The Development of Mayahana Buddhism

by Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MAHAYANA BUDDHISM

EUROPEAN Buddhist scholars are wont to divide Buddhism into two schools, Northern and Southern. By Southern Buddhism they understand that form which prevails mostly in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam; while Tibetan Lamaism, and Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism they consider as belonging to the Northern school. This geographical division, however, does not seem to be quite correct and justifiable; for we know that the Buddhism of Tibet is as different from the Buddhism of Japan as the latter is from that of Ceylon or Burma, not only in some of its teachings but principally in its practical aspects. Take, for instance, the Chinese or Japanese Zen sect or the sect of the Pure Land, and compare it to Tibetan Buddhism as it is known to us today, and we shall find that the difference between the two is wider perhaps than that between the so called Southern Buddhism and the Japanese Buddhist sect called Risshu or Vinaya sect.

A better way of classifying the different schools of Buddhism is to divide them into the Buddhism of Arhats and the Buddhism of Bodhisattvas; understanding by the former that Buddhism whose ideal attainment is Arhatship, and by the Buddhism of Bodhisattvas that system of Buddhist teachings which makes the conception of Bodhisattvahood its most salient feature. Or we may retain the old way of classifying the followers of the Buddha into two groups: the Mahâsanghika and the Sthâvira. Or, further, we can even invent a new method of division, and call one the progressives and the other the conservatives.

Taking all in all, however, it seems to me that the division of Mahâyâna and Hînayâna Buddhism is preferable to all the rest from the point of view of our knowledge of Buddhism. Of course, this way of dividing Buddhism has its historical odium, which is most desirable for modern scholars of Buddhism to avoid. Except for this latter objection, the term Mahâyâna” is comprehensive and definite enough to include all those schools of Buddhism in which the ideal of Bodhisattvahood is upheld in preference to the attainment of Arahatship, and whose geographical distribution covers not only the northern parts of India but east of them as well. Let us here, therefore, use the term Mahâyâna” more for the sake of convenience than anything else, until we shall have studied Buddhism in all its diverse aspects, historic, dogmatic, and ritualistic, when we shall be able to understand Buddhism far better than we do now.

The object of my present article is to expound briefly what in my view constitutes the essential characteristics of Mahâyâna Buddhism in contradistinction to Hînayâna Buddhism.

The character of Mahâyâna Buddhism can be expressed in the one word, speculative. Buddhism generally teaches three forms of discipline: moral (sīla), contemplative (dhyâna), and intellectual (prajñā) ; and of these the last seems to have been particularly emphasized by the Mahâyâna Buddhists, while the moral discipline has become the chief feature of Southern Buddhism, so called,in fact, to such an extent that most Western scholars of Buddhism, whose principal source of information is the Pâli Tipitaka, are apt to take Buddhism for no more nor less than a system of ethical culture, which, therefore, cannot be called a religion in the same sense as is Christianity. While the Buddha apparently taught a well-balanced practice of sīla, dhyâna, and prajñā, his followers became one-sided as has been also generally the case with other religious systems, and emphasized one aspect at the expense of the others. The Mahâyâna in one sense can be said to have gone too far in its speculative flight, almost to the point of forgetting its ethical side, while the Hînayâna adherents have been so extremely conservative as to refuse to adapt themselves to an ever-changing environment. However this may be, a practical reformer of Buddhism today would do well if he endeavored to restore the three forms of discipline each in its proper bearings and thereby to manifest more perfectly the original spirit of the founder of Buddhism.

This one-sided tendency and the development of the two schools of Buddhism can also be seen in their respective history. In Ceylon, there has been practically but one school ever since the introduction of Buddhism there. The Sinhalese Buddhists have had one code of morality, the Vinaya, which is recorded in detail in their scriptures, and which, being so very explicit in its enunciation that even the uncultured could comprehend it readily, does not allow of very widely divergent interpretations. Accordingly there were few chances for dissension. The Vinaya as it is practised today in Ceylon has not changed even in its details since the day of its first promulgation there. In this respect we can say that Hînayâna Buddhism faithfully preserves the practical form of Buddhist moral culture as it developed during the time that elapsed after the decease of the Buddha down to the despatch of the Asoka missionaries to this district. I emphasize this latter point; for it is quite reasonable to suppose, and the supposition is justified by the records in our possession, that Buddhism began to grow in its diverse aspects soon after the death of the Buddha. History, however, shows us a very different state of affairs among the Mahâyâna followers. Into how many schools did the Mahâyâna divide itself! And how vehemently did each school defend its own doctrine against the others! While the Hinayâna Buddhists evidently kept quiet, the Mahâyâna spoke disparagingly of their rival believers, and this was altogether unworthy of their professed liberalism. In fact, it was through their self-conceit that they came to designate themselves as Mahâyâna Buddhists, followers of the Great Vehicle of Salvation, which had in view the discrediting of their conservative brethren in the faith. This spirit of self-exaltation was exhibited not only against the more orthodox ethical adherents of Buddhism, but also among themselves, as witness the famous founder of the Nichiren or the Pundarîka sect of Buddhism in Japan. His denunciation of the other Buddhist sects then existent in Japan was so strong and abusive that the authorities of the time thought it politic to get rid of him quietly, though I must add that his prosecution was not solely due to religious reasons.

This struggle and fighting, however, was quite in accord with the somewhat one-sided development of the Mahâyâna in the direction of speculative philosophy. Intellect is always inclined to dissent, to quarrel, to become self-conceited. The existence of ten or twelve sects of Japanese Buddhism was the inevitable result of the general movement of the speculative Mahâyâna. Of course, the other phases of Buddhism were not altogether forgotten; for the practice of dhyâna (meditation) is still in evidence,indeed there is one sect in Japan and China bearing its very name and exercising much influence, especially among the educated classes. However this may be, the fact remains that the Mahâyâna is a development of one side: the intellectual, speculative, philosophical side of Buddhism, while the Hînayâna preserves the ethical side of Buddhism comparatively in its pure and primitive form. To realize the perfect type of Buddhism, the threefold treasure, Triratna, must be equally developed; the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha must stand side by side imbued with the same spirit as when they were first established, whatever outward transformation they might have undergone according to varying circumstances. If the Hinayâna is said to have the Sangha in its model form, the Mahâyâna may be considered to have fully developed the Dharma, that is, the religio-philosophical significance of Buddhism; while both schools claim the Buddha as their common founder. The problem that faces faithful Buddhists at present is how best to effect a complete reconciliation of the moral discipline of Hînayâna with the speculations of Mahâyâna.

Now let us see how Mahâyâna Buddhism has developed its speculative course as compared to the Hînayâna, and I will first discuss the doctrine of anâtman, or non-ego. This is considered one of the most important and characteristic features of Buddhism, and justly so, because both the Hînayâna and the Mahâyâna uphold this as essential to their raison d'être. However, the Hinayâna school seems to have remained almost too faithful, as it were, to the doctrine; it has not gone beyond its negative statement; it has not carried out its logical consequence to the utmost limits. On the other hand the Mahâyâna has not only extended the theory from its subjective significance to the objective world, but has also boldly developed the positive conclusion implied in it. I do not mean that the Hînayâna has none of these tendencies as shown by the Mahâyâna; in fact, it seems to contain everything Mahâyânistic in germinal form. What most eminently distinguishes the Mahâyâna school in this connection is that it makes the most explicit, manifest, unequivocal, and fearless assertions on these religio-philosophical questions which deeply concern the human heart. With regard to the non-ego theory, the Mahāyāna followers assert that there is no àtman or ego-soul not only in its psychological signification, but in its objective sense. That is to say, they deny with the Hinayana followers that there is any such thing as an ego-entity, a concrete, simple, ultimate, and independent unit, behind our consciousness; but they go still further and declare that this objective world too has no âtman, no ego, no personal creator, no Ishvāra, who works and enjoys his absolute transcendence behind the eternal concatenation of cause and effect. This is technically known as a double negation of the subjective and the objective world, and it is on this account that the Mahāyāna school has often been called, though unjustifiably and quite incorrectly, nihilism or çûnyavâdin.

In this connection, it may be of interest to quote a Western Buddhist scholars opinion of Buddhism as typical of a prejudiced and uncritical judge. Eitel, a noted scholar of Chinese Buddhism, speaks thus of the Buddhist doctrine of Nirvana in his Three Lectures on Buddhism, which were delivered in Union Church, Hong Kong, 1870-71 : “Nirvāna is to them [the Buddhists] a state of which nothing could be said, to which no attributes can be given; it is altogether an abstract, devoid alike of all positive and all negative qualities. What shall we say of such empty, useless speculations, such sickly, dead words, whose fruitless sophistry offers to that natural yearning of the human heart after an eternal rest nothing better than a philosophical myth? It is but natural that a religion which started with moral and intellectual bankruptcy should end in moral and intellectual suicide” (p. 21, column 2).

As a matter of fact, the Mahāyāna followers do not regard negation as the ultimate goal of their speculations. With them negation is but a road to reach a higher form of affirmation; for they are aware of the fact that the human mind lives in affirmation and not in negation. Any critic of Mahâyâna philosophy, who with sympathetic insight penetrates deep enough into its heart, would readily find that behind a series of negations offered by the Mahâyâna thinkers there is really the assertion of a higher truth, which, owing to the limitations of the human intellect, cannot be presented by any other means than by negation. It is not due to sophistry nor mere abstraction that the Buddhists sometimes appear to delight in a negative statement of truth. They are most earnestly religious; they know that the deepest religious truth cannot be presented in a stereotyped philosophical formula. Only those who are short-sighted timidly stop at the negation and refuse to go beyond. If they thus misjudge the significance of Mahâyâna Buddhism, the fault is on their own side.

What, then, is that positive something offered by the Mahâyâna scholars as the logical conclusion of the theory of non-atman? It is generally designated as tatvâ or suchness. This is a philosophical term, and when its religious importance is emphasized it is called dharmakâya.^[1] In this conception of suchness, or dharmakâya, they find the highest possible affirmation which is reached after a series of negations and which unifies all forms of contradiction, psychological, ethical, and ontological. Ashvagosha, one of the greatest early Buddhist philosophers in India, says in his Awakening of Faith in the Mahâyâna:^[2] "Suchness is neither that which is existent, nor that which is nonexistent; it is neither that which is at once existent and non-existent, nor that which is not at once existent and non-existent; neither that which is one, nor that which is many; neither that which is at once one and many, nor that which is not at once one and many… . It is altogether beyond the conception of a finite mind, and the best way of defining it is to designate it suchness.”

Nâgârjuna, the founder of the Mâdhyamika school of Buddhism in India, who was as great as Ashvaghosha, declares in his Book of the Mean: “No birth, no death, no persistence, no changing, no oneness, no manyness, no coming, no going: this is the doctrine of the mean.” Again, “To think ‘it is’ is eternalism: to think ‘it is not’ is nihilism. To be or not to be, the wise cling to neither.”

All these statements have been construed as nihilistic, leading the mind nowhere but to absolute emptiness. But, as I have said before, such critics entirely ignore the fact that the human understanding, owing to its constitutional limitations, often finds it most expedient and indeed most logical to state a truth negatively, since a negation is really a higher form of affirmation, to be comprehended only through a process of intuition. The Mahâyâna thinkers have denied with their conservative fellow believers the existence of a concrete ego-soul; they have refused to accept the doctrine of a personal God; they are further reluctant to assert anything dogmatically; and the ultimate logical sequence of all these necessarily negative statements could not be anything else but the conception of suchness. Beyond this, one enters into mysticism; philosophy must bow her head modestly to religion at this gate of suchness; and religion must proceed by herself into an unknown wilderness, or to Eckhart's stille Düsterniss or Wüste, or to Boehme’s Abgrund; -- this is the realm of “Eternal Yea,” or, which is the same thing, the realm of “Eternal Nay.” The Mahâyâna philosophy at this point becomes mysticism. Intellectually, it has gone as far as it can. Vidya must now give way to dhyâna or prajñā; that is, intellection must become intuition, which is after all the ultimate form of all religious discipline. Mysticism is the life of religion. Without it religion loses her reason of existence; all her warm vitality departs, all her inexpressible charm vanishes, and there remains nothing but the crumbling bones and the cold ashes of death. I have said before that the Mahāyāna is highly speculative, but I must add that it is also most deeply and thoroughly religious.

It is apparent that with the conception of suchness, the Mahāyāna speculations have reached the highest peak, and upon this summit stands the religious edifice of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Superficially, the Mahāyāna seems widely different from the Hinayāna; but when its development is traced along the lines indicated above, one will readily comprehend the fact that in spite of the disparity existing between the two yânas of Buddhism, the Mahāyāna which started intellectually and culminated in mysticism, as every religion should, is really no more than a continuation of the Hînayâna.

When the conception of suchness is established, the raison d'être of the Mahâyâna becomes manifest. Buddhism is not an agnostic system of philosophy, nor is it an atheistic ethics. For in suchness, or dharmakāya, it finds the reason of existence, the real reality, the norm of morality, the source of love and goodness, the fountainhead of righteousness, the absolute intelligence, and the starting point of karma, the law of deeds. For suchness, according to Mahāyāna thinkers, is not merely a state of being, but it is energy, intelligence, and love. But as suchness begins to assume these attributes, it ceases to be transcendental suchness, it is now conditional suchness. So long as it remains absolutely transcendental, in which neither negation nor affirmation is possible, it is beyond the comprehension of the human understanding; suchness can not very well become the object of our religious consciousness. But there is the awakening of the will in suchness, and with this awakening we have conditional and self-limiting suchness in place of the absolute unknowable. As to the reason and manner of this process the human mind has to confess a profound and eternal ignorance. It is in this transformation of suchness that the Mahâyâna system perceives the religious significance of dharmakâya.

The dharmakâya is now conceived by the human heart as love and wisdom, and its eternal prayer is heard to be the deliverance of the ignorant from their self-created evil karma which haunts them as an eternal curse. The process of deliverance is to awaken in the mind of the ignorant the samyaksambodhi, the most perfect wisdom, which is a reflection in sentient beings of the dharmakâya. This wisdom, this bodhi, is generally found asleep in the benighted, because a sort of spiritual slumber results from the narcotic influence of the evil karma, which has been and is being committed through the non-realization of the presence of the dharmakâya. Deliverance or enlightenment consists, therefore, in making every sentient being open his spiritual eye to this fact. It is not his ego-soul that makes him think, feel, desire, or aspire, but the dharmakâya itself in the form of bodhichitta or wisdom heart which constitutes his ethical and religious being. If we abandon the thought of egoism and return to the universal source of love and wisdom, we are released from the bond of evil karma, and we are enlightened as to the reason of existence; in short, we are Buddhas.

In trying to make a sentient being realize the presence in himself of the bodhichitta, the dharmakâya can be said to be working for its own sake, that is, to awake from the spell of ignorance. Here is involved a great philosophical and religious problem. In the beginning, the dharmakâya negated itself by its own affirmation, and it is now working to release itself from the negation through which this world of particulars was created. This is, as it seems to our limited intellect, an eternal process of suchness: from affirmation to negation and from negation to affirmation. To this mystery of mysteries, however, we fail to apply our rules of syllogism; we have simply to state the fact that, though it seems apparently contradictory, our religious consciousness finds in this mystery something unspeakably fascinating and indeed the justification of its eternal yearnings.

As a consequence of the conception of dharmakâya as eternal motherhood and as the source of infinite love, the doctrine of karma had somehow to modify its irrefragable severity. And here we observe another phase of differentiation as effected by the Mahâyâna Buddhists from the doctrine commonly held by their ethical, monastic Hinayâna brethren. I do not maintain that the doctrine of karma is denied by the Mahâyâna followers. Far from it. They adhere to the doctrine as firmly as the Hinayâna philosophers; they have taken away from it only its crushing effects upon the sinful, who are always too weak and too timid to bear the curse of all their former evil deeds. Or, in other words, the Mahâyâna Buddhists offer a doctrine complementary to that of karma in order to give a more satisfying and humane solution to our inmost religious needs. The Mahâyâna doctrine of parinâmanâ, therefore, must go side by side with that of karma; for through this harmonious coworking of the two, the true spirit of Buddhism will be more effectively realized.

The doctrine of parinâmanâ is essentially that of vicarious sacrifice. Apparently, it contradicts the continuity of the action of karma; but in Mahâyâna Buddhism karma is conceived in its cosmic rather than in its individualistic aspect, which makes it possible to reconcile the two notions, karma and parinâmanâ. I will try to make this clear.

First, what does parinâmanâ mean? It means “to bend,” “to turn about,” or “to deliver,”, or “to transfer,” or “to renounce,” for which the early Chinese Buddhists have hui hsiang, which means “to revolve and be directed towards,” that is to say, “to turn a thing about and hand it over to another.” The doctrine of parinâmanâ, then, is to turn one’s merits over to another, to renounce oneself for others, to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others, to atone for others' evil karma by ones own good deeds, to substitute oneself for another who according to the law of karma ought to suffer himself. Or, to use Christian terminology, the doctrine of parinâmanâ is in its principle that of vicarious sacrifice; with this difference, however, that while in Christianity vicarious sacrifice means the death of Christ on the cross for the sins of all mankind, the Mahâyâna philosophy does not confine the principle of vicarious sacrifice to a solitary historical incident. Christianity is built upon the history of a person, whatever its intrinsic authenticity may be, and not directly upon the facts of our religious consciousness and intellectual necessity. Therefore, it is unable to uphold the universal application of the principle of vicarious sacrifice, not to say its inability to appreciate the importance of the principle of karma. This is where Christianity derives its strength, the strength of concreteness and objectivity, as compared to Mahâyâna Buddhism; but here lies also its weakness, at least so it would seem to Buddhist thinkers.

The notion of parinâmanâ is based upon the following truths: The universe, according to the Mahâyâna, is a grand spiritual system composed of moral beings, who are so many fragmentary reflexes of the dharmakâya. The system is so closely knitted together that when any part of it or any unit composing it is affected in one way or another, good or bad, all the other parts or units must be drawn into the general commotion that would follow, and will share the common fate. This subtle spiritual system of which all sentient beings are parts or units, is like a vast ocean in which the eternal moonlight of dharmakâya is reflected. Even a faint wavelet which is noticed in one part of the water is sure to spread all over its surface sooner or later according to the resistance of the molecules, and thus finally to disturb the serenity of the lunar image in it. Likewise, with every deed, good or bad, committed by any sentient unit of this spiritual organization, the dharmakâya rejoices or is grieved. When it is grieved, it wills to counteract the evil with goodness; when it rejoices, it knows that so far the cause of goodness has been advanced. Individual karma, therefore, is not after all individual; it is most intimately connected with the whole. It is not an isolated phenomenon originating from the individual and returning to the same agent. It is no mere abstraction when I say that the lifting of my arm or the moving of my leg is not an accidental, indifferent act, but directly related to the ultimate cause of the universe.

This assertion appears with an immeasurably greater emphasis with reference to an act which has a moral bearing. “If,” we may ask, “in our spiritual plane of existence things are so intimately related to one another, why could we not make the merit of our own deeds compensate or destroy the effect of an evil karma created by an ignorant mind? Why could we suffer ourselves for the sake of others and lighten even to the smallest degree the burden of evil karma under which weak, ignorant ones are groaning, though they have nobody else to blame for their own wretchedness?” These questions are answered affirmatively by the Mahâyâna Buddhists. For they say: “It is possible for us to dedicate our own good karma to the cause of universal goodness, and to suppress or crush or to make quite inefficacious the evil karma perpetrated by the ignorant. It is possible for us to substitute ourselves for others and to bear their burden upon our own shoulders in order to save them from their self-created curse.” The result of this conviction is the doctrine of parinâmanâ.

In this, however, it is seen that quite in accordance with the cosmic conception of dharmakâya, the Mahâyâna philosophers emphasize the universal or supra-individual significance of karma more than its solitary, individual character. In the Hînayâna system, the conception of karma is individualistic, pure and simple; there is no escape whatever from the consequence of ones own evil or good deeds, for it follows one even after death which is merely another form of birth. The Mahâyâna Buddhists believe in this as far as the law of causation is concerned; but they go a step further, and assert that karma also has its cosmic or supra-individual aspect, which must be taken into consideration, when we want to realize fully the meaning of our spiritual existence. Though a man has to reap what he has sown and there is no escape possible from the consequence of his evil deeds, the Mahâyâna thinkers would say: A Bodhisattva wishes from the fulness of his heart to turn over whatever merit he can have from his acts of goodness to the general welfare of his spiritual kingdom, and to bear upon himself whatever burden of evil is going to befall his ignorant, self-destroying fellow-beings. The good he does is not necessarily for his own benefit. In whatever deed he performs, he does not forget its universal character; above all, he desires to be of service in any capacity whatever to the whole spiritual organization, of which he is a unit.

Therefore, the doctrine of parinâmanâ is no more than that of vicarious sacrifice. It is in point of fact vicarious sacrifice in that a Bodhisattva wishes to bear the burden of evil for the real offenders and to save them from suffering. But when he works to add to the general “stock of goodness” and to nourish the “root of merit” this world, he is doing more than mere substituting; he is doing something positive. Parinâmanâ is vicarious sacrifice, self-renunciation, the transference of merit, the promotion of universal goodness, the annihilation of me and thee, the recognition of the oneness of all things, and the complete satisfaction of our inmost religious yearnings.

The doctrine of karma is terrible, the doctrine of parinâmanâ is humane: karma is the law of nature, inflexible and irreconcilable; parinâmanâ is the heart of a religious being, filled with tears: the one is rigidly masculine and knows no mercy whatever; the other is most tenderly feminine, always ready to weep and help: the one is justice incarnate; the other is absolute compassion : the one is the god of thunder and lightning, who crushes everything that dares resist him; the other is a gentle spring shower, warm, soft, and relaxing, and helping life to grow: we bow before the one in awe and reverence; we embrace the other as if finding again our lost mother; we need the one, for we must be responsible to the dharmakâya for our thoughts, feelings, and deeds; but we cannot let the other go as we need compassion, tolerance, humaneness, and lovingkindness. Mahâyâna Buddhism can thus be said to have a singularly softening effect on the conception of karma. Karma cannot be denied, it is the law; but the human heart is tender and loving. It cannot remain calm and unconcerned at the sight of suffering, however this might have been brought about. It knows that all things ultimately come from the same source. When others suffer I suffer too; why then should not self-renunciation somehow moderate the austerity of karma? This is the position taken by the Mahâyâna Buddhists in regard to the doctrine of karma.

With the moderation of the principle of karma, there took place another change in the Mahâyâna concerning the ideal man, that is, as to what constitutes the true ideal Buddhist, or what kind of being he must be who really embodies all the noble thoughts and enlightened sentiments of Mahâyâna Buddhism. Arhatship was not satisfactory in this respect, and ceased to be the goal of religious discipline for the followers of the Mahâyâna. They considered the Arhat as not fully realizing all the inmost aspirations of religious consciousness; for is he not a Buddhist who seeks only his own deliverance from the whirlpool of birth and death, in which all beings are struggling and being drowned? So long as karma was understood in its individualistic aspect, Arhatship was quite the right thing for Buddhists to aspire after; but karma could be interpreted in another and a wider sense, which made the doctrine of parinâmanâ possible, and the Mâhayâna Buddhists thought that this was more in accord with the deepest yearnings of a religious being who wants to save not only himself but the entire world as well. Therefore, the speculative Buddhists came to establish the ideal of Bodhisattvahood in place of Arhatship, and for this reason the Mahâyâna is often designated as Bodhisatvayâna in contradistinction to Shrâvakayâna and Pratyekabuddhayâna. (Yâna means a vehicle on which sentient beings are carried from this shore of ignorance to the other shore of enlightenment and eternal happiness.)

The development of this ideal of Bodhisattvahood was quite natural with the Mahâyâna Buddhists. Grant that the Hînayâna followers most faithfully adhered to the moral, monastic, and disciplinary life of primitive Buddhism, and that the Mahâyânists in the meantime were bent on the unfolding of the religio-philosophical significance of the teachings of the Buddha, and it will be seen that the further they advanced the wider grew their separation from each other. To the moralists, such a bold flight of imagination as conceived by the Mahâyâna was a very difficult thing to realize. Moral responsibility implies a strict observance of the law of karma; what is done cannot be undone. Good or bad, one has to suffer its consequence; for nobody can interfere with it. Arhatship alone, therefore, could be made the goal of those self-disciplining moralists. With the Mahâyâna Buddhists, however, it was different. They came to look at the import of our moral action more from the point of its cosmic relations, or from that of the most intimate interdependence that obtains among all sentient beings in their moral, intellectual, and spiritual activities. With this change of the point of view, they could not but come to the conception of a Bodhisattva whose religion was the realization of the doctrine of parimânaná.

In point of fact, there are not two Buddhisms. The Mahâyâna and the Hînayâna are one; the same spirit of the founder of Buddhism breathes through both. Only each has developed in its own way, according to the different surroundings in which it has thrived and grown-understanding by surroundings all those various factors of life that make up the peculiarities of an individual or a nation. Lack of communication has hitherto prevented the bringing together of Buddhists and the effecting of a complete understanding of each other. But the time is coming nearer when each will fully realize and candidly admit its own shortcomings, though not oblivious of its advantages, and earnestly desire to cooperate with the other in order to bring about a perfect assimilation into one uniform system of Buddhist thought and Buddhist practice, and to contribute to the promotion of peace and goodwill towards all beings, regardless of racial or national differences.

Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki

University of Tokyo.

1. The term dharmakâ is very difficult to define. Neither "essence body," "law-body," nor "being-system" exactly expresses its idea. "Dharma" is a very comprehensive term in Buddhist philosophy, and in this case it means all this: essence, being, law, and doctrine. In short, let use understand "Dharmakâya" here as the source, the ultimate reality, from which is derived the reason of existence, morality, and religion.
2. Translated to English by the present author from the Chinese Translations, 1900. A new revised edition will be issued in the near future.