A Study on the Origin of Mahāyāna Buddhism

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A Study on the Origin of Mahāyāna Buddhism

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Descriptionངོ་སྤྲོད།

This article presents a critical examination of Hirakawa Akira's influential theory that Mahāyāna Buddhism originated among lay Buddhist practitioners engaged in stūpa worship, rather than from ordained monastic communities. Hirakawa's 1968 work Shoki Daijō Bukkyō no Kenkyū (A Study of Early Mahāyāna Buddhism) argued that early Mahāyāna bodhisattvas were lay people who adopted the Ten Good Precepts (daśakuśalakarmapatha) instead of the prātimokṣa monastic rules, that Mahāyāna texts criticized sectarian bhikṣus, that bodhisattvas lived in stūpas rather than monasteries, and that doctrinal differences prevented ordained and Mahāyāna practitioners from cohabiting.

Through detailed textual analysis, this study identifies fundamental logical contradictions in Hirakawa's argument, particularly his assumption that śrāvakas of the Śrāvakayāna were synonymous with sectarian bhikṣus. The author demonstrates that Hirakawa's evidence can equally support an alternative hypothesis: that Mahāyāna Buddhism emerged from within monastic communities, with both ordained bhikṣus and lay supporters contributing to its development. The study challenges Hirakawa's interpretation of key texts and argues for the possibility that ordained bodhisattvas and Śrāvakayāna practitioners coexisted within sectarian communities during the formative period of Mahāyāna Buddhism.

Citation

Shizuka, Sasaki. "A Study on the Origin of Mahāyāna Buddhism." The Eastern Buddhist 30, no. 1 (1997): 79–113. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44362214.

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Mahāyāna - Mahāyāna, or the Great Vehicle, refers to the system of Buddhist thought and practice which developed around the beginning of the Common Era, focusing on the pursuit of the state of full enlightenment of the Buddha through the realization of the wisdom of emptiness and the cultivation of compassion. Skt महायान  Tib ཐེག་པ་ཆེན་པོ།  Ch 大乘  

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Bodhisattva - A person who seeks enlightenment for the sake of others. In Mahāyāna Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a compassionate being who is training on the path to buddhahood and aspires to eliminate the suffering of all beings and take all sentient beings to the state of enlightenment. The Mahāyāna sūtras including those on buddha-nature generally have bodhisattvas as the main audience or interlocutors for the Buddha's discourses. Skt बोधिसत्त्व  Tib བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་དཔའ།  Ch 菩薩  

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Śrāvaka - The disciples of the Buddha who aspire to attain individual liberation or nirvāṇa. The final goal of the Hearers is to become an arhat, a state in which one has totally eliminated the inner problems of attachment, hatred and ignorance, the main causes for rebirth in this cycle of existence. There are four stages of a śrāvaka path including eight phases. Skt श्रावक  Tib ཉན་ཐོས།  Ch 聲聞  

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