Chapter 89. The Great Vehicle and the Diamond Vehicle: Mahayana, Vajrayana, Tibet and the Decline of Indian Buddhism

After the Ashokan centuries, Buddhism changed in two linked directions. In doctrine it grew into the Mahāyāna, the “Great Vehicle”, which taught the bodhisattva ideal, the Pure Lands, the philosophy of emptiness and the Yogācāra analysis of a “store consciousness”. It then grew into the tantric Vajrayāna, the “Diamond Vehicle”. In geography it moved out of India just as it was fading there, and it found in Tibet a second homeland, where it became the basis of a theocratic state. This chapter follows that course through primary texts in the library (84000, Padmasambhava, Shantideva) and through interpreters who range from Tibetan lamas and Western Buddhologists to a Romanian university course, a mountaineer’s memoir, a popular magic manual and a role-playing sourcebook. Each is identified for what it is.

Grace against self-effort: the Mahayana turn

The library’s reference works mark the split in terms of soteriology. The Zondervan Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cults, Sects, and World Religions states that “Mahayana and Theravada Buddhists differ in their ideas of salvation and the afterlife” [Mather, Nichols & Schmidt, Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cults, Sects, and World Religions, #65667, “Buddhism”]. Van Voorst describes what changed in devotional Mahayana: “the older idea of self-redemption characteristic of Theravada Buddhism gave way to redemption through the grace of this Buddha” [Van Voorst, Anthology of World Scriptures, #63227, Buddhism chapter]. Sorajjakool explains the name. Those “who believed that enlightenment was for all called themselves Mahayana (the great vehicle)”. He calls their ideal the bodhisattva who strives for enlightenment “to benefit all beings”, and he lists Zen, Pure Land and Tantric Buddhism among its East Asian schools [Sorajjakool, World Religions for Healthcare Professionals, #35015, “Buddhism: Theravada and Mahayana Traditions”].

The Pure Land of Sukhāvatī

The clearest scriptural expression of salvation by grace in the library is the shorter Sukhāvatīvyūha, translated by 84000 from the Tibetan Kangyur (Toh 115). Its summary gives the setting: “In the Jeta Grove of Śrāvastī, Buddha Śākyamuni, surrounded by a large audience, presents to his disciple Śāriputra a detailed description of the realm of Sukhāvatī, a delightful, enlightened abode, free of suffering.” The presiding buddha is “addressed as Amitāyus (Limitless Life) as well as Amitābha (Limitless Light)”. The text promises that “virtuous people who focus single-mindedly on Buddha Amitābha will obtain a rebirth in Sukhāvatī in their next life”. To support this, the Buddha cites the buddhas of the six directions. The buddhas of the east, for example, “who are as numerous as the sands of the river Ganges, pervade their own buddha realms” with their praise of this teaching [84000, The Display of the Pure Land of Sukhāvatī, #54211, Summary and Translation]. The translators’ introduction dates the sūtra’s written form to the first century CE, “possibly in what was then Northwest India and is now Pakistan” [84000, #54211, Introduction].

Mind-only and the bodhisattva path

The Yogācāra or “Mind Only” school gave Mahayana its psychology. The glossary to Advice from the Lotus-Born defines it as the school “propagated by the great master Asanga”, whose “main premise is that all phenomena are only mind, i.e. mental perceptions that appear within the all-ground consciousness due to habitual tendencies” [Advice from the Lotus-Born, #53968, Glossary, “Mind Only School”]. Alexander Berzin follows the later Tibetan development of the ālaya, the “all-encompassing foundation”. In the Sakya view, “clear-light mental activity” gives rise “to only pure appearances”, and the habits of unawareness imputed on it account for impure ones. The Nyingma tradition distinguishes “basis rigpa” as “the primordial deepest alaya” from “the alaya for constant habits” [Berzin, Alaya and Impure Appearance-Making, #363675].

The ethical side of the Great Vehicle is set out in Shantideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, a work of the Nalanda monastic university. In his commentary, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche calls it “the most brilliant commentary on how to engage on the Mahayana path to come out of Nalanda”. He stresses that Shantideva claims nothing new: what he writes is “something which is in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha” [Thrangu Rinpoche, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, #39641]. Khentrul Rinpoche, writing from the Jonang tradition, records how the fourteenth-century master Dolpopa Sherab Gyaltsen “unified the sutra and tantra teachings” into the “Great Madhyamaka” view. This was the Jonang zhentong reading of emptiness, which later made the school doctrinally suspect to its rivals [Khentrul Jamphal Lodro Rinpoche, Paths of Pure Vision, #65195, Jonang chapter].

The Diamond Vehicle: tantra in Buddhism

Berzin defines tantra as “an everlasting stream of continuity” on three levels: the practitioner’s mind-stream with its Buddha-nature, the “pathway” practice with Buddha-figures (yidam), and the resultant “enlightening corpuses” of a Buddha. The New Translation schools count four classes of tantra, from kriya to anuttarayoga; the Nyingma count six, culminating in dzogchen. Tantra requires preliminaries, including “a hundred thousand repetitions” of prostrations, the hundred-syllable Vajrasattva mantra, mandala offerings and guru-yoga, and it “is a method for combining and simultaneously practicing” all the sutra practices. Berzin warns that wrathful protectors are “like our fierce guard dogs. Unless we have the strength to control them … they may turn against us” [Berzin, Basic Features of Tantra, #363664].

In the terma (revealed “treasure”) literature, Padmasambhava teaches guru devotion as absolute: “one’s master is more important / Than even the thousand buddhas of this aeon … The master is the buddha, the master is the Dharma, / In the same way the master is also the sangha” [Advice from the Lotus-Born, #53968]. These dialogues are framed as questions from Yeshe Tsogyal, who, the editors note, “at first … was one of King Trisong Deutsen’s queens but later was given to Padmasambhava to be his spiritual consort” [#53968, Glossary]. The tantric text best known in the West, the Bardo Thödol (Tibetan Book of the Dead), appears in the Romanian holdings mostly through secondary authors. Eugen Celan describes it as containing “specific instructions addressed to the dying”, and Amit Goswami’s Fizica sufletului treats it as a map of post-mortem states of being [Celan, Viața după pragul morții, #13294; Goswami, Fizica sufletului, #71815].

Mark Ferrara makes an unconventional claim in his spiritual history of cannabis. He argues that cannabis entered Tibetan Vajrayāna “primarily through the Bön tradition”. In his account the porous boundary between spirit and living worlds, the weight placed on ritual propitiation, the “weaving together” of Vedānta, Shaivism and Bön, and the plant’s availability across the Tibeto-Himalayan region led to its “incorporation into tantric rituals and practices” [Ferrara, Sacred Bliss, #66945, “Tibetan Vajrayāna and Cannabis Use”]. This is Ferrara’s thesis. The Tibetan sources used in this chapter do not discuss it.

Tibet: from royal faith to theocracy

The popular occultist Baal Kadmon gives the standard outline. Under “the first King of Tibet, Songsen Gampo (600–650 AD), Buddhism started to trickle in from India”. Only “during the reign of king Trison Detsen (755–797 AD) … Buddhism became the official state religion”. Then “the very last of the anti-Buddhist kings reigned from 838 to 842”, was “assassinated”, and Tibet entered “a protracted period of darkness … that lasted almost 200 years” [Kadmon, Tibetan Mantra Magick, #366939, “Historical Development of Tibetan Buddhism”].

The UNESCO course describes the Gelug (“Yellow Hat”) school as founded by Tsong-kha-pa, whose dates the course prints as 1327–1419. It calls him “a specialist in Madhyamika Buddhism”. He “reforms Tibetan Buddhism by purifying it of the superstitious practices that prevailed at that time”. The course says of the result: “Tibetan Buddhism or lamaism … represents one of the strangest Buddhist schools, in which the most extreme manifestations of human nature join hands. Here we find, alongside the noble precepts of Buddhism, magical and sorcerous practices in which black magic occupies a prominent place.” Its “most important personalities … are the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama”: “the Dalai Lama is the embodiment of Avalokitesvara (Chenresi in Tibetan), and the Panchen Lama of Amitabha (Opame in Tibetan)” [UNESCO course, Istoria Religiilor pentru master, #81379].

The reincarnation principle behind this succession is the tulku. Wikipedia notes that the Old Tibetan verb sprul originally described “the emperor taking a human form on earth”. This makes it “a local religious idea alien to Indian Buddhism” [Wikipedia: Tulku]. The title “Dalai” was Mongolian. Altan Khan gave it to Sonam Gyatso in 1577–78, and the rival Tsang kings saw the move as “a politico-religious alliance between the Gelugpa and a foreign power”. The Fifth Dalai Lama (1617–1682) “became the first Dalai Lama to hold both Tibet’s political and spiritual leadership roles”. He unified Tibet “under the Ganden Phodrang, after Gushri Khan’s successful military interventions”, and he built the Potala [Wikipedia: 5th Dalai Lama]. Khentrul Rinpoche states the cost to the minority schools plainly: “During the Fifth Dalai Lama, both the Jonang and Kagyu traditions were severely suppressed” [Khentrul, Paths of Pure Vision, #65195].

Brian St. Claire-King’s Tibet: The Role Playing Game is a game sourcebook, not historiography, but its background chapter is frank. “Tibet is not a perfect place. The Chinese have many criticisms of Tibet, and most of them are not completely false … There are government officials who are corrupt. There are aristocrats who are cruel to the farmers that live on their lands.” On rivalry between the lamas it says: “The most famous is the struggle between Lhasa and Shigatse. The Panchen Lama … was in a struggle for power with the Dalai Lama and was forced to flee” [St. Claire-King, Tibet: The Role Playing Game, #54867].

Occupation, exile and sectarian survival

Heinrich Harrer, tutor to the young Fourteenth Dalai Lama, offers personal testimony. “From many discussions with him I know that the Dalai Lama was perfectly aware that his country had remained behind, and in 1954 drew up a rational plan of reforms aimed at the good of the people.” Harrer continues: “Although this contradicts all human logic, the Chinese prevented the Tibetans from applying their own reforms. They devastated monasteries” [Harrer, Întoarcerea în Tibet, #14627].

The Jonang shows how sectarian status carried over into exile. Khentrul writes that “in 1998 a few Jonang monks escaped Tibet into India, and seeing the importance of sustaining the Jonang tradition, His Holiness the Dalai Lama privately gifted” them support. This came three centuries after the Fifth Dalai Lama’s suppression of the same school [Khentrul, Paths of Pure Vision, #65195].

Decline in India and return

Wikipedia summarises the scholarly consensus. Buddhism “gradually dwindled” in India from the fourth to sixth centuries and “was largely ousted by Hinduism approximately by the 12th century”. The causes were lack of rural appeal, Turkic invasions and loss of patronage. Mahayana “adopted more ritualistic practices” until the line between it and Hinduism blurred [Wikipedia: Decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent]. The modern return came through B. R. Ambedkar. Ambedkar was a Dalit leader and drafting chairman of the Indian Constitution. At a conference on 13 October 1956 he announced his rejection of Hinduism, and he adopted Buddhism about six weeks before his death. His school is Navayāna, the “New Vehicle”. Mainstream Buddhists regard it as “a radical and political re-interpretation of Buddhism”, and nearly 90 per cent of its adherents live in Maharashtra [Wikipedia: Navayana] (see Ch. 85).

Key points

• The library’s reference works divide Theravada from Mahayana on salvation. Van Voorst describes Theravada self-redemption giving way to “redemption through the grace” of a Buddha [#63227; #65667].
• The 84000 Sukhāvatī sūtra, set in the Jeta Grove with Śāriputra, promises rebirth in Amitābha’s land to the single-minded, a promise attested by buddhas “as numerous as the sands of the river Ganges” [#54211].
• Yogācāra “mind-only” analysis of the ālaya (Berzin) and Shantideva’s bodhisattva path (Thrangu) form the doctrinal core of the Great Vehicle [#363675; #39641].
• Vajrayāna adds deity yoga, mantra, vast preliminaries and absolute guru devotion (Berzin; Padmasambhava terma). Ferrara claims a cannabis strand entered it via Bön [#363664; #53968; #66945].
• Kadmon dates Buddhism’s arrival under Songtsen Gampo and its state status under Trisong Detsen. The Fifth Dalai Lama fused spiritual and temporal rule and suppressed the Jonang and Kagyu [#366939; Wikipedia: 5th Dalai Lama; #65195].
• The UNESCO course calls lamaism “one of the strangest Buddhist schools”, with black magic beside noble precepts, and the Dalai and Panchen Lamas incarnations of Avalokiteśvara and Amitābha [#81379].
• Harrer testifies that the Chinese blocked the Dalai Lama’s 1954 reform plan and devastated monasteries. A game sourcebook concedes corruption and the Lhasa–Shigatse power struggle [#14627; #54867].
• Buddhism was largely gone from India by the twelfth century and returned politically in 1956 with Ambedkar’s Navayāna [Wikipedia: Decline of Buddhism…; Wikipedia: Navayana].