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The Development and Spread of Mahayana Buddhism

Mahayana, within a few hundred years of its inception, split into two main schools. The first, Madhyamika, is grounded in the work of the great Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 150–250) who elaborated the doctrine of sunyata, the non-substantiality or “emptiness” of all phenomena. (This influential concept is discussed further in the section “Nichiren and the Core of Mahayana Doctrine.”) The second school, Yogachara or Consciousness-Only school was based on yogic practice. For them, all phenomena arise from the vijnana, or consciousness, and the basis of all functions of consciousness is the alaya-consciousness. [6]

Both schools spread into China, where there is a reliable record of a practicing Buddhist emperor by around 250 C.E. T’ien-tai, a major school within the Mahayana tradition, was founded in China by Chih-i (538–597). This school emphasized doctrinal studies amd meditative practices based on the Lotus Sutra. It also taught the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, the unification of the three truths and the six stages of practice. After traveling to China for further studies, Saicho (767–822), also known as the Great Teacher Dengyo, returned to Japan in 805 and established what later became known as the Tendai sect.

According to Chih-i’s interpretation, the Lotus Sutra proclaims the Buddha nature to be inherent in all human beings. This provided the theoretical basis for Nichiren’s 13th-century asertion that all people can attain Buddhahood as they are and within the context of the phenomenal world. He taught that everyone has the potential to attain Buddhahood “in this lifetime” and “in one’s present form” without going through countless lifetimes of Buddhist austerities. Nichiren was among the first to embrace the idea that Buddhahood is a real, rather than theoretical, possibility for all human beings and, within the context of feudal Japan, asserted the revolutionary view of the equality of men and women. [7]