Mahayana Buddhism

Mahayana Buddhist Temple, Catskill, New York

The Mahayana movement appears to have begun in India around the first or second century of the Common Era. In part it was probably a reaction against the great emphasis upon monastic life that marked earlier Buddhism and against the arid psychological and metaphysical speculations that characterize much of early Buddhist scholasticism. It sought to open up the religious life to a wider proportion of the population, to accord a more important role to lay believers, and to give more appealing expression to the teachings and make them more readily accessible.

In earlier Buddhism, as I have already noted, the aim of religious practice was to achieve the state of arhat, one who has gained release from suffering and passed beyond the confines of this world. But to the members of the Mahayana movement this seemed too selfish an objective, one that was too at variance with the spirit of compassion and concern for all living beings that they regarded as the soul of Buddhist teachings.

In contrast to the state of arhat, they chose as their goal and ideal the figure of the bodhisattva, one who vows not only to achieve enlightenment for himself but to assist all others to so likewise. He advances stage by stage in his spiritual progress until he has reached the point where he could, if he wished, enter nirvana. But he--or she, since Mahayana largely disregards distinctions of gender--out of motives of compassion deliberately elects to remain in the realm of birth and death, permitting himself to be reborn as a human being, an animal, or even a dweller in hell in order to assist others and guide them on the path to salvation. It is this spirit of altruism that most of all distinguishes the bodhisattva from the follower of Hinayana teachings.

---Burton Watson---