Buddhist Denominations Explained | Theravada vs Mahayana

hi this is Matt Baker so far on this channel I've talked about Christian denominations as well as Jewish Muslim and Hindu denominations so you probably already guessed that Buddhist denominations would be next now remember I'm using the word denomination quite Loosely here simply to mean a branch or sect within a larger religion so let's start with the viic religion which I introduced in my Hinduism video it developed in India around around 1500 BCE after a group of indo-europeans slowly migrated into the area probably intermingling with the descendants of the once Mighty indis Valley Civilization as well as with other Native Indians living along the Ganges River the VC religion likely borrowed elements from all three of these groups which is an important point to remember we call this early form of Hinduism vdic because it was during this period that the oldest and most sacred Hindu scriptures called the vas were composed however by around 500 BCE the viic religion had evolved into brahmanism in which a certain class of people known as brahans controlled the priesthood as well as many other aspects of society below them were the katria consisting of secular rulers and Warriors the visha the Farmers and Merchants and finally the shudra laborers and servants however not everyone was happy with the authority of the brahans and with the teachings of the vas this gave rise to the shamana movement which was particularly popular along the Eastern gentic plain in order to explain let's take a look at a map of India around 500 BCE by this point most of the north was divided into 16 independent states which were known as mahajanapadas meaning great Realms brahmanism was strongest in the king om of Kuru which had previously been much larger and was the setting for the great Hindu epic the mahabat but to the east there were other states like Cala vgi and Mada where support for the brahans was weaker it was here that the Shana movement took hold basically a shamana was a person who dropped out of everyday Society in order to instead live a very simple life focused on Spiritual Development this resulted in the development of several new schools of philosophy but it also ended up influencing brahmanism as well leading to what's been called the Hindu synthesis which is when what we know today as Hinduism really took shape so from this point forward from the Hindu perspective Indian schools of philosophy were now divided into two categories Tica and ntica OA schools accept the authority of the Vos and are hence considered to be a part of of Hinduism whereas the gnostica schools reject the vetas and are thus considered to be separate religions the two gnostica schools that most people are familiar with today are ganism and Buddhism but in earlier times there were other schools of thought that were just as popular these include the atheist charvaka School the agnostic aana school and the fatalistic aiva school okay with that background let's now Focus exclusively on Buddhism unlike Hinduism which has no founder Buddhism does it was founded by the person who most people simply know as the Buddha but this was not his actual name at Birth he was called sidartha Goa and he was a prince living within the kingdom of kosala more specifically he belonged to a region and ethnic group within kosala known as the shakas whose territory actually fell within what we today call Nepal this is why in the early EST records the Buddha is called shakyamuni meaning the sage of the shakas I won't go through his full story but here are the highlights at the age of 29 sidartha left his family and life of luxury to become a shman at first he practiced asceticism denying himself all but the smallest amount of food needed to survive but then at the age of 35 while sitting under a tree he is said to have achieved Enlightenment it's at this point that he became the Buddha which is a title meaning the enlightened one after this he preached about the middleway which promotes living in between the extremes of overindulgence on one side and self-denial on the other side he also laid the foundations for Buddhist thought called Dharma which can be summed up by the four noble truths and the eight-fold path now in this video I'm not going to go through the Buddha's teaching in detail so instead I'm going to recommend to you a few books in fact thanks to today's sponsor blinkist I'm going to offer you free access to all of them all you have to do is sign up for a 7-Day free trial of blinkist using the link in the description or pinned comment basically blinkist is an app that gives you access to the main ideas of over 6,500 books in less than 15 minutes you can either read or listen to a book's main ideas books such as this one by the famous V Vietnamese monk tikat Han it serves as a great introduction to the main ideas of Buddhism there's also this one by the Dalai Lama you've probably heard of him but have you ever heard any of his ideas well if not you should definitely check out the art of Happiness currently I've been listening to No self no problem it was the subtitle that caught my eye how neuros pychology is catching up to Buddhism now remember you can get access to all of these books by signing up for a free trial you can even use their new spaces feature to share these titles with your friends all members of a shared space can access all titles in the space with or without a blinkist premium subscription but speaking of which blinkist is now offering useful charts viewers 40% off their annual premium membership so if you want to get a 7-Day free trial and then 40% off just use the special promo Link in the description or pinned comment okay back to the family of Buddhist denominations during the Buddha's lifetime he not only taught the Dharma he also built up a community of followers known as the S you may have heard Buddhists refer to the triple gem or three jewels this is a reference to the Buddha the Dharma and the S according to tradition the Buddha died at age 80 around the year 480 bce. at this point the first Buddhist Council was held with 500 of his followers attending the purpose was to make sure that all of the teachings of the Buddha and the rules for the community were remembered one of his 10 core disciples named Ananda recited all of the teachings which are known as sutras and another disciple named upali recited the community rules which are known as vinia according to tr ition a second Buddhist Council was held approximately 100 years after the Buddha's death this time there were disagreements over the community rules and this led to the first Buddhist Schism the majority group became known as the mahasa meaning the great s and the minority group became known as the stava Vada meaning School of the elders because it consisted mostly of the more senior monks take note that all of the mon modern branches of Buddhism descend from the staada although there is some debate over whether or not the mahasa had an influence on the development of Mahayana a term that I will explain in a bit but back to early Buddhism eventually more and more divisions occurred to the point where in ancient times it is thought that there were at least 18 separate schools around the time of Ashoka the Great Indian Emperor who United most of India for the very first time the three main ones were the Viada sasada and pudgala Ashoka is an extremely important figure in the history of early Buddhism because he himself converted to the new religion and promoted missionary efforts to spread Buddhism to other lands the most important of these missions was led by his firstborn son mahinda who became a monk and brought Buddhism to Sri Lanka now I should point out that one does not need to become come a monk to follow Buddhism although some still do as it is generally seen as being a faster way to reach Enlightenment in Sri Lanka the School founded by mahinda became known as the tamr shatya school and it was a branch of the viaja Vada school it was in Sri Lanka that the poly Canon was produced which today is the oldest surviving complete set of Buddhist scriptures take note that H is a language closely related to but not quite the same as Sanskrit let's now take a moment to look at the contents of the P Canon a full set of Buddhist scriptures is called a tripitaka which means three baskets that's because it's comprised of three main parts the vinia Paka which contains the community rules the Sutra Paka which contains the Buddha's teachings and the Abid damra which contains analysis of those teachings the vinia Paka contains rules for both male monks who are called beus as well as for female monks or nuns who are called peunis it also contains a few sections covering early Buddhist history in the poly Canan the Sutra pitaka is divided into five parts called nikayas meaning volumes these can then be broken down further into smaller books of these smaller books the one that I'd like to highlight is the dharmapada which is located in the fifth Naya it's the most well-known of all the Buddhist scriptures and it's a good starting point for those who want to dip their feet in the water finally I'd like to point out that the poly Canon version of the Abid dama has seven Parts okay let's now go back to the family tree chart from Sri Lanka Buddhism eventally spread to Burma Thailand LA and Cambodia the type of Buddhism found in in all of these countries is therefore very similar nowadays it is called theava Buddhism take note that the word theava is actually just the poly version of the Sanskrit word stada which as you might remember means School of the elders theava Buddhism therefore sees itself as the original Buddhism generally speaking it is more strict and more Earthly focused than the other forms of Buddhism although you can see here that there are three main types of Buddhism in the world today considering that Tibetan Buddhism is relatively speaking quite small it is often said that there are really just two main types of Buddhism theravada and Mahayana I'm therefore going to focus on Mahayana next the exact origins of Mahayana are unclear it wasn't really a separate school but rather a movement that took place within many schools one theory is that it developed out of the now extinct mod hanga school but another is that it might have originated among lay people meaning non- monks whatever the origin the common factor among Mahayana Buddhists is that they have an additional set of scriptures known as the Mahayana sutras according to Mahayana Buddhism these special sutras were initially hidden away after the Buddhist death only to be revealed later when the time was right one of the early schools to accept the Mahayana sutras was the Dharma gupt taka school which was originally centered in Gandara in what is today Pakistan and Afghanistan this is why there were until very recently some very old Buddha statues in this region unfortunately these were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 there is some debate over whether the Dharma gupa School came out of the viaja school or whether it came out of the sarvastivada school I've therefore showed it coming from both from the Gandara region the Dharma gupt taka School eventually spread to China Korea Japan and Vietnam there were other schools that spread to these areas as well but they all went extinct and therefore today all East Asian Mahayana monks followed the dhag gupt taka Community rules strangely although Buddhism originated in India and was once a dominant Force there today the vast majority of Buddhists now live outside of India in fact it is now China that has the most amount of Buddhists in the world I therefore want to talk a bit about the Chinese Cannon which is the main alternative to the poly Canon like the poly Canon it too contains a tripitaka however take note that these sections covering the teachings of the Buddha are called agamas instead of nikayas the Chinese Cannon has only four aamas which roughly correspond to the first four nikayas is from the poly Canon the vinia and Abu sections however are totally different whereas the poly Canon includes the theava community rules the Chinese Cannon includes the Dharma gupt taka rules as well as rules from several now extinct schools however the main difference between the poly Canon and the Chinese Cannon is that the Chinese Canon includes several additional sections most notably the Mahayana sutras which I mentioned earlier there are many of these but the most important are the Lotus Sutra the Perfection of wisdom Sutra the flower Garland Sutra and the Nirvana Sutra but that's not all the Chinese Cannon also includes a section called the jataka which describes Buddha's birth story and a section about tantas which are esoteric or more secret practices meant only for those with specialized knowledge now as you might have guessed the Chinese Cannon is mostly written in Chinese classical Chinese to be exact although the Japanese version does include some parts in Japanese this is why the PO Canon is generally understood to be the older of the two cannons after all Pi is an ancient Indian language and India is where Buddhism originated however this paints a bit of a wrong picture it's actually more accurate to say that the poly Canon is the oldest complete version of the buddist scriptures this is because there are in fact parts of the Chinese Cannon for which we do have the corresponding much older Sanskrit versions it's just that we don't have the complete Chinese Cannon available in Sanskrit okay now before I move on I want to briefly describe the main difference between theava Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism in terms of beliefs in both cases the ultimate goal is to achieve enlightenment which then frees a person from The Continuous cycle of birth death and rebirth which by the way is also the goal in Hinduism theava Buddhists teach that there are three paths to Enlightenment the first and by far the most common path is the student path in which a person learns from the teachings of a Buddha and eventually becomes an arat mostly by means of strict discipline once a person becomes an arot they will no longer be reborn the second path is that of the solitary Buddha in which a person achieves Enlightenment on their own but is unable to teach others how to do it finally there is the full Buddha path in which a person achieves Enlightenment on their own and is also able to teach others how to reach it this obviously was the path taken by sidartha Goa which is why he is called the Buddha now what a lot of non non Buddhists don't know is that the Buddha was not the only person to achieve full buddhahood the poly Canon mentions 27 Buddhas by name Buddhas who lived before the Buddha the three most recent being kakanda kagana and kasaba it also talks about a future Buddha named mraa which brings me to the word bodhisatwa which is a term that is used to refer to to someone on the path towards becoming a full Buddha in theaa Buddhism bodhisattvas are thought to be rare with mitraa being the only current one like I say in theava Buddhism most people take the arhat path and this is where Mahayana Buddhism is very different in Mahayana Buddhism the first two paths are viewed as being very much inferior this is why Mahayana Buddhists refer to theera as hinana which means the Lesser path in contrast the word Mahayana means the greater path Mahayana teaches that the full Buddha path also known as the bodhisatwa path is open to everyone it sees bodh sadas as being compassionate individuals who put off Enlightenment for the sake of helping others therefore in Mahayana Buddhism there are lots of bodhisattvas many of whom are understood to be residing in higher Realms so Mahayana Buddhists often pray to bodhisattvas and asked them for help one example of a buddhis satva is this guy often called The Laughing Buddha or fat Buddha his real name is actually budai and he was a monk who lived around a thousand years ago but here's the important thing budai and the Buddha are not the same person the Buddha is sedara Goa the founder of Buddhism who became a Buddha over over 2,000 years ago in contrast budai is a Bodhi SAA on his way to becoming a Buddha some think that he is mraa that future Buddha that I mentioned earlier all of this brings up the question are there gods in Buddhism well it kind of depends on your definition of a god although Buddhism is often said to be an atheistic religion in Mahayana Buddhism at least abodh satva certainly seems to be something little bit similar to a God maybe not the omnipotent sort of God that abrahamic religions talk about but some sort of spiritual being for sure in theava Buddhism this is less true for example you might see a theravada Buddhist standing in front of a statue of the Buddha with their hands together but in this case they are not actually worshiping Buddha as a god instead they are simply showing respect or using the Buddha's form as an aid to meditation okay let's now go back to the family tree chart there are three particular subbranches of East Asian Mahayana that I'd like to point out there are actually many more than these but these three tend to be the most popular the first is Chan Buddhism known as Zen Buddhism in Japan it is particularly popular in the west and mostly focused on meditation then there's pure land Buddhism where the focus is trying to get reborn in a special purified land where it's then easier to achieve enlightenment the most popular pure land in pure land Buddhism is the one formed by a Buddha named amitaba finally there's tianti known as tendi in Japan and chiante in Korea it focuses on the Lotus Sutra that I mentioned earlier which teaches that all paths eventually lead to the One bodhisatwa path okay I now want to turn our attention to Tibetan Buddhism back in the early days of Mahayana there was another movement that split off known as vadana but like Mahayana this was not a separate School of Buddhism but rather a movement that impacted several schools one school that took on vajana ideas was the Mula sarvastivada school which was probably a branch of the similarly named sasada school it eventually spread North to Tibet and Bhutan which is where it is mostly found today Tibetan Buddhism differs from other forms of Buddhism in that it incorporates far more esoteric practices such as chanting reciting incantations and making geometric patterns called mandelas to help induce transes the most famous Tibetan Buddhist is of course the the Dal Lama who is seen as being a sort of figurehead for the Tibetan people he is actually the leader of just one sect of Tibetan Buddhism of which there are currently four however his sect known as the gug or yellow hat school is the largest one he is referred to as the 14th Dalai Lama because the belief is that he is The Reincarnation of a man named gedon drupa who died in 1474 but continues to be reborn on Earth in turn all of the Dalai Lamas are said to be incarnations of a bodh SATA called Ava Loki tesara now before ago I want to briefly mention jism which is the other religion that can be traced back to the shman movement it was founded by a man named mahavira who as you can see here is often depicted as looking quite similar to the Buddha in fact the two teachers lived around the same time with mahavira being the older of the two whereas the Buddha was born in casala mahavira was born in VII one of the key features of the Jane religion is non-violence and therefore most Janes are vegetarians today jism is much smaller than Buddhism and really there're are only two main branches the larger one is called sambara which means white clad because its monks wear white robes note the face mask also Janes have been wearing face masks long before the current pandemic this helps prevent sacred items from being contaminated the other branch of jism is called dambara meaning skyclad this is because the male monks in this sect wear no clothes at all a testament to the fact that they want as few Earthly possessions as possible okay so that was a look at the family tree of Buddhist denominations eventually I plan to combine all of the denomination charts I've made so far into one large world religions family tree poster so keep an eye out for that and remember if you want to learn more about Buddhism I suggest you check out blinkist using the link in the description or pinned comment finally I want to announce that I've activated the join button on this channel this allows you to become a channel member which is slightly different from being just a subscriber subscribing to the channel is free and will always be free however becoming a channel member gives you a few extra perks the most notable one being that you get priority replies from me which means that if you ask a question in the comment section I will definitely reply okay I hope you enjoyed today's video I've got one more coming about denominations but I'm not going to tell you what kind of denominations yet see if you can guess in the comments thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: UsefulCharts

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Length: 25min 19sec (1519 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2024