The Three Schools of Buddhism: Intro

so today we're going to discuss the three major schools of Buddhism the differences that they have in contemporary practice coming right up so I'm Doug Smith I'm study director at the secular Buddhist Association that secular Buddhism dot-org if you're new to the channel and interested in living a wiser and a kinder and a less stress filled life consider subscribing to the channel and one of the ways that we can we can get along that path of course there are many ways one of the ways is to join a local Sangha get in touch with a local Buddhist group in your area now of course I'm saying I'm from the secular Buddhist Association but you know we're open to everything and of course there's so many different ways that one can practice Buddhism or study and practice Buddhism so it's important to have I think an introduction to the different ways for those of us who really aren't very familiar with this just to get an idea of which which schools practice style are there which schools approach might be right for you and I should say in introduction here that I have a personal experience with several of these but by no means with all of them but you know there's so many different options and so what I would love for you to do is put your own experiences down below if you have experience with one of the schools I'm gonna discuss and you think I've left something out or miss describe something because there's so many different ways even within a school that these things get realized that I don't want nothing I'm saying here is going to be absolutely conclusive all I'm gonna be giving you is sort of some general overviews and you may find very big differences in the particular Sangha that you're gonna go to and so be interesting though to know your own experiences or with experience with other schools that I don't mention or other parts that I don't mention because you know Buddhism is an enormous enormous thing and there's there's no way to get it across in a short lecture I should also say that my interest is in early Buddhism that is the kind of practice style you would have found there not that I want to follow it exactly but at least I'm interested and how it would have looked and of course being a secular practitioner my practice my practice is based upon that but with a secular take and I'll get to a little of that at the end but you know that's just was a background so you know everyone has their own biases and interests and so those are my interests going forward although I'm going to what follows I'll try to be as objective as I can so again if there's something that you think I've overlooked or misses described I was not intentional please just put it down below so to begin with tera vaada practice and tera vaada is a school from Southeast Asia which also now exists in the West it's what's mostly behind what we would call contemporary mindfulness practice or Insight Buddhism I have a local Sangha in New York on New York insight that I'm most familiar with and that's you know that's an example of a contemporary insight type of practice and in general insight practice is going to be less devotional less interested in devotional practices less ritualized less interested in ritual less interested in aesthetics so you're not you're probably not going to have incense you won't have that many bells you might have one bell but that's about it people will not generally be dressing up in robes at any level unless you have a monastic coming to visit so they're much they appear to be lay centers they're also generally less hierarchical that is to say you generally will not have a single teacher or guru who is considered the the guiding teacher of the whole Center or if you do they'll guide in a in a very vague way rather than you know sort of laying down the law as to what they're gonna teach it's a much more I would say if you'd like Democratic in a sort of a small D sense than other kinds of Buddhism which probably stems from the idea of the Sangha which in in his history was somewhat democratic I mean it was something that where decisions we'll come to in general discussion or by general discussion and I would say in general they're more interested in sort of rational or conceptual clarity with their with their teachings as opposed to other schools such as Zen which I'll get to in a moment they really they'll try as much as they can to give you reasons for what you're doing the and the the tax that you read which will be a lot of what you will give you reasons our texts from the for the poly material usually the Pali Canon which was composed around the fifth century BC BCE and also you'll look at later interpreters of those texts such as Buddha Gosa from the fifth century of the Common Era and a lot of course a lot of centers will use more contemporary writers and thinkers from the West who are interpreting these texts nowadays but they will usually have excerpts from the original texts and go back to them as as sort of the route texts for what they're what they're discussing and given the focus on this text of course the focus in general is going to be on the Buddha himself the historical Buddha is in so far as we know of what the historical but it was like and of course they're all kinds of interpretations surrounding that person some some that are let's say more fanciful than others but in general that's the focus is on the person of the Buddha the historical Buddha and so for example you'll have in general if you go to one of these sanga's you'll have a room that's oriented towards not usually a statue of the Buddha and so for example here's a photograph from New York insight that I took recently and you can see that the Buddha has a very prominent place there's also it just so happens a Mahayana statue there as well which goes to show that many of these contemporary centers are relatively ecumenical nowadays and so we'll get to that in a moment but nevertheless the the Buddha is generally the focus and there's little else that surrounds the Buddha the objective in practice in a terawatt a context is going to be become awakened to become what's called an arahant insofar as that's possible in any event we're trying to get up that ladder or trying to reduce greed reduce hatred reduce our ignorance in the relevant context and there's a generally little emphasis on topics such as Buddha nature which you may have heard such as non-duality which you may have heard such as emptiness these are concepts you generally find in the other schools of Buddhism not so much in the terabyte of school which is because those concepts are later concepts they don't go back to the the Pali Canon at least not in the way that they're used later on you can find aspects of them early on but in general if you look at the early texts those are not the focus of practice or at least they're interpreted in different ways could be interpret in different ways I should also say that insofar as you ever meet up with a monastic in that context they're quite strict they they do follow celibacy they are celibate they will follow the rules of the ancient vinaya insofar as they can and in general they don't have to be vegetarian because the early Sangha was not vegetarian although many of them will be nowadays the second major school is the school of Mahayana Buddhism that's probably the most famous school in around the world it encompasses such styles of Buddhist practice as Zen which is probably the most famous as a Pure Land Buddhism also very famous and as Tibetan Buddhism although Tibetan Buddhism we're going to also see in the next the third section but at Tibetan Buddhism is considered a branch of Mahayana Buddhism in general it's it's a style of Buddhist practice that's more devotional so for example in the Pure Land you have really as focused around simply around devotion to Amitabha Buddha one particular who's seen as a Buddha from the past the point of practice is to repeat certain mantras in order to invoke the compassion of this Buddha so that you're reborn into a better life along with that devotion it's generally Mahayana practice tends to be more ritualized there's more ritual involvement more things that you do because they're part of the ritual it's also more aestheticized practice in general than tera vaada so you will have incense you may have incense you may have different kinds of bells or sounds people may all be in robes you may you may have to wear a robe I've done Zen practice both where we didn't have to wear robes that was quite westernized and where we did have to wear robes and in that second secondary type that was nice because for visitors they had robes that you could put on if you didn't have one and for obviously for the regulars they had their own the the rooms will generally be more elaborate more more constructed more aesthetically distinct from a normal room whereas in tera vaada practice often that won't be the case again westernized tera vaada practice we're not talking about so much the ones that are a traditional tera vada within Southeast Asia I should also mention about Southeast Asia that you will at times within Southeast Asian viharas or monastic centers you will not necessarily only have an image of the Buddha you might have lots of different images it differs from place to place so I'm just you know these things I'm talking about the general overview rather than specifics also in general a Mahayana practices is more guru based more teacher based and more hierarchical there's more of an idea that you that your focus is on let's say the text that the that the the teacher wrote himself or herself and the practice that the teacher himself or herself suggest that you do rather than in let's say an insight or mindfulness practice where you may have a rotating group of teachers or guest teachers and and you just deal with the one that's in front of you today if you want however if you meet monastics sometimes in some of the schools they're they're less they're significantly less strict about the rules that surround them so for example in Zen many of the teachers or even the abbot's will marry will be married will have will have Y will have spouses which is not allowed in antara Vata Buddhism and early Buddhism for that matter and you'll have some temples that even do things like brew their own sake such as the amount of Sun Kongo G temple in Japan which witcha brewed its own sake for a long period of time and that would not of course be completely impossible in in different cultures because alcohol was seen as as one of the things that we avoided and in some of the schools of particularly in Zen there's more of an interest in in breaking through cognition in using paradoxical kinds of of stories or tales or called cones to try to break our our reliance on reason and analysis in order to understand the world and we will what I said in the prior section about tera vaada was that it was very attended to be more rational in Zen it's sort of more irrational or more non rational and the text that they look at are from a later period than the than the Pali Canon that is to say that the Mahayana texts in general were from the early centuries BCE maybe this first century second century BCE and but most of them are written in the Common Era and this is of course I'm talking from a scholarly point of view from within the tradition they're seen as coming from the Buddha himself but modern scholars don't see it that way they see them as later texts that were imputed to the Buddha the third major school of Buddhism is called Vajrayana Buddhism Vadra Yanna means the Thunderbolt Buddhism or Thunderbolt vehicle by the in certain ways that I mean the Vanja Rhianna sees itself as part of the Mahayana however there are many people within the Mayan let's see the vide Rhian is separate so this is one of these controversies that we're not going to try to overcome here but nevertheless I wanted to make that clear to you and it's what we might call a form of well what's called a form of tantric Buddhism Tantra is a difficult word to actually understand but it involves a number of things that we're going to get to and in the West these this this form of Buddhism of adrionna Buddhism is generally found within a Tibetan context because much of Tibetan Buddhism nowadays is Vajrayana Buddhism and I think most distinctly it's sort of more Mahayana than the Mahayana in the respects that we've been discussing till now it tends to be intensely guru based intensely hierarchical so you're really supposed to be you really can't practice without a guru without a teacher and so you find your teacher and then you practice pretty much one-on-one with them for however long it takes it can be years and the practice can involve very intense and difficult and long visualizations in particular visualizing yourself as certain kinds of deities in order to break through it said are some of our mental tendencies in other words the visualizations you're supposed to do our are constructed in order to break through some of these tendencies so and devotional practices are central to this initiation right so there's lots of ritual involved in this and particular initiation rites that are supposed to confer certain kinds of power they're also supposed to bind you to particular teachers on certain ways or particular deities or supernatural beings there's also an extensive use of what's called mantras and mudras mantras being certain kinds of statements that you say over and over to yourself in a kind of meditative context they can either be month things actually have meaning within let's say Sanskrit or Tibetan or they can be meaningless phrases now meaningless strings of of sounds they're supposed to rise within you certain kinds of feelings or certain kinds of intended mental states and mudras are hand gestures which are very very famous nowadays we see them on Buddhist sculptures everywhere and they have meaning but they do not go back to the earliest stratum of Buddhism and in the Pali Canon we just don't we don't have any evidence of mudras being important at all so these kinds of really would amount to magical practices didn't come a lot of it did not come from the earliest stratum a lot of it came from later later Buddhist tendencies some of it seems to have either come from or Co arose with similar tendencies in proto hinduism and early hinduism in particular shaivism the early shaivite cults there's a great book about the the arising of of Tantra and yoga which I'll link down below a scholarly book it's lengthy and dense but if you're interested in some of the potential roots of that it's a good place to start also in more and critically and this is one of the sort of hallmarks of adriana Buddhism is the texts are seen as potentially as very powerful it's called the Thunderbolt school because it's supposed to be the one school that can really get you to awakening right away it can get you in other words they say that you know the mahayana path is very lengthy the early path is very lengthy it can take multiple lifetimes or thousands of lifetimes or whatever but their path is is is pretty much Jamelia taking it can you know within a single lifetime it can get you there and but it doesn't what it considers and it can be people who practice it consider to be potentially dangerous practices not potentially transgressive practices and so a lot of it is secret a lot of it is the sort of thing it's only transmitted between a teacher a guru and a student and that is not written down and for this reason some aspects of Vajrayana Buddhism are hard to study academically because there just isn't there is a data about it it's it's kept secret within the tradition and historically some of these practices included sexual practices practices with forbidden forbidden kinds of substances like alcohol but that's not the case in every practice and some some guru some teachers very much resisted that aspect of it but historically it was definitely part of the practice and in Shai vite practice it was as well and the texts that you read are likely to be from later later texts from the Common Era or texts from the Guru himself or herself you're not we're probably not going to be reading anything from the the Pali Canon or the early material at all it's going to be stuff it's much more recent okay now broadly within both vag rihanna and mahayana there are certain kinds of similarities to to practice that did actually go through in both contexts there is a focus on a whole pantheon of buddhas and bodhisattvas oh you know so you'll have not only historical Buddha but he will be he will be viewed as one of many historical Buddhas going back into history throughout them throughout the the eons and also Bodhisattvas these beings who have been reborn through lifetime after lifetime in order to help other people without themselves being Buddha's and these you generally will have aspects to them of ways that they interact in the world so for example the probably the most famous Bodhisattva is avid lucky Tesh farah who is the Bodhisattva of compassion who's known in Chinese as Quan Yin and in Japan is canon and that was actually the statue that if you remember back to the photograph I have from New York insight the second statue there was was one of Kwan on or have a low-key cascada and sometimes in a female form and sometimes in the male form depending on the statue or sometimes a half of one and a half of the other so very interesting but he saw to a figure but if you enter into one of these into a room that is Mahayana or Vajrayana you're gonna have a lot of these different kinds of images and there are similarities distant similarities to let's say a Catholic Church we you're surrounded by Saints and where every saint has his or her aspect that's relevant and so if you're if you're interested in a particular thing you may direct your devotional practice to a saint in the same way in in many mahayana or Vajrayana practices if you're interested in a particular end you may devote your your attention to one particular body shot for one particular buddha the aim is to become a bodhisattva the aim is not to become well the enemy was eventually to become a buddha but the idea is that that is something way way in the future and so right away what you want to be as a bodhisattva which is somebody who devotes his or her life to compassion for all living beings there not only this life but potentially an infinite number of lives and so that's the point of your practice you make a vow a vow of practice a bodhisattva vow is critical to this in a way that again in the early tradition you don't find it and generally in the teachings you're going to have a heavy emphasis on concepts such as Buddha nature or non duality this notion that there's there's no real separation between self and world there's no real separation between two concepts that appear to be you know position to one another a very strong emphasis on emptiness the notion that know that all things in the world are empty of own being of self being of essence even of existence these are these are aspects that are brought up time and again in these practices and they stem from the early Mahayana teachings particular people like Nagarjuna and others so these are going to be central to the kinds of teachings that you're gonna you're going to hear and I'll put a link up above to a video put out I believe by the British government or some aspect of the British government discussing discussing these three ask these three kinds of Buddhism for an act you know for a school audience so another another introduction to them if you want to hear more about this finally just just a word about secular Buddhism I'll do another video where I go into some of this in more detail there's just too much to be to be said in one one video here but secular Buddhism in general tends to be related to early Buddhist or tera vaada kinds of practices because they're they're less ritualized they're less strictly religious and at least they're overt form and or to the Zen practice which is also less interested in views and doctrines and more interested in simply sitting and practicing so that is the secular Buddhist kind of approach in a certain sense it pulls various strands out of these prior ones and may may be considered to be somewhat of its own thing so as I said at the beginning please if you have your own experience as any of these schools I'd be interested to hear and I think other people would as well if they're interested perhaps and doing a study there or joining a local Sangha they might want to know what to expect so put put your own experiences down below fill out the picture that I've at least begin begun to sketch here that's way too much to talk about in a single video I'm so glad to have you and thanks so much for your your kind comments and questions in the past I hope we'll see you on the next one of these videos and meanwhile be well

Channel: Doug's Dharma

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Keywords: three schools of buddhism, buddhism, buddhism 101, buddhism explained, buddhism for beginners, mahayana buddhism, secular buddhism, theravada buddhism, vajrayana buddhism, buddha, buddhist, buddhist teachings, doug's secular dharma, philosophy, secular buddhist association, secular dharma, secularbuddhism, secularbuddhism.org, secularism, theravada mahayana vajrayana

Id: FAazFDC8m6M

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 16 2018