Buddhism's Original Texts 3: Mahayana Thought & Emptiness

Thank you for visiting. This article is the third installment in a series explaining the original texts of Buddhism.

Last time (Article 2), I explained the making of the Tripitaka and how Buddhism divided into Theravada and Mahayana. This time, I look at the thought of “Mahayana Buddhism” itself, the foundation of Japanese Buddhism. The path of the bodhisattva who saves all people, Nagarjuna’s emptiness (Madhyamaka), and the consciousness-only of Asanga and Vasubandhu — this is the installment that becomes the philosophical foundation for reading out the Heart Sutra and Lotus Sutra (explained in Article 4).

For an overview map of Buddhism’s original texts as a whole, please see this summary article.

Buddhism's Original Texts: The Tripitaka and the Major Sutrasen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-buddhism/

Let me first put the whole picture of the Mahayana thought dealt with in this article into a diagram.

What Is Mahayana Buddhism — the Path of the “Bodhisattva” Who Saves All

The greatest feature of “Mahayana Buddhism,” which arose around the turn of the era, lies in what it aims at.

Against the conventional Buddhism, which renounces the world and aims at one’s own enlightenment, Mahayana Buddhism preached, “Not being satisfied with one person’s enlightenment, it aims at saving all living things (all sentient beings).” The being who embodies this ideal is the “bodhisattva.”

The bodhisattva originally means “one who seeks enlightenment.” In Mahayana Buddhism, it is a being who, even having gained the power to become a buddha, dares to remain in this world and keep working to save suffering people. Anyone, even one who is not a renunciant, can walk the path of salvation as a bodhisattva — this open view of salvation made Mahayana Buddhism widely permeate the common people.

The virtues a bodhisattva should practice are the “six perfections.” “Perfection” means “reaching the far shore of enlightenment.”

Further, a bodhisattva, on beginning to walk, makes four vows called the “four great vows.” Beginning with “sentient beings are boundless; I vow to save them,” they are grand vows — to cut off boundless delusion, to learn boundless teaching, and to accomplish unsurpassed enlightenment. Also, in a bodhisattva’s progress, stages called the “ten stages (bhumi)” are preached, and the long, long path of practice, from the first stage of joy to the stage of the dharma cloud, was systematized. To save all beings even if it takes a dizzyingly long time — this thoroughgoing spirit of altruism is the very heart of Mahayana.

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“Mahayana” and “Hinayana” — the Claim Put into the Names

In the first place, “Mahayana” means “the great vehicle.” This was a name with a strong claim put into it, raised by the side of the new movement. “The conventional Buddhism, which aims only at one person’s liberation, is a small vehicle (Hinayana) that few can ride. Our teaching is a great vehicle that carries all sentient beings to the far shore of enlightenment.”

However, since “Hinayana (small vehicle)” is a derogatory name from the Mahayana side, it is not used today, and the southern Buddhism that follows that stream is generally called “Theravada Buddhism.”

When and how Mahayana Buddhism arose is in fact not clear. Various things have been argued — a theory that it arose around the turn of the era, apart from the conventional renunciant order, from a movement of lay people who venerated the stupas holding the Buddha’s relics, and a theory that it developed in thought from within sectarian Buddhism. In any case, from within this movement, new bodies of scriptures of an unprecedentedly grand scale — the “Prajnaparamita Sutra,” “Lotus Sutra,” “Avatamsaka Sutra,” and others — were produced one after another. These are not the Buddha’s direct words, but were revered as “a deeper unfolding of the Buddha’s true intent.”

Emptiness — the Core of Mahayana Thought

The most important thought running through Mahayana Buddhism is “emptiness.” This is an idea pushing further the “dependent origination” and “non-self” seen so far.

All things merely arise from the interrelation of causes and conditions (dependent origination), and do not have a fixed substance (self-nature) in themselves. This “having no substance” is called “emptiness.”

What I want to note is that emptiness does not mean “there is nothing (nihilism).” Things certainly appear. But it is a way of seeing — that they exist only “provisionally,” shifting and interrelating, with no eternal, unchanging core. The one who theoretically completed this thought of emptiness was “Nagarjuna” (around the 2nd–3rd century), who opened the “Madhyamaka school” and gave a tremendous influence on all of later Mahayana Buddhism. His standpoint, rejecting every extreme view and standing on emptiness, was so revered that he was later looked up to as the “founder of the eight schools (the root of every sect).”

Nagarjuna’s “Middle Treatise” — the Eight Negations and the Two Truths

Nagarjuna’s main work is the original text that established the thought of emptiness through logic, the “Middle Treatise.” The verse of homage placed at its opening raises the famous “eight negations.”

Neither arising nor ceasing, neither permanent nor cut off, neither identical nor different, neither coming nor going.

The eight frameworks by which we grasp the world — arising, ceasing, permanence, cessation, identity, difference, coming, going — are all negated with “neither.” It is a declaration that, however much one tries to fix things with concepts, the true way of being of things slips out of that frame. This standpoint, apart from the two extremes, is the very “middle way,” and became the origin of the school’s name “Madhyamaka (middle view).”

Another important thing is the idea of the “two truths” = two truths. The everyday truth spoken in words and common sense (conventional truth), and the ultimate truth beyond words (ultimate truth). Nagarjuna preached, “Without the words of the conventional, the ultimate truth cannot be shown. Without the ultimate truth, nirvana cannot be gained,” and, rather than denying the everyday world, showed the path to truth by using its “provisional way of being” as it is. The reason “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” (the Heart Sutra of Article 4) affirms phenomena while being empty is supported by this logic of the two truths.

Consciousness-Only Thought — All Is Made by the Mind

A great pillar dividing Mahayana Buddhist thought in two alongside the Madhyamaka school is the thought of “consciousness-only.” This was completed around the 4th–5th centuries by the brothers “Asanga” and “Vasubandhu,” and is called the “Yogachara school.”

The core of consciousness-only is the idea that “the world we think is ‘out there’ is, in fact, all nothing but what the mind reflects (all things are consciousness-only).” Even the same water appears as drinking water to a human, as a dwelling to a fish, and as a flow of pus to a hungry ghost — the way the world appears changes by the mind of the one who sees. If so, the very conviction that a fixed “outer world” really exists is the true nature of delusion.

Consciousness-only deeply dug into the human mind, and preached that, deep behind the surface consciousness, there is a fundamental deep mind that stores all experience as seeds, the “storehouse consciousness (alaya-vijnana).” This is a meticulous analysis of the mind, even compared to Freud’s theory of the unconscious. Consciousness-only divides the mind into eight consciousnesses. The five sense consciousnesses of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body; the thinking mind consciousness; behind it, the manas consciousness, which keeps generating attachment to “self”; and the deepest, the storehouse consciousness. Each deed is stored in the storehouse consciousness as a seed, and that sprouts and again generates the next world of experience — a thought that systematized the cycle of mind and world this precisely is rare even in the world’s history of religion.

The Three Natures — the Three Ways the World Appears

Another pillar that the original texts of consciousness-only, such as Vasubandhu’s “Thirty Verses on Consciousness-Only,” preach is the “three natures” = three ways of being of things.

Mistaking a rope for a snake on a night road and being afraid — but, looking well, it is just a rope, and, further, nothing but a gathering of straw. As in this famous parable, consciousness-only analyzed that “delusion is being afraid of a phantom the mind drew,” and saw enlightenment in transforming the very way the mind draws (transforming consciousness into wisdom).

The “Madhyamaka (emptiness),” which denies the substance of every object, and the “consciousness-only,” which sees all as the mind’s appearance — these two became the two wheels supporting Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. Note that the representative one who brought this teaching of consciousness-only back from India and translated it into Chinese is “Xuanzang,” the model for the Tripitaka master of “Journey to the West.”

To the Mahayana Body of Scriptures

These new thoughts — bodhisattva, emptiness, consciousness-only — in time came to fruition as the many grand Mahayana sutras, such as the Prajnaparamita Sutra, Lotus Sutra, three Pure Land sutras, Avatamsaka Sutra, and Vimalakirti Sutra. I explain these sutras themselves, one by one and at length, in the next Article 4.

Buddhism's Original Texts 4: The Major Mahayana Sutrasen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-buddhism-sutras/

To Learn More

Here are some related books. Reading them alongside this series lets you savor this world even more deeply.

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Conclusion

In this article, I explained in detail the core thought of Mahayana Buddhism. How was it?

Mahayana Buddhism raised as its ideal the path of the “bodhisattva” aiming at the salvation of all people, and produced two profound philosophies — “emptiness (Madhyamaka)” and “consciousness-only.” Only with the foundation of this thought did the rich world of Mahayana sutras, which we look at next time, blossom.

In the next Article 4, I will explain, one by one, the major Mahayana sutras (Heart Sutra, Lotus Sutra, three Pure Land sutras, Avatamsaka Sutra, Vimalakirti Sutra) in which this thought came to fruition.

Buddhism's Original Texts: The Tripitaka and the Major Sutrasen.senkohome.com/myths-religions-origins-buddhism/

I hope you’ll read the next article too.