Variations on Buddhism: Theravada vs. Mahayana vs. Vajrayana Buddhism

so today we'll be discussing variations on Buddhism just as with all religions there are various ways of interpreting understanding practicing each of these faiths is depending upon your location depending upon a time period etc etc and Buddhism is no different we discussed or at least we mention the three major types at the beginning of our lectures on Buddhism there's Theravada Buddhism there's Mahayana Buddhism there's Vajrayana Buddhism let's compare the first two first the Mahina folks oftentimes think of the Theravada branch of Buddhism as being a small vessel a small raft and hence they often label them as being Hinayana meaning little raft and the idea here is to go back to the analogy of trying to escape suffering or trying to leave suffering the mono folks see the Theravada branch of Buddhism as having a smaller vessel with which to help humanity escape suffering while they see themselves the Mahayana branch sees themselves as being more inclusive as emphasizing helping more people so they see themselves as the bigger rack obviously the Theravada branch of Buddhism prefers to label themselves and think of themselves as being Theravada if Theravada Buddhists right the way of the elders a little more positive connotation and within Theravada Buddhism there's going to be an emphasis on the buddha achieving enlightenment well for the Mahayana branch of Buddhism the emphasis isn't on achieving enlightenment necessarily but on what the Buddha did afterwards right coming back to help others now when we take a look at the Theravada branch of Buddhism we see a propensity to follow the Pali Canon strictly and believing this is the the best source of the Buddhist teachings while the Mahayana branch believes that there are teachings from the Buddha that can be attained outside of the Pali Canon for the Theravada branch of Buddhism when they look at what it means to become enlightened what it means to have sat under the Bodhi tree and what occurred to the Buddha at that point in time the emphasis is going to be on attaining wisdom so enlightenment is about attaining was a Bodhi it's the Bodhi tree for the Mahina branch enlightenment is about cultivating and developing compassion so the enlightenment that the Buddha attained wasn't just of knowledge it was about cultivating the heart in a way to be more compassionate towards others so what is the aim what's the goal within within Theravada Buddhism the game is to become the game the aim is to become in our heart which means to attain nirvana attain liberation from suffering attained escape from suffering as an individual thing right I do my practices for myself so that I can become in our hot with the Mahayana branch of Buddhism the goal or aim is to be a bodhisattva and this is a person who attains enlightenment not to stay in nirvana but in order to come back and help others also attain enlightenment we're going to prime discuss Mahayana today in Vajrayana since a lot of what we discussed already within Buddhism applies to Theravada within the Mahayana tradition there is the story of how the Buddha brought his students to a a muddy field and within this this mush there was a single flower and the Buddha picked it up and would hand it to his students being good students they figured this must be a lesson from the Buddha so they would stare at the flower and try to explain what the lesson might be right this flower represents the purpose that's wisdom and the natural intelligence of the earth or somebody might say this flower represents compassion and how how this gives life to other things within be within the ecosystem so they would go down the line and each of the students would grab the flower and then try to espouse what sort of less than they believed the blued was teaching them well as the story goes the flower ends up with the last student and rather than speaking or giving some sort of verbal explanation for the lesson being taught the student begins to laugh and the Buddhist acknowledges that that last student is the only individual who understood the lesson now what does this mean this seems to point towards an emphasis on knowledge and wisdom that's nonverbal like that can't it be expressed with language and we see this emphasized with the with the idea of soon yatta soon yatta is a concept of emptiness it is the experience of being clear and open in this sense you can think of your mind as sometimes being clouded by thought and that doesn't allow us to see or experience reality as it is but every once in a while maybe this fits for yourself where your mind clears your mind opens and instead of being aware of the clouds it actually sees what's behind the clouds this clearing this opening of the clouds experiencing what's beyond them that soon yata so think of any time when you've been trying to solve a problem or when you've been trying to deal a situation and your mind becomes muddy there might have been a moment where the mud clears or when your thoughts dissipate and you're able to see things more clearly that openness of thought that openness of awareness that soon Yatta so within the Mahina branch of Buddhism there's this emphasis on trying to attain this experience this clarity of mine one way to describe what this means is to think of it as being aware of an experience without your conditioned mind imposing meaning on it it will often impose meaning on our experience using language this is that that is this and we label our experience the idea of Shunyata is to experience what's in front of us without the labels because the labels are words and the words come from us they come from our language and that means all those words are tied to other words so we we are in every time we describe or label our experience will automatically tying it down or weighing it down to things that we've already defined for ourselves so there's all these connotations and connections that may not be what's actually in front of us whatever's in front of us it is what it is so that pure connection that pure identification or the pure awareness of what what's in front of us without our baggage of predetermined vocabulary that soon Yatta we've looked at this before with this particular puzzle two men are found dead in the cabin in their woods what prevented a lot of us from seeing the solution from having that clarity of mind to experience the solution was the fact that once we describe the scenario with these words our minds are conditioned to understand these words a certain way all of our common understanding of those terms you can think of as being the clouds that get in the way of seeing how things are in and of themselves to get past that condition thinking the get past are our condition understanding of something to see something as it really is that soon yata so soon yatta is awareness without the mind necessarily imposing meaning upon the experience judging it as good or bad this or that this is a very prominent I deal with in Zen Buddhism Zen Buddhism in a nutshell emphasizes simplicity emphasizes serenity and it emphasizes this clarity of thought that brings about a epiphany that were you where you come to a quick understanding all of a sudden out of nowhere of something maybe when you had seen this puzzle that we looked at for the first time maybe some of you had this experience where once you were relaxed it came to you out of nowhere oh the answer to the puzzle is that experience of how that sudden insight is referred to as Satori so within Zen Buddhism we have this theme of trying to cultivate simplicity serenity in our lives in order to attain experiences of Satori hence we have a simple symbol for Zen Buddhism an open or not complete circle room for things to come into it maybe familiar with Zen Buddhist aesthetic right the the clarity of rooms the simplicity of decoration the serenity of nature so Zen Buddhism originated in China in the 6th century and Zen is actually the Japanese pronunciation of what in Chinese would be more like Chan so Chun Buddhism Zen Buddhism within China this Buddhism was heavily influenced by Taoism and the the influence of Taoism into Buddhism has this out has this product right Zen Buddhism Jon Buddhism as the as the result of this combination and within Zen Buddhism there are a few key terms I'd like you to know one is zazen which refers to a seated meditation like in the image here koenz which we'll take a look in a second our practices their stories and puzzles that Zen Buddhists will use to try to help cultivate a mind that's better able to experience a sonata and then have those moments of Satori the idea within these Cowen's these puzzles are to try to stop the mind from imposing meaning on what it experiences so that our mind is better able to just simply experience what's in front of us we'll talk we'll look through several of these events in a second sans n refers to a private session between the student and a master and the sun's end will often include these cones and as you mentioned a second ago Satori refers to these flashes of insight these moments of clarity were a an idea or a realization comes to us so let's took it let's take a look at various Cowen's one of the more famous Zen koans the following you can make the sound of two hands clapping now what is the sound of one hand clapping I'll give you a second to ruminate over this as Stanford psychologist Robert Ornstein writes he sees these Cohens as serving the purpose of stopping the rational mind from grappling with with something so a rational mind likes to analyze tear apart bit by bit situations circumstances in order to better understand it the problem is that that means our rational mind is isn't is inherently imposing meaning upon all of these parts it's inherently trying to fit what it sees with what it already knows this is what understanding means if I asked you what's a car you would describe a car and it's based upon what you already know of a car and then when you see something new I give you a new tool yet never seen before let's say a a pair of dice that's meant to be hung by the mirror if you've no experience about what that is I would describe that to you in relationship to your understanding of a car so if you understand something new we're always related to what we already know the problem is what if what we already know isn't exactly how it is what if there's more to understand about something than what we already know within Zen Buddhism the idea is that maybe we could stop the rational mind from automatically coming to an understanding of what's in front of us and through that stopping of the mind we give room right sune yatta we have we open up room for the mind to come up with a solution idea a concept epiphany that it wouldn't have come from it would it wouldn't have come up with if we're clinging on to what we think already new and you can go back to the story of the two men found dead in the woods because of the rational mind we piece out the idea of two men we piece out the idea of woods we have an idea of what a cabin is in our rational mind uses what we think we already know the situation to try to make sense of it did they die from a fire did they die from because they killed each other were they attacked by a bear right all of these sorts of ideas come from what we think we already know of the scenario for Zen koans the idea is maybe to stop that from happening stop imposing what we think we ready to know on to what's in front of us so maybe you experience that with this Co and let's see what happens to the next one if you meet the Buddha on the road okay this is something we may discuss in our weekly live conferences at the end of the week another go in what was your original face the one you had before your parents gave birth to you again all these cones are met supposedly according to some people are meant to halt the rational mind from going about thinking the way it usually thinks in order to leave space to think differently sometimes thinking differently it's what's needed in order to see something like a solution or creative idea now when this is often given to students their responses to the cohens aren't necessarily meant to be verbal you don't think about the Kohen and go the meaning of this Cohen is and explain oftentimes what's really the answer to the colon is something nonverbal is something you physically do right hence when we thought think about the story of the flower the flower sermon story notice that all the students tried to explain with words what the lesson was that was being given to them by the Buddha through the flower yet it was only the last person the last student that the Buddha said underst the lesson but that last person then same thing with words they simply laugh so it's through an experience it's through expression that maybe oftentimes the student is best able to express what be what the lesson is that the Masters trying teach them so stereotypically you might see students do a variety of actions once they determine once they figure out once they come to the let's have a story experience of the Zen Cohen lesson what the lesson is that's being given to them through the comb and they might do some like jump up and down or laughs hysterically or pound their chest or a variety of other physical sorts of manifestations you can relate to this possibly by thinking about our whole notion of logos versus mythos through these antonin it might be that what's trying to be relayed to the student isn't a declarative fact isn't some sort of knowledge of fact this is how life is like always be careful to watch out for maybe what's being expressed instead is knowledge of acquaintance maybe what we're supposed to get is some sort of experience and the only way to relate the experience is to live right to do something in the world this could be what's why so many times the solution to the lesson of a Cohen or the response the proper response isn't to say this is that but simply to act a certain way there is a famous Zen proverb about the nature of enlightenment it said before enlightenment what do you do well you chop wood and you carry water this is the normal life and then after enlightenment what happens what do you do now well it's said that now after you've attained enlightenment you still chop wood you still carry water so enlightenment is this internal sort of transformation it's an internal change in internal happening that affects your life but but you still live in the world the enlightened person within my doesn't escape reality they don't escape life they simply live their lives possibly more elegantly in a way that's that's more conducive to happiness the last branch they'll talk about as Vajrayana Buddhism and this is often referred to as as a more energetic or a more direct approach to escaping suffering at least within the Vajrayana tradition they sees themselves this way and you can we think Vajrayana you can think Tibetan Buddhism right so as opposed to the two branches we looked at previously where this is emphasis on cultivating awareness emphasis of peace of mind the Vajrayana branch of Buddhism emphasis there's an emphasis on on action there's an emphasis on not escaping internal turmoil internal turmoil but to go into it deeper thereby transforming it from within as opposed to sing it from above so when we take a look at various artifacts from Tibetan Buddhism the Vajra a tradition we see a dramatic difference so compare this to what we saw a second ago with Zen Buddhism much more colorful much more bright much more engaging to the senses and all of these things are meant to meant to activate energies within us that can help us escape suffering so Tibetan originated obviously in Tibet eighth century and it's often referred to as the third turning so remember back to our analogy of the wheel of Dharma we live of knowledge an Eightfold Path both Vajrayana Buddhism and I'm sorry both Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism are said to be different turnings different ways of escaping the wheel of ways of escaping suffering and the Tibetan Buddhists see themselves as the third turning and when we take a look at the beliefs and practices that make up Tibetan Buddhism a lot of them seem very foreign I seem very much different very different than what we talked about with the first two branch of the Buddha's er and there's a reason for this when we look at abettin Buddhism there's lots of influences heavy influences that we don't necessarily see in the first two branches there's the indigenous spirituality indigenous religion within the Tibetan region right this is the bond tradition so when we see Buddhism going into two-bed bond which was already there starts to get come melded with it's been with it with Buddhism plus there is a heavier influence of beliefs of practices that we would normally associate with Hinduism now within this tradition they'll say that a lot of what they believe are esoteric teachings these are teachings that are that are more secretive or that are below the surface right not as obvious as some of the teachings we see from the pali canon and and from the more exoteric sources within the Mahayana tradition what's the secret well what we see is that as an emphasis on metaphysics that what we mean by that is when we took a look at Buddhism prior to Vajrayana we didn't really discuss things like the afterlife we didn't really discuss things like spirits or Souls we didn't discuss the idea of reincarnation like we did with Hinduism but within Tibetan Buddhism there is a big emphasis on spirits and on moving energies and and and on the afterlife there's a big mythology about dying and then going to a Bardo which is this in-between state between life and death and you ride various you ride the ship within the Bardo transports you to your new life after reincarnation the Dalai Lama the the leader of Tibetan Buddhism is said to be a reincarnation of previous Dalai Lama's so our current de lama is thought to be the fourteenth reincarnation so what we see now is more of an emphasis on working with the energies of the body or the energies within in our lives so our our frustrations our anxieties or our sexual urges or all of these are different energies within our body and rather than trying to be simply mindful of them and try to escape them or transcend them within Tibetan Buddhism we are asked to delve deeper into them to make use of them to help us trance to help transform us from being caught in suffering to being in nirvana so you might have heard terms like chakras right these are different energy centers so for us to liberate ourselves from suffering there are various things that we can do to tap into to to go further deeply into these energies various rituals various chanting there's pilgrimages there's various mantras different hand gestures right mudras various imagery and patterns at least mandalas like we see on the this carpet in the image here there's even practices that are meant to have us become more in tune with sexual desire or sexual urges we don't have time to to go into detail about how this works except to say that rather than being succumb and to these energies rather than suffering because the energies kind of trap us into suffering what we see within the Vajrayana tradition is the notion that if we go deeper into the suffering we get to understand it better going deeper into the into the the energy the pain we get to really know it so that rather than having our mind preoccupied with judgments and thoughts about while I feeling this this is stupid I can't believe this happen to me we simply feel the actual pain and sometimes when we feel the actual pain feel the actual energy it's really not as bad as a suffering that we endure by getting caught up in all judgments and thoughts about the pain if I about the suffering this is the best that I can do to explain this sort of approach to escaping suffering from the Tibetan point of view though just to talk about Buddhism in China for a second the Mayan edition as you mentioned earlier right Mayan tradition gets fused with lots of cultures and traditions already in China as Buddhism goes through China so there's a variety of various practices beliefs that are all labeled under this big umbrella of Buddhism within China but as you know through maybe experience with friends or family or with people that you interact with there's there's lots of things about Buddhism that we haven't discussed where this use of incense whether it's these extravagant altars sometimes there's an altar a single altar with a larger statue Buddha and behind them behind it are several other smaller Buddhas right sometimes people have offerings as you see in the imagery offerings of food offerings of drink within these altars now all of these various traditions right they you can see them coming from indigenous spirituality that existed with in China already so the various different types of Buddhism we see in China as a result are listed here for you and there are various individuals various Buddhist teachers that are associated each of these that we won't have time to discuss and just like Tibetan Buddhism where we that we identified bon and Hinduism as having influenced it within all these various Chinese forms of Buddhism we see various influences from different types of indigenous cultures so the use of incense had been in China along before Buddhism the use of altars with what will that provide where we provide food and drink that I've been trying to prior to Buddhism one statue or an image that I'd like to discuss before leaving our discussion of Mahayana Buddhism is this one if you go to Asian grocery stores if you go to various temples you might see this figure of the Buddha now this figure is strikingly different from other statues of the Buddha that we've seen in other images so far in class you notice it's it has a larger belly it's this version of the Buddha is always smiling this image isn't of the first Buddha it's not image of Siddhartha right this is an image of somebody else it's an image of a figure named Buddha or ho Tai depending if you're Japanese or Chinese and Buddha is said to have existed around 800 AD and the story behind bowtie is of an individual who had achieved enlightenment and was giddy and was joyful as a result of of achieving this enlightenment hence they're seen as laughing all the time and you can maybe come to an understanding what symbolism might be of having a large belly they might refer to being full it might be referred to being sat shaded right being achieved satisfaction in one's life various things I'm sure you could think of now though this image this figure may not have been the first Buddha may not have been Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha or haut I may in fact be a Buddha so within the Maya tradition there's the idea that there's several different Buddha's and Buddha's simply refers to people that attain enlightenment so it might be even better to say several Bodhisattvas right okay so let's summarize Buddhism so just like with Hinduism let's ask some basic questions just that we can contextualize and get our hands around how to how to understand Buddhism what's the ultimate for Buddhism well it kind of depends it kind of depends for some people the ultimate is nirvana achieving this escape from suffering for others it might be enlightenment coming to the realization coming to an understanding well then what's the human condition what is how does Buddhism describe our life on the planet on earth again it depends for some people the human condition is dukkha right the human condition condition is suffering for others the real condition the real real heart of our problem is ignorance being unaware how do we transcend this condition how do we escape suffering how do we escape ignorant again several different answers to this one is to think of the Eightfold Path we can escape suffering by following the Eightfold Path another is since the problem is ignorance the solution is to attain clarity to attain openness of perception openness of mind so that we can have awareness of reality as it is now the question for you is what is your takeaway from our discussion Buddhism what is what is the one or the few concepts or ideas that you will hold on to as being key to what Buddhism is based upon what you've been exposed to so far for some it might be the notion that happiness isn't dictated by your circumstances your well-being your happiness isn't the result of things outside of your control instead Buddhism seems to say it is an inside job you can depending on the choices you make and the thoughts you entertain and where you pay attention you can dictate your own happiness you can choose to be happy maybe what comes to you is the notion that the quality of life is equivalent to the quality of your mind so while we often spend so much time in our lives trying to adjust or alter what's on the outside of us right how we look the possessions we have maybe what we should focus on is developing the skills of the mind the ability to focus on what we choose to focus on the ability to to enter into equanimity the ability to be mindful one thing to ask before we leave is do you see or hear any resemblances between what you've learned with Buddhism with other religions you're familiar with you should be able to draw some parallels with what we've already discussed with Hinduism the idea of suffering and escape from suffering maybe you can even see Buddhism as kind of a Raja yoga a path to liberation through meditation maybe can even relate it to the Abrahamic traditions and ideas we might have about about living life on earth there are about Kingdom of Heaven being on earth or other concepts so you might be familiar with when we get together over our live conference we will discuss a Zen Cohen and I'll ask you once again to try to imagine what the world would feel like to you if this was your mythology and this was the story the fundamental story that that through which you experience the world

Channel: Prof G

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Keywords: theravada buddhism, mahayana budhism, vajrayana buddhism, tibetan buddhism, zen buddghism, variations on buddhism

Id: 4QLpxfQswvc

Length: 34min 23sec (2063 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2017