What made you choose Māhayāna?

The Watercooler
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I was raised in a firmly non-Buddhist culture and had a conversion experience a year or two ago, and went from just meditating to being a Buddhist and meditating. I naturally gravitated towards Theravāda and have since become a stronger Theravāda traditionalist, more aligned with Thai Forest and EBT. To me, many of the Māhayāna teachings (e.g. things about Pure Land, “interbeing”, etc.) seem to reject the Buddha’s advice on how to escape suffering. However I have never even considered being Māhayāna so I do not know what it is like “on the other side.”

So I want to hear some of these opinions. I am looking for people raised in a non-Māhayāna culture who have consciously made a decision to practice Māhayāna instead of Theravāda Buddhism. What made you decide on Māhayāna? Is Theravāda Buddhism missing something?

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I come from a Muslim country, so I guess I qualify. :slight_smile:

My first encounter with Buddhism was back in college, when a philosophy major friend asked me to ghost-write their work on Dōgen’s “Oneness of Practice-Realisation” compared to Kantian ethics.

Suffice to say, I hadn’t an inkling of what Buddhism was. Armed with Wikipedia and some Shōbōgenzō snippets, somehow I managed to get a passing grade. The meta-irony of the whole episode about the very concept Dōgen was explaining, is abundantly delightful to me. :slight_smile:

But I was struck by the opening paragraph of Bendōwa (The Sermon on the Effort-Way). I can’t remember what translation it was, but this is how I read it:

All buddhas and tathāgatas, in directly transmitting the wondrous Dharma and realizing unsurpassed awakening, possess a supreme and unconditioned art. Entrusted only from buddha to buddha and admitting no deviation, it takes as its standard the samādhi in which realization is personally received and enjoyed. To move freely within this samādhi, upright sitting in Zen is the true gate.

Something about the framing, the directness of the aim, was powerful to me. It’s a visceral, embodied directive, explaining the Buddha art, which is personally verified, enjoyed, and sitting upright is the true gate for it’s cultivation.

To be honest, it took me a long while to figure out what Arhat even meant. :grin: What inspired me to practice Boddhisattva Way was embodying Buddha, in his methods and practice, to be able to sit comfortably at all.

So for a while, I tried sitting still. I liked it, and I began to realise just how we ourselves or the world make it difficult for us to sit comfortably. And on the finer points of just how to sit, I ventured into the sūtras.

My first foray into the scriptures were Lotus Sūtra, which, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to read as a first sūtra — it’s very hard to make any sense of it! All these weird gods and bodhisattvas and upset monks and drama…

So I made my way into Pāli Canon. That seemed more immediately useful, relevant, sober-headed compared to the grand drama.

Of course, as I suspect anyone who has a hint of interest across traditions could confirm, I began to have this “Wait, are Mahāyāna scriptures then so fake?” internal debates and inquiries. Lateness in transmission, altered doctrines, genuine-fakeness…

But, Nikāyas seemed more grounded and relevant to my practice, so I set aside the whole I-don’t-know-what-Mahāyāna debate, with a side of guilty pleasure of indulging in Dōgen’s expositions here and there.

And what I’m about to say may sound strange, but I realised I was practicing only because Dōgen left instructions. In a sense, I believe in the Buddha because I believed in the Dōgen who believed in the Buddha.

And so it is with all traditions. It’s through the painstaking tradition of monks, nuns, layfolk of all sorts, that we are even in the business of Dharma.

And this realization of faith, made me humble for trying to figure out why Dōgen, the reason of my faith in the Buddha in the first place, wouldn’t stop talking about the virtues of Lotus Sūtra.

So I came back, nominally third time to Lotus Sūtra, and this time around, it didn’t seem like an outrageous space-opera, or a discarding of Nikāyas. In fact, I wonder if anyone without a solid background in Nikāyas could even make sense of it at all.

Suddenly it didn’t seem like a “replacement project” or “a fake article”, but just so, another line in the tradition of Buddhadharma, written for a Buddhist audience already, a call for reunion, and a celebration of the sameness of the Buddhist path, despite myriads appearances.

To be a Mahāyāna student is an arduous task. First you gotta learn the suttas, then the Abhidharmas, then the commentaries, then the violence of Prajñaparamita upon the Abhidharmas, and so on…

But in my ignorance, this is what I cherish: that people wrestled with the same points, and debated fiercely and gently for millennia, all because they were inspired with the same image of Shakyamuni sitting in samādhi.

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Looking at this image, this is probably nothing like what Shakyamuni ever looked like. He was depicted bald, to begin with; and unless some magical realities exist that I do not know, he can’t have a head like that.

But still it continues to inspire people, because people see in it a reflection of what Shakyamuni stood for, who could in this instance, happen to look like he has his hair braided just so. Does it make it any less true, that he is depicted as being crowned in his samādhi?

(And after all, I might still be wrong, and he might’ve really had his hair like that. That would be weird for me, but I’d like to think I could handle it. )

In this image, arhat, tathāgatas, buddha might just be words, after all. Somewhere in the suttas, it says that tathāgatas can’t be found to be real or so, and I’m probably missing a point there, so don’t quote me for anything other than my article of faith.

I’ve been moved to be like the Buddha nevertheless, to be able to sit still, to hold everything in stillness, as a direction of my faith: That I see the merit in striving to be just so as Buddha had and Buddha was, to reach and elucidate his unsurpassed samādhi.

So, long story short: Why did I choose Mahāyāna (I couldn’t really say “over Theravāda” though, since I consider myself a student of Theravāda just as much)?

Well, because somewhere in my shameless youth, I had the most fortunate indecency of ghost-writing a philosophy paper on a maddening Zen poet, and I took the joke seriously. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for sharing, Dogen. I enjoyed reading that.

Somewhere in the suttas, it says that tathāgatas can’t be found to be real or so, and I’m probably missing a point there, so don’t quote me for anything other than my article of faith.

SN 22.85 and SN 22.86 (= SN 44.2).

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Thank you for sharing! This is a beautiful answer.

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In my case Theravada Buddhism was missing living teachers and actually even followers, as well books. That was the case in most Communist countries fifty or forthy years ago. But at that time some Zen masters and Tibetan teachers have already came, and there were some Zen groups, or even one or two centers, so one could practice meditation together, a good thing for the beginners.

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This is very timely for me, so thank you for your post, @DhammaNYC. (I’m born and raised in B’klyn, by the way. You?)

Timely because I just started working with some Dunhuang manuscripts which, prompted by the tenth chapter of the Platform Sūtra, attempted to bridge older Buddhist paradigms like the five khandhas, the twelve āyatanas, the eighteen dhātus, etc. with Mahāyāna concepts of svabhāva and so on.

For years, I was almost militant in my rejection of not only Mahāyāna but anything “later,” like Abhidhamma, commentaries, etc. I look back and laugh now. I said on another thread that I can’t even decide anymore where sutta ends and abhidhamma begins–I don’t think anyone can! Like @Dogen said, it’s just the progression of the teaching. But I agree that a solid grounding in the EBTs is essential, and most Mahāyānists lack that.

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I’ve always kind of leaned toward Mahayana Buddhism, I think for a couple reasons. The first is that I think that altruism is a better ethic that the individualism of early Buddhism. This is not an intellectual judgement, though. It’s just my personality. I can’t ignore the suffering of other sentient beings and just focus on my own. It repels me when I see the Theravada arguments against caring for others that pop up now and again as a kind of ideological argument against Mahayana ideas. It’s a visceral or emotional reaction for me. It’s just wrong-headed to me.

The second reason is that I think Mahayana Buddhism did a good job of taking early Buddhists to task for some of the superficial prejudices that they developed toward women and lower castes. They developed deconstructionism before the Roman Empire fell, arguing that attributes like male and female are only conventionalities and ultimately unreal. I have a lot of respect for Mahayana Buddhists in their attempt to develop a philosophical argument that all sentient beings are ultimately equal in nature and that they are all deserving of compassion and respect.

That said, I wouldn’t call myself an adherent to any particular Mahayana school, especially the later ones that exist today that developed in China, Tibet, and elsewhere. From the start, I’ve been pretty non-sectarian as a Buddhist. When I was first learning about Buddhism 30 years ago, I was reading Buddhist Publication Society Wheel booklets alongside Mahayana sutras, etc. I guess I’m a naturally syncretic person. Which is probably why I have always liked the Chinese culture and philosophy. They could be just as sectarian as others, but their best thinkers were syncretists who tried to find the underlying principles shared by multiple sources.

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This indeed isn’t an intellectual judgment, since on the first place the task given us by the Teacher is to understand what suffering means. Only when you understand your own suffering on the level of the Four Noble Truths you are able to help others to escape suffering.

“Cunda, that one who is himself sinking in the mud should pull out another who is sinking in the mud is impossible; that one who is not himself sinking in the mud should pull out another who is sinking in the mud is possible. That one who is himself untamed, undisciplined, [with defilements] unextinguished, should tame another, discipline him, and help extinguish [his defilements] is impossible; that one who is himself tamed, disciplined, [with defilements] extinguished, should tame another, discipline him, and help extinguish [his defilements] is possible.

MN 8

If you understand that truth, you will find nothing controversial in this Dhammapada passage:

The welfare of oneself should not be neglected for the welfare of others, however great; recognizing the welfare of oneself, one should be devoted to one’s own welfare. (Dhammapada 166)

Otherwise desire to help others may be as well unskillful escape from dealing with ones own problems.

You are not a teacher so your altruism may not be so dangerous, but there are quite a few teachers who desire to help others to understand dependent arising, so they cannot restrain themselves and wait until they personally understand the Four Noble Truths.

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Oh, I squint a little at that statement. Mahayana is what created an entirely unattainable goal for women when it created the goal of Buddhahood. Early bodhisattvayana sutras even teach methods of developing dispassion for one’s wife, such as picturing her as a crocodile, and encourage men to abandon them as soon as possible, to pursue ordination. Not a word to the good “daughters” at all.

In classical buddhism, a woman can become an arhat, even though in the indian mind, they were seen as inferior, maybe. In Mahayana, even pure lands were devoid of women; women needed to be reborn as men in order to become buddhas, and most of the bodhisattvayana literature referenced nothing but men. As Jan Nattier notes in her paper on Gender and Hierarchy in the Lotus Sutra, the bodhisattva path was initially considered suitable only for men. Even if later the path was opened to all, women were supposed to shed their identity as women, aim to be reborn as men, and only then would they be worthy of the goal.

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Nothing is absolutely the case across an entire tradition, obviously. There’s a whole class of Mahayana sutras that perhaps less well known in which little girls make everyone look like idiots, including the buddha. And emptiness theory was used to render gender a conventionality only in the hands of teachings like Kumarajiva. A person needs to be well read to recognize this, yes. It won’t be apparently to someone who doesn’t know texts that have been barely translated to English like the Dazhidulun or the Ratnakuta collection.

Oh, one of more well known texts that has an example I can think is the goddess that dresses down Sariputra for having unresolved attachments in the Vimalakirti Sutra. Themes like that pop up in various places in Mahayana lit, which really don’t have equivalents in early Buddhism. It’s yet another thing Buddhists invented before Europeans - feminism.

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Isn’t that mostly moot though for those on the Bodhisattva path? Buddhahood is something in a far distant future. In the meantime, there are lives as male and female, while one advances in the Bhumis and eventually attains Buddhahood in a very long time from now. So in the current life, those Bodhisattvas are on equal footing regardless if they are male or female.

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Are there many Mahayanists here? Since the EBTs focus heavily on the Pali Canon (being the most complete Canon), I imagine most here are Theravada or a mix of Theravada & EBT.

I like EBT, Theravada and Mahayana. I like the inclusiveness of bhikshunis (nuns) in Mahayana and the greater focus on compassion found in some schools too, especially Chan Buddhism.

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I am ordained and a teacher in the Soto Zen tradition. The “yanas” I am less concerned with, to be fair. I don’t think compassion is unique to Mahayana, and historically, it was introduced later; in the beginning stages of the bodhisattva path, compassion was understood more like pity, and the transfer of merit was an internal process, where one invested in one’s own future attainment of buddhahood. It was the bodhisattvas who were accused of being selfish and self-centered, since, at least in part, they were advocating for a return to the life of forest-dwelling, and the practice of dutanghas. The bodhisattva path was not recommended to all, but rather to a select few who were able to engage in the serious practice based on the dharma and vinaya.

The way I ended up in Zen was because my Christian background made me viscerally reject more esoteric forms of Buddhism, such as Tibetan or Pure Land. I recognized early on that what was common to all Buddhist traditions, or to the majority, at least, was meditation.

I already had an interest in Japan, and Japanese Buddhists looked like very serious meditators. Japanese Buddhism seemed to me more grounded in reality, as I was still grappling with many Christian notions, and it didn’t seem too concerned with rebirth, past lives, supernatural powers, and other ideas of that kind, which I had difficulty accepting.

It also seemed to me like Zen was directed at everyone, and one could become a serious practitioner without being ordained, abandoning everything and going to a forest, and there were Zen centers in my country. I never paid too much attention to Theravada Buddhism, as it seemed too far removed from this place, where I am. I didn’t understand it and was already kind of focused on Zen. Many Zen folks seemed to teach online as well, and it made it easy for me to learn, given that, for economic and other reasons, I couldn’t just get up and go to a temple somewhere.

Of course, diving into practice and study has completely changed my understanding of Buddhism and my approach to it. My Christian conditioning also disappeared over time, which made it possible for me to revisit the dhamma in a more meaningful way. I now subscribe to the idea of Dogen Zenji, the founder of Japanese Soto Zen, that one shouldn’t speak of different schools of Buddhism, but just of the Buddha dharma. I approach Zen as a method, as a way of engaging with the dharma, and not as a doctrine. I do my best to teach the dharma like that, with no rigidity, with the richness of the Zen methods.

I don’t consider myself a Mahayanist, to be honest, but then again, what is a Mahayanist? How many ideas developed in the Mahayana tradition does one have to accept before they are a Mahayanist? I see wisdom in both Theravada and Mahayana, and don’t think rigidity is needed. Neither one is the Buddha’s original teachings 100%, yet the Buddha’s original teachings are in both. And then there’s a lot of “other stuff”, which no one is obligated to accept. The Dharma invites one to come see for oneself, not to stick to one invented tradition in particular.

That’s kind of my take and story

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That Mahayana you describe is only one branch. The Bhumis were not present from the beginning of the bodhisattvayana path, and they are not relevant across all Mahayana schools today.

Misogyny matters now, not in future lives. Imagine being a woman and being told your birth is an unfortunate one, that the goal is only for men, that pure lands lack women, and things like that. Even later, in Japanese Buddhism, priests were doing ceremonies for women so they could have good rebirths as men, since they were considered impure and disadvantaged. The Zen lineage includes no women either.

Of course, not all Mahayana was the same. It wasn’t one coherent way of thinking, which is why the Lotus Sutra or Vimalakirti are so different from other texts, like the Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra.

My point is merely that I think the Mahayana did two things simultaneously: create more discrimination and include women (provided they eventually became men).

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Isn’t it the same in Theravada? A woman can attain awakening as an arhat/arahant, but can’t be a Buddha. In Theravada, samma-sam-buddhas are always male.

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But, we are talking about the early days, right? There was no Buddha goal, was there? Everyone aimed for arhantship, so women didn’t need to aim for better rebirths as men, and everyone was equal in terms of the goal. That’s all I was pointing to. There was undoubtedly misogyny as well in the early days, but the Buddha always spoke of the fourfold sangha, including nuns.

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Okay, I suppose Theravada is a little better in that regard, since Theravadins have arahantship as the goal. Mahayanists who take the bodhisattva vow have Buddhahood as the goal, but from what I’ve heard not all Mahayanists take that vow.

For the universal-teaching-Buddha (samma-sam-buddha), they are the same in that both say it is always male.

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So, I didn’t choose, like Dogen, I’m somewhere between Dogen’s Zen (DZ) and EBTs, but anyway…

I think DZ and EBTs along with, or up to Theravada attack the problem of suffering from different angles : EBT attacks it from the angle of our own mind, while DZ address it from a perfect coexistence, immersion in, and harmony with external reality. The fun thing is that who we are, the self, is solely what manifets squeezed between these two elements at the limit of our perception that we do not control well i.e., the mind (generating hindrances, pulsions, emotions etc.), and what is beyond our perceptual field, or beyond our environement. EBT being how to deal with dukka arising from the former, DZ how to deal with it from the later. Ah… And Nagarjuna sort of annihilates that what lies in between exists from it’s own side…

So yes, the question boils down, from my perspective, as to from which angles you want to attack your own suffering.

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