forty-five years of his life traveling and teaching this method. He drew many followers during his lifetime. Following his death, his talks and ideas were written down and were eventually gathered together in the Tripitaka. Composed in Pali, an early Indian language, these works included the sutras, sermons taught by Buddha and his teachers; the Vinaya or rules of the order; and the Abhidharma, commentaries on the sutras.
MAHAYANA: THE SECOND WAY
The Second Way came after Buddhas death. Some followers felt that Buddhas path was too limiting. It offered enlightenment only to those individuals willing to give up their personal lives to become monks, arhats. The goal to become completely free from desires was a solitary one. A new ideal emerged: the bodhisattva, or enlightened being. Instead of staying isolated in nirvana, bodhisattvas turn away from enlightenment, and return to the world to help others until every person is enlightened.
The Mahayana expanded the meaning of the Four Noble Truths. The goal was not simply to overcome suffering but to wake up from illusion. We live our daily lives in a dreamlike state. When we overcome ignorance by correcting our thinking, we come to a new understanding about the nature of reality: emptiness.
This doctrine of emptiness was a new idea of the Mahayana. Real wisdom is the recognition that everything in our world is ultimately without individual essence, and enlightenment is the intuitive realization of this. Our everyday life (samsara) and enlightenment (nirvana) are One. And we find enlightenment in and through daily life. This is the true essence of Buddhism, and it is found in all activities.
Buddha was also changed. No longer thought of as an individual person, Siddhartha, Buddha was now a cosmic being, a symbol of enlightenment. He became eternal and omniscient, representing the absolute wisdom of enlightenment.
Two Sects of Mahayana Buddhism: Madhyamika and Yogacara
Mahayana Buddhism is divided into two major schools: Madhyamika, the Middle Way, and Yogacara, Mind Only.
Nagarjuna, the founder of Madhyamika, was considered one of the greatest Mahayana thinkers. He reinterpreted the Middle Path by stating that it is not simply a choice between luxury and austerity, but rather something that should be viewed more philosophically. The Middle Way is a path between, on the one hand, the belief in the existence of things, and on the other hand, the belief that nothing exists. The first is based on superstition and faith, the second is founded on nihilism.
Nagarjuna pointed out that no position is certain. What we are left with is a path that takes us between existence and nonexistence, reality and illusion: neither and yet both. In this way, we escape from the delusion of dualistic, either/or thinking. Unlike Aristotelian logic, which says that either a thing is (it exists) or is not (it does not exist), Buddhist logic says things are and they are not. From the perspective of enlightenment, this paradox disappears. On the relative, everyday level of reality, things do indeed exist. But from the enlightened perspective of the absolute, everything is empty of any real, lasting existence. Both and neither are true at the same time.
The other major Mahayana sect in India, the Yogacara school, was founded by two brothers, Vasubandu and Asanga, in A.D. 400 and had a profound influence on Mahayana, and later, Tibetan Buddhism. The word cara means practice. Thus, the Yogacara school used yoga in its attempts to reach enlightenment.
The Yogacarins believed that everything we know and experience is a manifestation of the mind—their famous formula was Mind Only. There is no objective world outside of the mind that perceives it. The very intelligence that we use to perceive our world is our own little drop of universal mind. The world is entirely illusory. All the methods we use to measure it and conceptualize it are like trying to grip air in your hand. The real nature of the world is empty, nothingness. This can be very liberating, because if the world is illusion, then the enlightened mind has no boundaries. It can deconstruct what seems to be indestructible. Nothing is there to obstruct us; nothing stands in our way.
Consciousness is like the ocean, vast and deep. Waves are like thoughts. They are not different from the ocean, yet they are not the entire nature of the ocean either. They are simply one part of it. Similarly, our thoughts are never all of consciousness, of Mind, yet they are always part of it. Thus we cannot hope to understand the ocean if we only know waves.
Enlightened wisdom is described in positive terms as pure thought. This differed from the earlier Hinayana idea of nirvana as extinguishing desires. If reality is nonreality, then it is an ultimate state of nonstate. This is a positive conception. There is an Absolute Mind, even if it is empty of substance.
THE VAJRAYANA: A NEW WAY
The Vajrayana, or Diamond Vehicle, was absorbed by the Tibetans into their form of Buddhism, and incorporates both Hinayana and Mahayana. It uses rational thinking and one-pointed concentration to open the mind to new abilities and to the fuller development of potential. According to the Dalai Lama,
What is unique about the third turning is its presentation of particular meditative techniques aimed at enhancing the wisdom realizing emptiness and its discussion, from a subjective perspective, of various subtle factors involved in a person’s experience of that wisdom. (Tenzin Gyatso 1995, 27)
In Tibetan Buddhism, enlightenment is the goal, but an enlightenment that is based in this life, now, as symbolic. We can partake of the Universal Mind through the mind and body that we are. Tibetan Buddhism guides people toward this positive conception of nirvana by using special meditations. Ritual and visualizations give the practitioner an experience of the enlightened state of mind.
Tibetan Buddhist doctrines unite a seemingly diverse group of practices so as to offer a variety of ways to truth and enlightenment. These practices involve the use of tantras and yoga. The word tantra refers to a varied set of practices that foster the realization of enlightenment, but it is also used to describe the sutras on tantric practices. Yoga, on the other hand, is a way to focus concentration while performing tantras to enhance Buddhist practice even more. These methods employ all the senses, training and developing them into tuning forks for enlightenment. Sounds (mantras), visual symbols (mandalas), and gestures (mudras) help direct and intensify the Way.
Tibetan Buddhists do not avoid words or concepts. Thoughts and ideas, for them, are linked to a higher reality. In Zen Buddhism, enlightenment is wordless, beyond knowledge and thought. By contrast, Tibetan Buddhists utilize thought and ideas to lead to the experience of a higher reality.
The individual mind, seen as an individual symbolic essence, is a function of the Universal Mind. All practices are intended to lead to this transformation, the gemstone, or jewel, of higher consciousness.
Avalokitesvara, the patron Buddha of Tibet, Four-armer Avalokitesvara, Buddha of Mercy, Applied Thangka, 18th century, Tibet, Silk and glass beads, The Newark Museum/Art Resource, N.Y.
CHAPTER 2
Buddhism Turns Toward Tibet
One mind pervading all life. It is the primal state, that goes unnoticed. It is brilliant, boundless intelligence that is ignored. It appears everywhere and always, but is not seen.
—Padmasambhava in T. Freke, The Wisdom of the Tibetan Lamas
The tapestry of Tibetan history interweaves myth with fact, religion with politics. Primary in this tapestry is Buddhism. Tibetans mark their important events around the time of the introduction and development of Buddhism in their country. Religion is so closely woven into everyday life that Tibetans consider spiritual realms just as real as material ones. They think symbolically and
