Mahayana

Emergence

Mahayana appears in the surviving record around the first century BCE to the first century CE, with the Prajnaparamita literature among the earliest texts. It was not a schism in the Vinaya sense: Mahayana monks lived in the same monasteries under the same discipline as others, and Chinese pilgrims to India describe both in the same establishments.

It is better understood as a movement of texts and aspiration than as an institutional break — which is why its origins are hard to locate archaeologically, and why the question of where and among whom it began remains open.

Central positions

The distinguishing commitment is the bodhisattva ideal: rather than seeking one's own liberation as an arahant, the practitioner vows to attain full buddhahood in order to liberate all beings, however long that takes. Compassion is accordingly given the weight that wisdom alone carries in earlier formulations.

Doctrinally, the emphasis falls on emptiness — that phenomena lack independent existence — developed by Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka, and on the analysis of consciousness developed by Asanga and Vasubandhu in Yogacara. Buddhahood is reconceived: the Buddha is not simply a teacher who lived and died but is described through the doctrine of three bodies, and celestial buddhas and bodhisattvas such as Amitabha and Avalokiteshvara become objects of devotion.

Texts

Mahayana produced a very large literature of sutras presented as the word of the Buddha — the Prajnaparamita, Lotus, Vimalakirti, Avatamsaka, Lankavatara and many others. The tradition explains their late appearance by holding that they were taught to particular audiences, preserved elsewhere, or suited to capacities that had to develop. Historians treat them as later compositions, which does not settle their doctrinal standing within the tradition.

Spread

Mahayana travelled the Central Asian routes to China, and from there to Korea, Japan and Vietnam, and separately to Tibet, where it developed with Vajrayana. In India itself it flourished at Nalanda and the other monastic universities until the destruction of those institutions.