Like many Nyingma lamas and like many Indian Tantric saints, Jigme Lingpa spent many years meditating in the mountains. He had the experience of being visited by many of the important figures in the history of the tradition, including Padmasambhava and Trisong Detsen.

One of his most important revelations came to him in a dream. In the dream he was transported out of Tibet, across the Himalayas into the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal, where he visited the Swayambhunath Stupa. When he was there a heavenly messenger came to him and revealed a text in a form of writing that it was impossible for him to understand. The heavenly messenger gave him the key to the code that he could use to unlock and interpret that text. As he translated and recorded these revelations, he created the nucleus for a new scriptural tradition in his community.

This story about Jigme Lingpa is not by any means an isolated story. There are other important revealers of Termas in the Nyingma tradition.

Nyingma is Founded on Direct Experience

The Nyingma school is a tradition founded on meditative experience. Jigme Lingpa was meditating in the mountains and while he was there he had powerful experiences that affirmed not only the depth of his own meditation but also his connection to this long lineage of teaching that took him all the way back to Padmasambhava and the ancient Buddhas of the Indian tradition.

In this sense, Nyingma is the Tibetan tradition that comes closest to the pure transmission of the Tantric impulse. Jigme Lingpa didn’t study or at least didn’t study in a sophisticated monastery. He wasn’t a great student of philosophy. His charisma and his power were established by the vividness of his own personal vision.

The Nyingma tradition still maintains this character today. It appeals to people because it puts its feet down on direct personal experience.

The Nyingma tradition and the story of Jigme Lingpa also convey the ancient Buddhist respect for scriptural transmission. Jigme’s Lingpa may have been founded on personal experience, but it was expressed and it was spread in a body of texts. Even in its most esoteric and personal form, Tibetan Buddhism is a strongly scriptural tradition. These aren’t just old texts that come back from the time of the Buddha, but texts that are generated by authoritative figures who manifest themselves from time to time in the history of Tibet.

Tibetan Buddhism has a canon of scripture. It is big and widely disseminated. It was settled in the 13th century and contains within it what you might call the authoritative Tibetan definition of the teaching that came to Tibet from India. In a broader sense, the Buddhist canon in Tibet still remains open. New texts can be generated or discovered to respond to all sorts of new situations.

The Nyingma tradition that is represented by Jigme Lingpa has come to North America. You can encounter it in various Tibetan communities. Interestingly enough, it is popular among scholars who study the tradition intellectually but have some kind of hunger for personal experience. They often study with Nyingma teachers to make that direct personal encounter with the dharma.

The Kagyu School

The word Kagyu means “teaching lineage”. This school traces its origin to the lama Marpa, who lived between the years 1012 and 1096. He was a Tibetan by birth but he traveled to India and studied with Tantric teachers. He brought their texts back to Tibet to serve as the foundation of a new lineage.

Marpa’s most important disciple and the person who carried his teaching was a man by the name of Milarepa. He is one of Tibet’s most beloved saints. The biography of Milarepa is one of the best ways to become familiar with the typical life of the Tibetan saint.

He starts out as a rather weak-willed and not very organized young man. It turns out that Milarepa’s father died when he was a young man and the relatives stole the family’s property. Milarepa’s mother was deeply angered by this and wanted to seek revenge. He took his malleable young son and sent him to study with one of the black magicians in Tibet to learn the black arts. He learned how to use the mantras that would help him bring storms on the relatives’ fields and even kill some of them through natural phenomena.

He did this and worked. However, Milarepa got worried about this because he realized that what he was doing created enormous bad karma, and unless he could find some way to remove this karma he would end up in one of the lowest hells. He began to wonder where he could find a teacher that would help him achieve enlightenment in this life.

He studied with a couple of different teachers and it didn’t work out well for him. He finally was advised to go and find a man by the name of Marpa, who would give him the teaching that he needed.

Milarepa seeks and meets Marpa. They have a difficult relationship. Marpa really puts Milarepa through intense trials. Milarepa finds himself in a state of complete despair. Once he tries to run away and realizes that running away from Marpa wouldn’t solve the problem. He comes back and begs for Marpa’s forgiveness.

One of the most interesting points in the life of Milarepa is when he finished his studies with Marpa and went to meditate by himself. He didn’t go to a cave to find solitude back he returned to his home with his mother. The relationship between Buddhist monks and their mother usually is pretty important. Unfortunately her mother had died and the house had fallen into ruin. Milarepa used it simply as a meditation on impermanence.

Milarepa went on from this experience to become a great ascetic and the founder of a great lineage.

The Sakya and Gelug School

There are two other schools that are worth mentioning. One of these is the Sakya school, that emerged in the 11th century under the leadership of a lama named Drokmi. Drokmi was the teacher of Konchok Gyelpo, who in 1073 founded a monastery at Sakya, a place that gave the school its name.

This school played an important role in the negotiations between the Tibetans and the Mongols. Eventually, the Mongols converted to Tibetan Buddhism and became important protectors of Tibetan Buddhism not just in Tibet but also in other parts of Asia. The 13th century, when the Mongols first appeared, was a crucial century in Tibet for a couple of reasons. First of all it gave rise to this incipient political allegiance between Tibetan monks and Mongols. This became an important theme in later Tibetan history.

It also was the first century after the death of Indian Buddhism. Indian Buddhism ended around the year 1200. We could say that the 13th century marks the beginning of a truly independent Tibetan religious tradition.

Today the old allegiance between Tibetan lamas and the Mongols is a difficult theme in Tibetan history because it is translated into this troubled relationship with the Chinese. China has always viewed itself as being the heirs of the Mongols. Chinese political leaders visualize Tibet as a part of the large Chinese empire.

The fourth school that I want to mention just briefly is the Gelug or “way of virtue” school. It emerged in the 14th century under the leadership of the scholar Tsongkhapa. Tsongkhapa followed the example of the Indian scholarly tradition and tried to establish a pure form of monastic practice. This involved an intense effort to codify the Tibetan approach to Buddhist philosophy and the stages of Tantric practice. Tsongkhapa is one of the great systematizers of the Tibetan tradition. He wrote extesively.

Tsongkhapa founded some major monasteries in central Tibet. These have been some of the most influential religious institutions in the history of Tibet and have been actively restored in recent years. Tsongkhapa is not only reveered by scholars and monks but also by common people as a great saint.

After the death of Tsongkhapa, the leadership of the Gelug school passed to the lineage of the Dalai Lamas.

Return from The Schools of Tibetan Buddhism to Tibetan Buddhism

History of Tibetan Buddhism

The first introduction of Buddhism to Tibet is known as the “first diffusion of the dharma”. It began in the 7th century, about the time when Tantra was beginning to manifest itself in the Indian Buddhist community. During the 7th century the Tibetan kings brought the Tibetan tribes to some kind of unified government. They began to expand their military influence out of central Tibet and into the rest of Asia.

As they did this, they came into contact with China and India. In both of these places they found quite sophisticated Buddhist cultures. These early Tibetan kings began to link themselves to the larger countries of Asia by beginning to adopt some of their religious practices. Buddhism was a central part of what they encountered in these places.

Songtsän Gampo and the Introduction of the Cult of the Buddha

According to the Tibetan chronicles, king Songtsän Gampo, who reigned roughly from 609 to 649, invited one of his two Buddhist wives to help him introduce the cult of the Buddha to Tibet. What this meant was to introduce a statue of the Buddha in Tibet and establish him as a focus of worship.

According to stories, the first attempts to build the temple in the capital city of Lhasa were unsuccessful. The carts that were carrying the Buddha’s statue fell to the swamps and were impossible for them to construct the temple the day they hoped to build it.

In a dream, the king was told that the land of Tibet laid on the body of a demoness, who had to be subdued before the cult of the Buddha could successfully be established. So, he ordered a series of temples to be build around the country. These temples were pinning down her knees, her elbows, her hips and her shoulders. Finally a temple was build in the center of the capital city to pin down her heart. This temple today is the most sacred in Tibet and is the focus of Buddhist pilgrimages.

The actions of Songtsän Gampo not only subdued the demoness but marked Tibet with the form of a Mandala, a Mandala that could be traced by pilgrims as they made their way from the fringes of the Tibetan plateau into this holy site in the center.

Trisong Detsen and the First Monastery

After the time of Songtsän Gampo, the next series of major events in Tibetan history occurred in the 8th century during the reign of another Buddhist king named Trisong Detsen. Trisong Detsen sponsored the construction of a monastery at Samye. This was the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet and obviously it marked a major shift in the relationship between Tibet and Buddhism.

The construction of the monastery required the help of the Tantric saint Padmasambhava, also known in Tibet as Guru Rinpoche or “precious teacher”. With his magic power, Padmasambhava subdued the demons that opposed the monastery’s construction. He has become the focus of tremendous story telling and myth making in Tibet.

King Trisong Detsen needed the help of another specialist as well. Padmasambhava was good at Tantric magic but he wasn’t necessarily a scholar. For the scholarly curriculum of his new monastery, king Trisong Detsen had to turn to one of the representatives of the Indian tradition whose name was Shantarakshita. He was actually a Madhyamaka philosopher of the Svātantrika branch. He helped introduce to Tibet that sophisticated monastic corriculum that we talked about in another article.

I think that you could say that these two figures represent the two faces of Tibetan Buddhism. A reverence for the power of a Tantric practitioner has always been important in Tibetan Buddhism. Tantra is a living force in Tibetan society and it manifests itself in a form of practice that is not unlike the practices associated with Padmasambhava. There also has been in Tibetan culture a deep reverence for the practice of Buddhist scholasticism as represented by Shantarakshita.

If you want to study philosophy in the way we discussed here, Tibetan Buddhism is the way to go. The scholarly tradition is still alive, active and flourishing in Tibetan monasteries.

The Definition of the Character of Tibetan Buddhism

The Tibetan tradition also tell us that Trisong Detsen didn’t just founded a monastery but he sponsored a debate to determine the character of Tibetan Buddhism. He brought a Chinese religious specialist and an Indian religious specialist. He set them up in a mode of discourse that would lead eventually to a conclusion about which variety of Buddhism would be best for Tibetan culture.

Representing the Chinese side was a meditation master whose name was Moheyan. He advocated the practice of sudden awakening. Representing the Indian side was a disciple of Shantarakshita whose name was Kamalashila. He advocated the practice of gradual awakening.

According to the Tibetan tradition, the king decided in favor of the Indian party and permanently oriented the Tibetan tradition towards India. This was another watershed in Tibetan history.

The Later Diffusion

What we call the “later diffusion of the dharma” took place in the 11th century. It is associated with important teachers, one of these is a man by the name of Atisha, who was an important scholar who came from one of the monasteries in Eastern India. In Tibet he had a group of disciples and established a lineage that recreated some of the scholarly tradition.

There were also some indigenous Tibetan figures who traveled to India and studied with Tantric saints and came back to Tibet to promulgate the tradition of Tantric practice. Out of these individuals floating through Tibet grew most of the schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

Return from History of Tibetan Buddhism to Tibetan Buddhism

The Practice of Tantra

A common question about Tantra is wether there is anything that distinguishes the practitioners of Tantra from the ordinary practitioners of other traditions. Who are these people? Who practice Tantra in this form?

The Siddhas

The earliest bands of Tantric practitioners were known as Siddha or perfected ones. We can call them simply saints as it is often done in writings about the Tantric tradition. As you might expect, the stories of the Siddhas depict them as people who have rejected the conventions of Indian society. They are often described as living in cremation grounds or other impure or dangerous place and participating in rituals that overthrown the conventions of ordinary behavior.

The Story of Maitripa

You can get a taste of their practice from a story of a Tantric Siddha that I’m particularly fond of, his name is Maitripa. He came originally from one of the great monastic universities in India but he had an experience that took him out of that monastic world.

He was studying in one of the great monasteries in North Eastern India and through the window flies a Tantric messenger. It is a figure who conveys a glimpse of enlightenment that shatters his normal perception of the world. The messenger says him to go to South India to study. He obeys and goes to a remote stretch in the Indian subcontinent. He finds a guru.

The master says him: “If you want to learn about awakening go to the woods, find a flat rock and sit there for seven days and don’t eat anything until you receive some kind of revelation. Then come back and tell me what it is.”

Matri Gupta goes out into the forest, sits down in a rock and waits. He is bitten by mosquitoes, his stomach begins to rumble but he got enough discipline. Finally, near the end of the 7th day, out of the forest comes a wild huntress, a woman carrying a knife, a bow and arrow. She is chasing a wild pig. She shoots the pig with the bow, reaches down and slices off a big chunk of meat and holds it out for Maitri Gupta and says: “Here, eat this, eat the flesh. It’s emptiness. Taste the blood. It’s the great bliss”.

Maitri Gupta thinks that thatis the revelatory event and returns to tell it to the teacher. He talks to his teacher and comes to understand something about the nature of reality that was not accessible to him in the intellectual practice in the monastery.

He came back to the monastery and became not just a great Tantric teacher, but also a remarkable philosopher.

Direct Experience

A couple of things are striking for us in this story. First of all, the Tantric tradition is concerned with direct experience, with encountering reality face to face. Maitri Gupta encountered here a radical overturning of the ordinary distinctions in life. Here the distinction isn’t just about male and female, but between purity and impurity.

To understand Indian religion it’s important to grasp that distinction. A person like Maitri Gupta would have avoided things that are impure: wild animals, bloody pieces of meat, and specially the people who chase them. To taste that flesh was a violation of one of the fundamental prohibitions in his monastic life. He experienced an overturning who led him to an understanding of emptiness.

The Importance of the Guru

This story also suggests how important the teacher is in the Tantric tradition. Maitri Gupta could not had have that experience without the master being there. It’s important to have a teacher to introduce you to the practice. This teacher in Tantra is called a Guru or a Lama. You can’t study Tantra without the intervention of a teacher.

Return from the Practice of Tantra to Introduction to Tantric Buddhism

Founder of Buddhism

Who was the founder of Buddhism? A man named Siddharta Gautama is considered the founder of the Buddhist tradition. He was called the Buddha by his followers, that means the “awakened one”. The Buddhist tradition is named after that title.

Historically, we have just a handful of facts we can hold on to tell ourselves about the lifestory of the Buddha. We know, we think we know, that he was born in the family of king Suddhodana and queen Maya about the year 563 BCE, in a region of the Indian subcontinent that now lies in Southern Nepal.

He was a member of the Shakya tribe, his clan name was Gautama and his given name was Siddhartha, which means something like “mission accomplished”. It has been common in the Buddhist world to refer to him as Shakyamuni, “the sage of Shakya tribe”.

These facts don’t tell us very much what the Buddha did or about what he has meant to his followers, but they tell us that the Buddha was not the creation of somebody’s imagination, he was a real human being who walked the dusty roads of Northern India twenty five hundred years ago.

To learn more about Siddharta Gautama, his life and his teachings, you might be interested in the series of articles The Life of the Buddha.

Return from Founder of Buddhism to Buddhism FAQs

Yogacara School: The Reality of the Mind

The second major school of interpretation of the concept of emptiness is known as the Yogacara, or “Yoga practice”. The Yogacara school was founded in the fourth century by Asanga with help from his brother Vasubandhu. Like the Madhyamaka, the Yogacara school had a long history in India. At beginning of the 7th century it was carried to China by the Chinese philosopher Xuanzang. There, it had significant influence on the orientation of Buddhist thought.

The Three Natures

The Yogacara took a position that was quite different from the Madhyamaka. Instead of using the doctrine of two truths to understand emptiness, the Yogacara used the concept of the “three natures”. They thought of ordinary experience as a flow of sensation. A flow of sound, of visual experience. They thought about that as dependent nature. This is a kind of reality that arises dependently.

They say that ordinary experience depends for its existence on a series of momentary causes and conditions. In some respects, this ordinary experience is real. In some respects, it is unreal. This is the Yogacara version of the Middle Path. In some ways, it’s there. In some ways, it’s not there.

The unreal aspect of dependent nature consists of the concepts and distinctions that we impose on the flow of experience. This is unreal. The real aspect of dependent nature is the mind itself devoid of all of this imaginary distinctions. A name for this is emptiness itself.

Verses to Explain the Concepts

The Yogacara philosophers expressed this concept in a series of verses. These verses were meant to be memorized. To our ears they sound clumsy and obscure, but they are quite precise and rhythmic. In English, one of the most important verses goes like this:

“The imagination of something that is unreal is real, but the duality in it is not real. The emptiness in it is real. It is real in emptiness.”

That’s puzzling, but in Sanskrit it is really rhythmic and clear. That makes it really easy to memorize.

Useful Graphical Examples

The best way to make sense of the Yogacara school is to look at their examples rather than on their technical concepts. Sometimes, they compare dependent nature to a dream. All the phantoms in the dream maybe are unreal, but no one would doubt the reality of the mind that does the dreaming.

Dependent nature could also be compared to a stormy ocean. Dependent nature is like separate waves on the ocean. The real aspect is the stillness of the ocean itself. Meditation is meant to still the waves, so the pure undifferentiated nature of the mind can become clear.

A Really Unique Interpretation

The Yogacara school turns the Madhyamaka understanding of the world right upside down. The Madhyamaka said that ultimately nothing is real. The Yogacara says that the mind is real. It is only the imaginary construction of the mind that is unreal.

Why did the Yogacara take a position that seems so radically opposed to the position of the Madhyamaka. Their deep motivations are pretty hard to discern, but we can say that there were two main reasons.

First of all, to take the goal of the Buddhist path seriously, you have to be convinced that it is real, that it is there in some way for you to be inspired. In this case, the goal is the complete purification of the mind. In order to reach the goal, you have to be convinced that you can overcome all the barriers that stand between you and the goal.

To say that duality is unreal means that the illusions that tie people to the world of Samsara are nothing but a dream. All that we have to do to achieve Buddhahood is to simply wake up from that dream. The Yogacara too was motivated by the pursuit of Nirvana.

This conviction about the reality of the mind is what it made the Yogacara attractive to the Chinese. The Yogacara school doesn’t exist today as a separate entity but its ideas infuse the Chinese tradition.

The Madhyamaka School of Thought

The first major school of Mahayana philosophy is known as the Madhyamaka, or “Middle Way School”. The Madhyamaka school emerged in India in the second or third century of the Common Era in the works of the philosopher Nagarjuna. It was developed for almost a thousand years in India, then it was transmitted to Tibet and became the dominant tradition of Tibetan philosophy.

Nagarjuna and the Two Truths

Nagarjuna talks about the understanding of emptiness in the way I outlined it in my last series of articles. There, we talked about emptiness in a way that Nagarjuna would have understood.

Nagarjuna said that when the Buddha teaches the Dharma, you learn two truths: Ordinary relative truth and ultimate truth. This is the doctrine of two truths. Nagarjuna said that anyone who does not know the distinction between these two truths does not know the profound point of the Buddha’s teaching.

From the point of view of ultimate truth, all things are empty of identity. This is the point we discussed last time. From the relative or conventional point of view, the categories of ordinary life have to be accepted as valid.

Nagarjuna distilled this point into a simple formula: “It’s impossible to teach ultimate truth without relying on conventional truth. Without understanding the ultimate, it’s impossible to attain Nirvana.”

The key point of controversy for Nagarjuna commentators has to do with the meaning of the word “rely”. What does it mean to rely on conventional truth when you make some kind of statement about ultimate truth? There is a split in the Madhyamaka school on this point.

The Svātantrika Sub-School

One group of followers known as Svātantrikas thought that they had to accept that things have to be established or proven in a conventional sense before they could argue against them in an ultimate sense. This position came from their believe that philosophers had to start from established premises before they could refute the positions of their opponents. This position is actually embodied and expressed in the name of this group.

The word Svātantrika comes from the Sanskrit word Svatantra, that means “independent”. The Svātantrika were people who thought that Madhyamakas had to make independent arguments in order to respond to the positions of their opponents. In order to make an independent argument, you have to state a premise that you think as valid, and then you have to use that premise to argue to a conclusion.

They felt that conventional reality had to be established at the start of an argument in order to move forward to convince their opponent of their position. The Svātantrika had a lot of influence in India and Tibet, but it wasn’t the one that eventually won the day, at least from the Tibetan point of view.

The Prasangika Sub-School

Another group of followers was known as the Prasangikas. They thought that they only needed to presuppose the positions of their opponents before showing that they led to absurd conclusions. This position is embodied too in the name of their subschool. The Prasangika comes from the word Prasanga, that means “an absurd conclusion”.

All they do is to take the words of their opponents and then show that those would lead to some kind of absurd conclusion.

What Does it All Mean?

You might wondering at this point why we are going into this in so much detail. We now have followed the argument of the two truths into what is a genuinely a technical dispute between two groups of commentators in the Madhyamaka school. We should ask ourselves what is at stake here. Why is it interesting for us to consider an argument like this?

If you’ve been reading this site, specially my articles about the Buddhist concept of no-self, you may understand that this simple phrase, no-self, expresses the key point in the Buddhist view of the world. Buddhists want to find a way to live in the world and take it seriously, but not be bounded by any of it. This requires a delicate balance between the two intellectual pulls of the Middle Path. Not too much self, and not too little self. You need just enough to be effective and enough to be free.

This is what the Madhyamaka school was trying to get at when was doing this exegesis of the concept of conventional reality. Conventional reality is what we mean by self. What am I? Just some kind of conventional entity that stands here. It is not ultimately real. But how is it real? That’s the question. How can you be a self in a way that is out there and at the same time not being anything at all?

The Prasangika says that you are a self in a sense that it is true only when it is not analyzed. You can’t be a self that is established in its own right either from the conventional or ultimate point of view. If you were, you will be holding on to that self, you wouldn’t be able to flow freely through the flow of experience.

The issue that lies behind this dispute between the Svātantrika and Prasangikas is really a dispute of selfhood and in the end a dispute about freedom. How can you define philosophically what is to be free? This is the Madhyamaka school, the school of the Middle path, and it is the fundamental position of the Tibetan tradition. It is shared by all Tibetan schools in one way or another.

The Celestial Buddhas

In addition to celestial bodhisattvas, there are celestial Buddhas as well. I said earlier that not everyone is limited to the bodhisattva path, there are beings who reach the end of the path and achieve Buddhahood.

Amitābha and the Pure Land

One of the most important of these is the Buddha Amitābha, a name that means infinite light. The story of Amitābha is that when he was a bodhisattva he made the promise that when he became a Buddha he will establish a Pure Land. In that land, anyone could be reborn if they chanted his name with faith.

From the descriptions of the land, it is depicted as a place that is full of lotuses. Amitābha himself sits in a lotus throne. If the devotees chant the name of Amitābha with faith, they will be reborn in that land and he will see the light of Amitābha’s face.

Chanting of the Name

One of the classic practices in this tradition is to chant the name of Amitābha at the moment of death. If you can chant with faith at that crucial moment, Amitābha will come to you bedside surrounded by crowds of bodhisattvas and will take you soul to the Pure Land.

Like the invocation of Avalokiteśvara’s name, this practice is a deliberate attempt to open the possibility of salvation to anybody who approaches the deity with faith. It is a genuine attempt to open the possibility of salvation to anyone who can approach this celestial being with a sense of sincere aspiration.

Devotion to Amitābha Buddha, known as Pure Land Buddhism, has been influential throughout China and Japan. It is also an important variety of Buddhism in America.

A Radical Change in the Tradition

I think that it is important for us to know in what ways is really related to the kind of Buddhism that we already know. It seems to me that the devotion to Amitābha Buddha takes us above and far away from the tradition of self-reliance that we saw in the early tradition and we thought of as one of the fundamental characteristics of Buddhism.

The Buddha taught that you should rely in your own efforts and you could achieve Nirvana by yourself. Now, you don’t rely in yourself, you rely in the influence of a celestial Buddha. How did that happen? Is this even Buddhism anymore? We entered a world where Buddhism is so deeply transformed that it has become somewhat unrecognizable.

The Emphasis Changes: The Most Important is to Start

I argue that what we see here is simply an example of the adaptability of the tradition. You can see how the logic of the Buddhist tradition has given rise to this new way of thinking about Buddhist life. First of all, in the Mahayana tradition we aren’t talking anymore about one single lifetime, or two or three lifetimes in the pursuit of Nirvana. Now, the passage has been stretched out over many more lifetimes, as the bodhisattva comes back into this world to help others.

There is much more emphasis now not in perfect wisdom but in simply having the faith that gives you access to the beginning of the path. This emphasis on salvation by faith has to do with the importance of simply entering the path of the bodhisattva. Getting started is more important than anything that may come later.

This article is part of the series about Mahayana Devotion.

The Celestial Boddhisattvas: Buddhist Deities?

In the past articles we said that the Mahayana vision of the universe expanded dramatically. It wasn’t anymore just a group of monks imitating the ideal of Siddharta Gautama, but began to imagine themselves as actors on a drama that was really cosmic in scope. The Mahayana begins to imagine a universe that is not populated just by human boddhisattvas, people like you and me, but also by celestial boddhisattvas and Buddhas that have infinitely greater power than we have.

The “Buddhist Deities”

These celestial boddhisattvas have the ability to intervene in this world and save people as if they were gods. These are advanced practitioners, you might said, of the boddhisattva path, who have passed through the ten stages and achieved extraordinary superhuman powers.

These powers make it possible for celestial boddhisattvas to reside in the heavens, hence the name celestial. These powers also make it possible for them to function as the Buddhist equivalents of the Hindu gods, because here they are still operating under the traditional world view of India.

Buddhists insist, though, that these great boddhisattvas have gone so far from the Hindu gods in their power and in their understanding of reality, that is it not appropriate to think of them as being gods at all.

What we do then? We call the celestial boddhisattvas “Buddhist deities”, or call them simply celestial boddhisattvas to distinguish them from the Hindu gods.

How are they like?

What I’d like to do here is give you some indication of what these celestial boddhisattvas are like and how people are related to them in the practice of Mahayana devotion. There are many, as the world view of the Mahayana expanded, it became populated by celestial boddhisattvas. Some of them appear only in a few instances in Mahayana literature, but there are a few great celestial boddhisattvas that are worth mentioning.

Avalokiteśvara: The Lord of Compassion

The first one is Avalokiteśvara. Avalokiteśvara’s name is probably the most complicated name that we will mention. It is made of two parts, the word īśvara that means “lord”, and the word avalokita, that means “to look down”. The image that you have of Avalokiteśvara is a great celestial embodiment of compassion, standing up there in the heavens, and looking down on the people in this world.

Often in the text you read about Avalokiteśvara’s tears, as he sees the suffering of the people in this world.

In the Lotus Sutra, Avalokiteśvara is described as being a deity who takes on all sorts of different forms in order to manifest compassion to people in this world, specially to people who call on his name.

This idea of invoking the compassion of Avalokiteśvara often is involved in the simple practice of calling on the name of the deity himself. This simple practice actually leads us into the heart of the Mahayana. I sometimes think that the most basic form of religious practice, specially in theistic religious tradition, is simply to call on the name of the deity.

This basic expression of human piety in the face of the divine now makes its appearance in the Mahayana tradition for the first time.

This article is part of the series about Mahayana Devotion.

Mahayana Buddhism

The Mahayana, or “Great Vehicle”, changes the style, the tone and the content of Buddhist practice in profound ways. It opens up the practice of Buddhahood to lay people as well as to monks and nuns. It also involves a far more extended vision of the cosmos than anything that came before.

The Mahayana movement emerged in the Indian Buddhist community around the beginning of the Common Era. Eventually, the Mahayana spread to China, Tibet, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

In the following articles we are going to study the core beliefs of this tradition and its history:

1. Mahayana: The Great Vehicle: The name Mahayana is used to distinguish itself from what it saw as the Buddhism that came before. Mahayana texts refer to themselves as a great vehicle, in contrast to what they call the Hinayana, or lesser vehicle, that preceded it.
   
   
2. The One Vehicle and the Skillful Means: One of the most important doctrines in the Lotus Sutra is the doctrine of the One Vehicle, the Buddha teaches in the end one particular way to salvation. Another concept that is important here that runs all the way through the Mahayana tradition is the concept of Skillful Means. It raises the question about whether the Buddha lies to people by presenting these preliminary teachings.
   
   
3. The Origin of Mahayana Buddhism: Where such a radical reform movement arises in the community of the early Sangha? The Mahayana texts claim to be the teaching of the Buddha himself delivered to a special assembly of boddhisattvas. Was it really like that? Some scholars have suggested that the Mahayana arose among circles of lay people, who were worshipers at particular Shrines where the relics of the Buddha were the focus of devotion.
   
   
4. Mahayana and the Boddhisattva Ideal: The fundamental teaching of Mahayana Buddhism is what is called the Boddhisattva Ideal.A Boddhisattva is a Buddha-to-be, somebody who isn’t a Buddha yet but plans to be one in a future life.
   
   
5. Mahayana and the Lay Boddhisattva: Boddhisattvas described in Mahayana literature are often human beings just like ourselves. In earlier Buddhism, the ideal practitioners of the Buddhist path were monks and nuns who engaged in an act of renunciation and pursued a monastic life. Now, this tradition was opening up explicitly for lay people.
   
   
6. The Extended Vision of the Mahayana: The Mahayana brought Buddhism into realms and practices very different from anything we saw before.
   
   
7. Bodhicitta and the Boddhisattva Path: The most important concept to express the Boddhisattva ideal is the concept of the Bodhicitta, a word we translate as the “mind of enlightenment” or you might say the mind that seeks enlightenment.

Bodhicitta and the Boddhisattva Path

How is the Boddhisattva ideal expressed in ritual and in philosophy? The most important concept to express the Boddhisattva ideal is the concept of the Bodhicitta, a word we translate as the “mind of enlightenment” or you might say the mind that seeks enlightenment.

The Mind of Enlightnement

To enter the Boddhisattva path, it’s important to generate this mind of enlightenment. What is it? Simply the aspiration to seek enlightenment for the sake of all other beings. Boddhisattvas who enter the Boddhisattva path start with some kind of gut feeling. “I want to be enlightened in order to bring that enlightenment to others”. This mind of enlightenment is generated and cultivated as the Boddhisattva path proceeds.

A Moral Aspiration

As you see this evolving in Mahayana literature and practice, it becomes a quite complex and subtle concept. You can see at the beginning that is a moral aspiration. “I want to help others, I want to develop myself in a way that is going to be helpful to other people”. You can see also that it involves a perception of yourself as being connected in a relationship of interdependence with all other beings. So, you become aware of yourself in a different way at the same time that you express this moral aspiration.

A Personal Transformation

It also has what might be called an ontological component in the sense that it has to do with the awareness of your own being. In Buddhism, your mind is you. Whatever you are, is the cultivation and evolution of your own mind. When you feel this aspiration to help others, what you feel is an expression of your own Buddha nature arising from within you. This concept has to do with the transformation of your personality and your own being as well as a moral aspiration to help others.

A Simple Yet Subtle Concept

I think that this concept is complex in one further aspect. To arise the mind of enlightenment is a pretty simple thing. We can do it today. In fact, we probably have aspirations similar to that in the flow of our daily lives. It is pretty easy to have this feeling, and yet, it contains implicitly the full enlightenment of the Buddha. It is the starting point of your own Buddhahood.

The Bodhicitta is an important concept in the Mahayana tradition, but we should consider also that the Boddhisattva path is divided into a series of formal stages. One way to divide it is in six perfections: the perfection of generosity, moral conduct, patience, courage, mental concentration and wisdom. A lot of Mahayana texts discuss a passage through six stages to reach the experience of full Buddhahood.

There are other accounts that divide the path into ten stages, but they are not very different than the path that I just outlined for you. They always start with generosity and end with wisdom.

Return from "Bodhicitta and the Boddhisattva Path" to Mahayana Buddhism

The Extended Vision of the Mahayana

Vimalakirti is a pretty good example of the Boddhisattva ideal, but there are others that are important to mention just to see how broadly the Mahayana ideal was extended.

Queen Srimala

There is an important queen by the name of Srimala who is the focus of another Mahayana text. She is a queen and has a lot of responsibilities that bears in the ordinary life in the palace, and yet, she is portrayed as being one of the wisest followers of the Buddha. She is the source of one of the most important Mahayana doctrines.

Even queen Srimala, who in many respects seems to be engaged in a life that is very different from the life of a traditional monk or nun, can be an exemplary practitioner of the Mahayana ideal.

Sudhana: The Curious Young Man

Another figure who is worth knowing and becomes important in later Chinese and Japanese Buddhism is a young man by the name of Sudhana. He goes out on a long quest in order to achieve some kind of religious insight. He visits fifty different teachers. At the very end, he comes to a Boddhisattva by the name of Samantabhadra and is given a vision of the universe vastly more complex and complete than anything we found earlier in this tradition. Let me quote a passage from the text that describes Sudhana’s concluding vision:

“Then Sudhana, the teenager, reflecting upon the body of the final Boddhisattva in his quest, the Boddhisattva Samantabhadra, saw in every pore of that body untold quadrillions of Buddha fields being entirely filled up with Buddhas, and in every single one of those Buddha fields, he saw Buddha surrounded by countless assemblies of Boddhisattvas. Gradually he came to equal the Boddhisattva Samantabhadra. He came to equal all the Buddhas.”

This is a vision of reality vastly greater than anything we’ve seen in the earlier tradition. This has to do with an expansion of the imagination that brought the Mahayana into realms and practices very different from anything we saw before.

Return from "The Extended Vision of the Mahayana" to Mahayana Buddhism

Mahayana and the Lay Boddhisattva

Boddhisattvas described in Mahayana literature are often human beings just like ourselves. I’d like to give you a couple of examples of Mahayana descriptions of Boddhisattvas so that you can get a sense of the kind of persons who were described as Boddhisattvas in this classical literature.

Vimalakirti: The Lay Boddhisattva

One of my favorite in the early literature of the Mahayana is the Boddhisattva known as Vimalakirti. He was a wise lay person who pretended that he was ill in order to teach a lesson to the Buddha’s monastic disciples. Let me paraphrase just a short account of Vimalakirti from the beginning of the Mahayana Sutra:

“In the city lived an Elder named Vimalakirti who dwelled there as Skillful Means for the salvation of other beings. For he used his measureless wealth to convert the poor and his own pure virtue to convert those who broke the precept. He controlled himself with patience to convert the scornful and strove with diligence to convert the lazy. He used this calm meditation to convert the confused and his wisdom to convert the ignorant. He used the white robes of a lay man, but he observed the pure conduct of a recluse.

He lived the household life but he wasn’t attached to the world. He had a wife and children, but always practiced the religious life. He wore jewels and ornaments, but adorned his body with the signs of greatness. He ate and drank but delighted with the taste of meditation. He went to the gambling halls, but he worked for the salvation of men. He knew all the worldly texts, but he always delighted in the teaching of the Buddha."

You Can Have an Ordinary Life

It is hard to see from this text how radical a shift of values this is. In the earlier tradition we always were talking largely about monks and nuns. The ideal practitioners of the Buddhist path were monks and nuns who engaged in an act of renunciation and pursued a monastic life. Now, this tradition was opening up explicitly for lay people. This is a way of saying that lay Buddhist values and the lay Buddhist life is a place where you can pursue the fundamental teaching of the Buddha. You can become a Boddhisattva and bring to ordinary lay life all the values of Buddhist life.

You can go out and have a couple of beers, you may live with your family, you may even go to a gambling hall, but you always do it in a way that is going to bring Buddhist values into that place. The Boddhisattva is engaged in the world. This is a crucial shift of the basic understanding of Buddhist life and it had a radical effect on Buddhism throughout Asia.

The Chinese world is very suspicious of monastic life because it seems to turn its back on the values of the family, but here on the figure of Vimalakirti you’ve got somebody who lives the Buddhist values within a context of ordinary lay life. The Buddhist tradition here is shifting in a way that takes it out of that strictly monastic ideal that was present in the early tradition.

Return from "Mahayana and the Lay Boddhisattva" to Mahayana Buddhism

Mahayana and the Boddhisattva Ideal

If we are uncertain about the origin of the Mahayana, what can we say about its teaching? The answer to that question is a lot more clear. The fundamental teaching of Mahayana Buddhism is what is called the Boddhisattva Ideal.

What is a Boddhisattva?

A Boddhisattva is a Buddha-to-be, somebody who isn’t a Buddha yet but plans to be one in a future life. A Boddhisattva in the Mahayana tradition doesn’t attempt to go straight to Nirvana but he turns to this world and attempts to help others along the path to salvation. This means that Boddhisattvas can include lay men as well as monks and nuns, because all of us can be understood as being part of the path to Buddhahood.

Boddhisattvas that come back like this to this world to help others cultivate two important virtues. One is wisdom, that great virtue that was discussed in the early accounts of the Buddhist path that leads you to Nirvana. In addition to that, Boddhisattvas explicitly develop the virtue of compassion. The word is Karuna, a crucial Mahayana word.

So, Boddhisattvas cultivate two virtues. Wisdom, a contemplative and quiet virtue, that has to do with understanding the nature of the self and the nature of the world. And compassion, a virtue that has to do with actively seeking the welfare of others. The Mahayana always has this double aspect: contemplation and action. You have to understand the self and bring that understanding into the world to make it available for other people.

The Circular Path of the Boddhisattva

The Boddhisattva path can be talked of as a two-way street. You can think of it also as a circle. Samsara is at the beginning of the circle, Nirvana somewhere along the way, and then the circle brings you back into Samsara. A Boddhisattva is constantly coming back to this world to help others.

The Boddhisattva ideal is contrasted to the ideal of earlier Buddhism. In the earlier community the ideal was a person who sought Nirvana in his life for himself, he follows the one-way traffic to Nirvana and doesn’t come back into Samsara.

Some people say that Boddhisattvas renounce Nirvana in order to lead all other beings to Nirvana. If you follow this, a Boddhisattva doesn’t become a Buddha until everybody is ready to become a Buddha with him or her. The truth is that this is not strictly accurate. Boddhisattvas can’t become Buddhas, they simply aspire to become a Buddha for the sake of all other beings. When they can become a Buddha in a way that serves the needs of other people, then that Boddhisattva will become a Buddha.

The Mahayana world is full of Buddhas as well as Boddhisattvas, people who had pursued the Boddhisattva path and brought it to perfection.

Return from "Mahayana and the Boddhisattva Ideal" to Mahayana Buddhism

The Origin of Mahayana Buddhism

Now we are asking a pretty good and natural question. Where this rare tradition comes from? Where such a radical reform movement arises in the community of the early Sangha?

The Second Turning of the Wheel

One place to go for an answer to this question is to the Mahayana texts themselves. The texts trace the origin of the Mahayana to what is called the Second Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma during the life of the Buddha himself. In other words, the Mahayana texts claim to be the teaching of the Buddha himself delivered to a special assembly of boddhisattvas.

The Mahayana texts then go on to say that the Mahayana was concealed during several centuries until the world was ready to receive it. Then the Sutras, the texts of the Mahayana, were brought forth and spread across India.

There is an awareness in the Mahayana itself that the tradition is new. It’s not something that was known in the traditional community.

A Revelated Tradition

All of this is very nice, but scholars are quite uncertain what the actual origin of the Mahayana is. There are suggestions in the Mahayana tradition that practitioners perhaps fasted and meditated in order to receive visions and revelations from great Buddhists of the past. It is conceivable that the early texts of the Mahayana came to people in this way, as visions interpreted as revelations from past Buddhas. This can’t be true of the most elaborate literary Sutras of the Mahayana. Many of them don’t have the quality of visionary experiences but of literary texts.

Some scholars have suggested that the Mahayana arose among circles of lay people, who were worshipers at particular Shrines where the relics of the Buddha were the focus of devotion. This view has now been discredited by scholars. It seems clear that the Mahayana had a strong monastic component right from the beginning. It’s not accurate to say that the Mahayana was a lay movement. It included components of both lay and monastic life.

So, a scholarly consensus about the origin of the Mahayana has not yet been reached, but most believe that Mahayana scriptures are rooted in the earliest teachings of Buddhism.

Return from "The Origin of Mahayana Buddhism" to Mahayana Buddhism

The One Vehicle and the Skillful Means

In the last article we’ve talked about the “Parable of the Burning House” and its basic implications: the Buddha is like this father, the little cards were the lesser vehicles that were preached before and that the Mahayana is the real teaching of the Buddha.

The One Vehicle: The Real Teaching

In the text, many concepts are elaborated that are important for us to notice. First of all, the story says that this card, the Mahayana, is the one great vehicle, the real teaching of the Buddha. All those other teachings that came before are preliminary exercises that are meant to get a person started on the path to salvation, but are not meant to constitute the Buddha’s final teaching.

One of the most important doctrines in the Lotus Sutra is the doctrine of the One Vehicle, the Buddha teaches in the end one particular way to salvation.

Skillful Means

Another concept that is important here that runs all the way through the Mahayana tradition is the concept of Skillful Means. It raises the question about whether the Buddha lies to people by presenting these preliminary teachings. Did the father lie to the children? The answer that the text gives is that is not really a falsehood to skillfully lure someone along the way to salvation.

This is called Skillful Means. It has to do with the ability of creatively using the categories of this world to move along the way to salvation.

Return from The One Vehicle and the Skillful Means to Mahayana Buddhism

Mahayana: The Great Vehicle

It is time for us to look at a reform movement that made a radical change in the way people enacted the Buddhist ideal. It changes the style, the tone and the content of Buddhist practice in profound ways, only a few centuries after the lifetime of the Buddha. We call this movement the “Mahayana”, or the “Great Vehicle”.

A Reform Movement

Theravada Buddhism in South East Asia is in some ways very different from Buddhist practice at the time of the Buddha, but still represents, quite deliberately, a conservative option. It looks back at the example of the early community. We saw that in King Mongkut’s reform movement, that deliberately attempted to reapply the ideal of the Pali Canon.

The Mahayana movement emerged in the Indian Buddhist community around the beginning of the Common Era. Eventually, the Mahayana spread to China, Tibet, Japan, Korea and Vietnam. Of course there are many varieties of Mahayana Buddhism.

The name Mahayana comes from the literature of the movement itself. It is a name that is used to distinguish itself from what it saw as the Buddhism that came before. Mahayana texts refer to themselves as a great vehicle, in contrast to what they call the Hinayana, or lesser vehicle, that preceded it.

The Meaning of The Mahayana

The best place for us to look in an scriptural source for an account of the contrast between the Mahayana and the Hinayana is the Lotus Sutra. This is a text we will refer to quite often in our study of Buddhism in China and Japan. The key passage in the Lotus Sutra that talks about the Mahayana is a passage that is known as the “Parable of the Burning House”. I will tell you the story and then comment on the distinctive features of it, so we can get a sense of the shape not just of the Mahayana itself, but also how it distinguished itself from the earlier tradition.

The story goes something like this. There is a father who lives in a large house with a large number of children. When the father was outside, the house catches on fire. He looks up at the house, the children are playing and are not aware of the fact that the house is on fire. The father looks up at the children and says: “Kids, come out of the house! All is burning!” The kids say: “Why? We are having such a great time here. Why should we come out?” The fathers says: “I’ve got cards here for you to play with. If you come out of the house, you can play with these.” The children, excited by this, come running out of the house. They go to look for the cards the father offered them and then he says: “Well, it’s great that you’re outside, but I don’t have those cards. I’ve got an even greater card: a vehicle. So, hop on and take it for a ride”.

The text begins to offer some commentary about the story. It obviously makes the connection that you expected it would make. It says that the Buddha is like this father. The little cards that he first promised were those lesser vehicles that were preached before the coming of the Mahayana. They were meant to lure the people who were caught in the burning house of Samsara out, in order to receive the real teaching the Buddha has to offer them.

What’s that real teaching? It’s the Mahayana. This is the great and beautiful card the Buddha finally offers the children once they escaped the burning house.

Return from "The Great Vehicle" to Mahayana Buddhism

Aung San Suu Kyi: A Buddhist Hero

Aung San Suu Kyi is another striking example of the intersection between religious and political values in the Theravada Buddhist countries of South East Asia. Aung San Suu Kyi was born in 1945, as the daughter of Burma’s national hero: General Aung San. He was the leader of the Burma’s liberation movement in World War II, who was assassinated in 1947, just after the end of the Second World War and just when Burma was going to receive its independence from British and Japanese domination.

A Symbol of Democracy

Aung San Suu Kyi was educated in Rangoon, Delhi and Oxford. She settled down to raise a family in Oxford. He married an Englishman, had two sons and was living a rather comfortable life as an academic in England, quite far away from all the concerns of Burma and South East Asia.

Her mother became ill. She went back to visit her mother in 1988, to offer her some companionship. Just during that time, the military government in Burma had declared the possibility of an election. As the daughter of the discrete hero of Burmese national liberation movement, she was drawn naturally into the movement for democratic reform. Eventually, she became the symbol of that movement.

Despite being placed under house arrest, her movement won a colossal election victory in May 1990. The military government dismissed the results of the election and imprisoned its leaders. Aung San Suu Kyi has been held under house arrest since 1990 in Rangoon but he has continued to speak out in favor of the democratic movement.

In 1991, she was given the Nobel Peace Price for what the Nobel Committee called her “unflagging efforts for democracy, human rights and ethnic reconciliation by peaceful means”.

A Buddhist Political Philosophy

Aung San Suu Kyi’s political philosophy seems to be pretty simple but there is force and eloquence in her words as there was in the teaching of the Buddha. Simple and strong words. One of his most famous speeches is called simply “Freedom from Fear”. The speech begins by saying “It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

Near the end of the speech, after she had explored this theme for a while, she refers to Mahatma Gandhi’s statement that the greatest gift for an individual or a nation is fearlessness, the absence of fear from the mind. When Gandhi talked about the gift of fearlessness, he was doing something in which he was very skillful at, he was referring to an ancient practice of the Buddha.

She said that fearlessness may be a gift, as Mahatma Gandhi said, but perhaps more precious is the courage that is acquired through endeavor, through your own efforts, courage that cultivates the habit of refusing let fear dictate your actions. As you read these words, you can see how Aung San Suu Kyi’s career brings together modern democratic values and the fundamental Buddhist values of courage, patience, tolerance and non-violence. It is a powerful mix that should draw the attention of anyone who thinks Buddhist values belong only in the monastery. Here they play an active role in political life, as they have in the Buddhist tradition all the way through its history, from the time of Ashoka to the present.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.

Mongkut: King and Monk

King Mongkut reigned Thailand from 1851 to 1868. He is one of the most striking examples of a righteous king in modern history. He is remarkable because combines the roles of monk and king. He served as a monk for over twenty-five years before he ascended to the throne. He came to his position of king as a person who already had been deeply infused in monastic practice, something that is not common in the Buddhist world. It is striking that King Mongkut brought that background with him to the throne.

A Modernist

As king, he believed that Thai monastic life needed to be reformed, purged of superstitious practices and return to the pristine model of the early canonical scriptures, the scriptures that we call the Pali Canon.

In addition to being a monk and a king, he was also a modernist. He wanted to reform the Sangha, to bring it back to what he thought was the pristine ancient practice of the Buddha as it was reflected in the Pali Canon. This is an important aspect of contemporary Buddhism you would encounter throughout South East Asia, and in fact, throughout the world. There is a modernizing impulse, an impulse to strip away what people think of as being superstitious practices, things that have been added to the tradition over the course of his history and return to the ancient practice of the Buddha.

The Reform Movement

He gave institutional expression to these ideas by creating the Thammayut movement. During the reign of his son, king Chulalongkorn, this reform movement was extended throughout the Thai Sangha and was given the status of an official orthodoxy. So, King Mogkut created a reform movement that eventually was extended to the whole Sangha and became the modernizing matrix of Thai monastic life. This is one of the reasons why the Thai monastic system has been able to adapt to the challenges of modernity.

Thailand continues to be an example, even today, of the close alliance between king and Sangha in the extension and protection of Buddhist values. This is something you should keep in mind if you ever have the chance of visiting in Bangkok the Royal Shrine, called the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. In that place, you will see clearly the intersection of royal and Buddhist values. It is a Shrine that honors the monarchy, and also at the same time, the central place of the Buddha within the structure of the Thai national identity.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.

Ashoka, the Righteous King

When King Ashoka assumed the throne in the year 269 BCE as Emperor of the Maurya dynasty in India, he inherited a kingdom that had already been substantially expanded by his predecessors. He already dominated a large portion of India, but there was a particular kingdom that resisted domination, the Kingdom of Kalinga.

The Convertion

Ashoka took as his responsibility to bring the people of Kalinga into the empire. He waged a very bloody and cruel military campaign to bring the Kalinga people under his domination. The brutality of this campaign apparently provoked Ashoka to convert to Buddhism. He accepted the Buddha’s Dharma with its implicit idea of no violence.

King Ashoka

After his conversion, Ashoka proclaimed himself a Righteous King, a protector of the Dharma. Ashoka advocated a policy of conquest by Dharma. Ashoka’s position has been recorded on a series of rock carvings that were placed in strategic locations around his empire. This is nice for us, we can take all of them and read them.

The Edict 30 gives an account of his conversion. It is interesting to read about Ashoka’s convertion in his own words:

“Eight years after his coronation, King Devanampriya Priyadarsi (a way of designating himself) conquered the country of Kalinga. One hundred and fifty thousand people were deported. One hundred thousand were killed, and many times that number perished. Now that the Kalingans have been taken, Devanampriya came to feel a strong inclination towards the Dharma, a love for the Dharma and for instruction in Dharma. Devanampriya feels sorrow at having conquered the Kalingans. Indeed, Devanampriya considers conquest by Dhamma to be the best conquest.”

The Promotion of The Dharma

This is the basic theme of conquest by the Dharma rather than conquest by force of arms. Other Edicts talk about his policy to promote the Dharma. You can see that his view of Dharma is not complicated. It has to do with rather simple Buddhist values. It has to do with respect for others and their welfare:

“King Devanampriya Priyadarsi says: I have had banyan trees planted along the road to provide shade for beasts and people and I have had mango groves planted. I have had wells dug, rest-houses built in every mile. I have had watering-holes made for the use of animals and men. Of course previous Kings have sought as well to please the people with such facilities, but I’m doing this so people may follow the Path of Dharma.”

This explicitly links his concern for the welfare of the people with his policy to promote the Buddha’s Dharma. As part of this policy, King Ashoka sent missionaries out to spread the Buddhist teaching in India and elsewhere in South East Asia. His actions have served as models for righteous kings throughout the Buddhist world.

The Righteous King

What a Righteous King would be like? A Righteous King protects and promotes the Dharma. In return, the king is recognized and legitimated by the religious authorities. There is a ritual way monks can designate this guy as somebody whom people should respect and trust. This is an important two-way relationship. The king supports the monks, the monks support the king. This makes it possible for the king to develop a sense of trust and loyalty among his people.

In some situations, the king disciplines and reforms the Sangha, to make sure that it doesn’t interfere in the affairs of the state. Ashoka himself set an example for this reformist function when he says in one of his edicts: “Any monk or nun who causes a schism in the Sangha would have to wear the white robes of a lay person and would no longer be able to dwell in a monastic residence.”

We will see this ideal of the Righteous King throughout the Buddhist world, not just in South East Asia, but also in China, Tibet and Japan. It is an important component in the complex structure of Buddhist society.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.

Theravada Buddhism Through its Figures

Buddhism changed in two ways as it expanded out of its original homeland in Northern India. Disputes within the Buddhist community generated a series of sectarian movements. All this started after the Second Buddhist Council.

The Doctrine of The Elders

Many of these early sects are really historical objects at this point. We can study them or we can read about them in texts, but we can’t meet them on the street. They don’t represent the Buddhist tradition today.

One of these early sects, however, is still active today. This is the Theravada tradition. The word “Theravada” simply means the “Doctrine of the Elders”. It is in its designation a conservative tradition. It expanded into Sri Lanka and the to the rest of South East Asia. It maintains today many aspects of the Buddhist tradition that would had been practiced in India during those early centuries after the death of the Buddha.

Three Essential Figures

I will try to give you a taste of the history of the Theravada by looking at three representative figures who have shaped the development of the Theravada tradition as we know it today.

The first figure I have in mind is King Ashoka, the ancient king of the Maurya dynasty who became a prototype of the righteous king and who’s son, according to Buddhist legend, became the first missionary to carry the Buddhist tradition down into South East Asia.

The second figure is King Mongkut of Thailand. He reigned from 1851 to 1868. Before he became king, he spent twenty-five years in the monastery as a monk. When he was instituted as king he began a reform movement to modernize the Thai Sangha. As king, he had an enormous impact on Buddhist life in Thailand. He crystallizes an important aspect of modern Theravada Buddhism.

The third figure is one of the most intriguing modern figures in the Buddhist tradition. A woman named Aung San Suu Kyi. She is the leader of the democratic protest movement in Burma and was the recipient of the Nobel Peace Price in 1991. She also shows us the Buddhist tradition in a fascinating and modern way.

Why These?

You might ask why of all the possible figures of Theravada Buddhist history I’ve chosen to focus on these three political leaders. There are two reasons for this. One is to raise the issue of the relationship between Buddhism and Politics. It is not something you normally think of as being consistent with traditional Buddhist values. You see the Buddha as a monk, it is hard to imagine him as a politician.

The relationship between Buddhist values and politics has been a deeply rooted theme in Buddhist life. It is important for us to consider it in order to develop a full understanding of Buddhist society and to see how Buddhism wove its way into the life of other civilizations in Asia.

The second reason for choosing these figures is to raise the question of modernity. It is very easy to imagine that the Buddhist tradition is only an historical artifact, something associated with the teaching of the Buddha in a distant civilization, distant from us not just geographically but also historically. The truth is that Buddhism and Buddhist people had been involved in the process of modernization just the way religious people had been in other cultures. It is useful for us to see in King Mongkut and Aung San Suu Kyi some of the subtle and powerful ways that Buddhism has been brought into relationship with the challenges of modernity.

This article is part of the series about Theravada Buddhism.