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Theravada & Mahayana Buddhism: Differences & Similarities
DhammaDhatu
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There doesn't seem to be a clean copy of it to link to, but anyone interested in this question might get something from Ajahn Brahm's talk "Which Yana? Hahayana!"
I don't think that we are "messing with" anything here or in our practice. What many of us have come to understand is that, whilst the Pali Canon may indeed be the earliest written Buddhist texts and may be as close as we shall get to the Buddha's own words, it suffers from a few problems not least of which are that it was written long after the event and is not even in the language spoken by the Buddha and is thus, itself, a translation with all the room for error that is implied.
Whilst I agree, @Fivebells, that there may be little difference between Theravadina and some Mahayanists, we must surely acknowledge that there are some traditions which are very different. Pure Land is one clear example. The practice of 'empowerments' in the Tibetan traditions is another.
For the newcomer, it can be very confusing and I am not sure that the video (above) really addresses the fundamental difference, although it is mentioned in a way that I deem 'spinning': the the Great Vehicle includes sutras, treatises and other writings which are ignored by Theravadins, writings that define the Dharma in very different ways from theirs.
For many of us, Westerners, brought up with the notion of evolution and progress, the idea that understanding and exposition, together with new insights, continued after the Buddha's death is one which makes sense to us, particularly if we have been thouroughly turned off by ideas of textual "inerrancy".
What is your source for this?
What I'm saying is that that is one aspect of Vajrayana, but not the final objective as you assert. It's just part of it.
But again, same distance from Theravada. I guess if neither one of us has initiation into advanced tantric practices, neither one of us knows what the objective of those practices is (nor would we tell). But I am familiar with that aspect of Tibetan iconography. I was at the Kalachakra Initiation in Santa Monica in 1991 and there was a huge thanka of Kalachakra with consort like you describe.
To me an Arahant and a Buddha only differ in the fact that a Buddha teaches the Dharma when there's no such teaching in known existence/memory. A Buddha is an Arahant that has no master, has come to an awakened state of liberation on his own. An Arahant comes to the same liberation, but he has one or more masters, the Buddha at least (as the source of the Dharma teachings) and possibly a personal teacher/guru as well.
Regardless of having a teacher or not, the result is the same. That is why even in a Buddha-era where a Buddha is known and has taught, those who come to awakening without ever hearing his teachings are called Private Buddhas. They are self-awakened, but do not teach, or at least do not bring any new knowledge to the world since the teachings already exist somewhere.
Therevada teaches gradual enlightenment through practice while Mahayana teaches instantaneous enlightenment.
The Mahayana argument is that awakening from ignorance is sudden and much like the arousal from sleep. There is no intermediate stage between the sleep state and the awakened state. The Theravadin, who tells himself that he is ignorant now but with practise he will eventually become enlightened, is fooling himself.
Any comments?
A lot of conditioning with ignorance as a factor led us to this state of suffering, a lot of conditioning with wisdom as a factor (at least wise/skillful karma as taught to us through the teachings) leads us toward Nirvana. It depends entirely on the individual circumstances how "quickly" one will see the truth and become unfettered, but even then the mind unravels this delusional reality step by step. Everything is a process.
the buddha, trying to be a man of the people, not a high fallooting brahman speaking sanskrit, spoke in the common pali tongue, the scriptures were chanted by the monks in pali, and certain genius monks with incredible memory led the prayers, i don't know if you know this but there are literally thousands of muslims who have memorized the entire koran, so the idea of memorizing volumes of buddhist scriptures is entirely plausible,
sometime around 300 AD the monks in present day burma decided it wasn't reliable to fully trust this person to person memorization of the scriptures and had it written down using southeast asian alphabets, but still phonetically the same pali language from india.the monks in burma speak burmese, but they learn the scriptures in pali, an entirely different language.the prayers are not translated into the local languages, but preserved in the buddhas tongue pali, mahayana prayers are mostly translated into the local language, like tibetan, though
the buddha himself even made some statement that he didn't need sanskrit at all and could explain everything in pali, because of this statement the therevada schools refuse to believe any of the sanskrit scriptures are the actual writings or words of the buddha but rather from his early followers.
the mahayana believe in all of the pali cannon, i think, but also believe that late in his life, maybe in his 50s or 60s the buddha started writing or having written down in sanskrit some of his more advanced teachings, even to the mahayana the pali cannon (188volumes??) is still the earlier basic teachings, and all the sanskrit writings a later, or more advanced teaching, most of which was written by followers not the buddha, however the mahayana argue that core teachings were written down in sanskrit during the buddhas lifetime and survive basically unaltered today.
also the therevada argue that so many thousands upon thousands of monks were involved in memorizing and chanting the scriptures that virtually no words were changed, before they were written down 300 or 400 ad, thats why when you chant the pali scriptures in thailand you are using the same language and meaning as the buddha spoke 2500 yrs ago, albeit in a thai accent!
If there is one thing that has convinced me that all of these schools, along with all the faiths and belief systems are right, wrong, neither right nor wrong, both right and wrong, and none of the foregoing, is best summed up by some words I read recently. Commenting on his conversation with HHDL, Brother David writes:
"Thus, belief in Creation and belief in Interdependent Arising are two different expressions of one and the same underlying faith - two different pointers toward the same experience." (Deeper Than Words</I.)
The same, he maintains, can be said of all beliefs, making a clear distinction from what he calls 'faith'. Beliefs point us towards that 'faith' but are not identical with it.
Beliefs and practices are, indeed, @Cloud, all process but, as Sitwell says, "All, in the end, is harvest."
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Better than to imagine 'becoming enlightened' is the unbecoming of ignorance, and healthier than instant awakening noodles is an insight/letting-go feedback loop salad. Thus ideas of graduality and instantaneity sound not helpful to me. If I were you I'd imagine it as a process.
To answer your question, life is all about me and how I see myself as a human person living among other people on the planet Earth. There is no freedom. I have no say in how I want to live my life; not here in this forum controlled by moderators nor out there beyond the web controlled by dictators. Life sucks.
Now, tell me something I don't know. I want to find out whether you are a false prophet, a wolf in sheep's clothing, a bad teacher or the historical Buddha.