The Equality of Theravada & Mahayana

And this marks something of an inconsistency in Mahāyāna’s relations with what it calls ‘Śrāvakayāna’.

These inconsistencies, however, are part and parcel in Mahāyāna, and Mahāyānists must decide on themselves which teaching to consider provisional and what to consider ultimate.

The Lotus Sūtra says (actually, it only ‘heavily implies’) that all women must be reborn as men before anuttarāsamyaksaṃbodhi.

How one navigates these disagreements, is part of how one decide what is the dharma and what is not the dharma.


(Edited by the moderators at the author’s request)

If you read the story of the naga princess in the Lotus Sutra carefully, you will see that she already attained enlightenment in female form. It’s only when the Buddha’s disciples doubt her attainment that she then transforms into a man, as an act of skillful means for those who couldn’t accept a woman’s attainment.

Nor is there in Mahāyāna! Emptiness is emptiness. Its empty. You can’t get “emptier” than “empty”!

I was actually referring to the woman referred to in chapter 23

Constellation King Flower, if there is a person who hears this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King, he too will gain immeasurable and boundless benefits. If there is a woman who hears this chapter on the Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King and is able to accept and uphold it, that will be her last appearance in a woman’s body and she will never be born in that form again. If in the last five-hundred-year period after the thus come one has entered extinction there is a woman who hears this sutra and carries out its practices as the sutra directs, when her life here on earth comes to an end she will immediately go to the world of Peace and Delight where the buddha Amitayus dwells surrounded by the assembly of great bodhisattvas, and there will be born seated on a jeweled seat in the center of a lotus blossom.

He [remember the heavenly gender-change the Buddha’s mother is also subject to in commentarial literature!? Clearly heavens in Buddhism oft have a “no ladies” policy, it seems!] will no longer know the torments of greed, desire, anger, rage, foolishness, or ignorance, or the torments brought about by arrogance, envy, or other defilements. He will gain the bodhisattva’s transcendental powers and the truth of the birthlessness of all phenomena. Having gained this truth, his faculty of sight will be clear and pure, and with this clear pure faculty of sight he will see the buddhas, the thus come ones, equal in number to the sands of seven hundred twelve thousand million nayutas of Ganges Rivers.

(Watson translation)

What is your definition of emptiness here? Sounds like grasping on extreme.

My definition of empty is empty. You can’t get emptier than empty. There are no gradations to emptiness that I can think of.

Empty of “what” is the important thing. “Emptiness” for me is 法空/dharmanairātmyatā, “dharma-selflessness” or “phenomenal selflessness”.

I’m sure I’m not entirely alone in that definition.

As a Mahayana Buddhist, I don’t differentiate between the attainment of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist masters.

While the goal of attainment in Theravada Buddhism is widely considered a lesser goal than in Mahayana Buddhism, this is not fundamentally the case:

Samma Sambuddha is a self-enlightened Buddha. That is, a Buddha who realises the Truth (Nibbana) by himself, without the assistance of a teacher…
The last Buddha was of this catergory.

Pacceka Buddha also attains Nibbana without the assistance of a teacher, but unlike theSamma Sambuddha he cannot teach the Dhamma.

Savaka Buddha or Arahat attains Nibbana by following the teachings given by a Samma Sambuddha.

In terms of their Enlightenment, all three Buddhas are identical, but they reach this state by different means (with or without a teacher), and may or may not be able to teach.
http://www.londonbuddhistvihara.org/fund_topics/buddha.htm

If a living person in the Theravada tradition is widely believed to have attained Nirvana, I take that seriously.

If the Buddha taught 84,000 paths to enlightenment, as is widely taught in Mahayana Buddhism, then Theravada Buddhism is included among those paths:

The Basic Points Unifying the Theravāda and the Mahāyāna is an important Buddhist ecumenical statement created in 1967 during the First Congress of the World Buddhist Sangha Council (WBSC), where its founder Secretary-General, the late Venerable Pandita Pimbure Sorata Thera, requested the Ven. Walpola Rahula to present a concise formula for the unification of all the different Buddhist traditions. This text was then unanimously approved by the Council…
Basic points unifying Theravāda and Mahāyāna - Wikipedia

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I think this is a Mahayana concept.

Above being Mahayana or Theravada, the idea of 84,000 paths is more likely to be about how a mix of Chinese whispers and eastern idiomatic uses of numbers caused (and still causes) misunderstandings in established traditions of Buddhism.

The figure was probably originally used to refer to the massive number of discourses the Buddha gave across the 45 years of his spiritual career, and which Venerable Ananda was able to recollect or confirm in the first times the early Sangha met to compile the Dhamma-vinaya left by the Blessed One.

We have already addressed this in previous threads:

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Thanks for the link :grinning: Interesting reading.

I agree with Ajahn Brahm on this point. A genuine Arhat won’t be selfish. Even stream-winners are endowed with generosity, according to the EBTs.

However, I also like Analayo’s exploration of this topic in regards to the Bakula Sutta, a late Sutta which promotes the ideal of a hyper-OCD Arhat, who is obsessed with following the letter of the law of ascetic practice, but refuses to teach others. It would seem like, at some point in early Buddhist history, the Arhat ideal deteriorated, perhaps giving rise to the proto-mahayana idea that Arhats are “Selfish.”

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I really don’t understand what the purpose of this thread is. If you want to point out the equality of Theravada and Mahayana to people who are sympathetic to this idea, it is very much preaching to the choir. If you are talking to people who tend to disagree with it, simply stating these things once again won’t help you change their mind.

If the Theravada enlightenment and Mahayana enlightenment are equal and basically the same, then there is no point in trying to convince the Theravadins that those two branches of Buddhism are equal. The Theravadins can be sure that they are not and still reach the arahantship, can’t they? At this stage, they will see the equality of Mahayana and Theravada for themselves.

The same thinking could be applied to many perennialists’ works. If all religions are equal and lead to the same truth, why should I do yoga and not stick to my Latin pre-Vatican II Catholic mass? Why did I convert to Buddhism and not stick to following the teachings of the Russian Orthodox church? I mean, if you consider those two enlightenments are equal, then the Theravadins have all the right to ignore Mahayana altogether, why not?

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Ajahn Brahm is cool because in his own way, he allows for a sense of ecumenicism that creates goodwill and harmony.

Still, I just feel a bit bad for Buddhists that haven’t found the EBTs and/or Sutta Central. I do spend time with some Zen communities (yeah, I try to connect in my city, dominated by Zen, Shambhala et al…) , and there is always a Buddha in the corner on a shrine, but I do feel that there’s no appreciation of what the man taught and stood for, and how important his presence is in the world. The Early Texts? No idea. It’s a bit like being a modern physicist and having no idea of who Einstein or Max Planck were.

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You’re welcome.

I’m sorry, that’s not even a fair comparison. Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism are different expressions of fundamentally the same religion. Pointing this out is not the same as saying “all paths lead to God” or whatever the perennialists might say.

As far as I’ve seen, modern Zen masters like Shunryu Suzuki and Sheng-Yen are concerned about what the historical Buddha taught and stood for.

I also believed that, out of all Mahayana schools, Zen is closest to what the Buddha originally taught.

I don’t know how it originated, but here is an oft-repeated and beautiful saying, “Just as there are 84,000 worldly passions, the Buddha taught 84,000 paths to enlightenment.”

Even in the Pali scriptures, the Buddha taught different things in different ways to different people in different situations and from different sets of circumstances.

However, despite our lack of understanding, I believe all these fall under the Four Noble Truths, and follow the Noble eightfold path.

with metta

Okay, let’s leave it out. Let us consider Theravada and Mahayana only. Most Theravadins believe Mahayana to be incorrect and irrelevant at best. If we accept that the Theravadin enlightenment is identical to the Mahayana enlightenment, then why not let the Theravadins mind their own business? I mean, why should we talk about the equality of Mahayana and Theravada if the end result is the same, whether we believe in this equality or not?

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what unites us is greater than what separates us

:anjal:

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