Buddhist polemics

Buddhist polemics

Buddhist polemics revolve around the veracity and efficacy of doctrine and practice. It seems that from the very beginning Buddhists were involved in a struggle with non-believers to establish the Truth.

By the time the Vajrayana came into being there was already a considerable superstructure of doctrine and practice built up. But the Vajrayana was bound by the same constraints and so ended up adopting everything and trying to make sense of it. The Tibetans synthesised it all into a complex hierarchical system which has Hinayana, Mahayana, and various grades of Tantra as a towering stairlike path through which the spiritual aspirant must ascend in order to follow the Buddha. Somewhat ironically the highest levels of Tantric practice, such as Dzog Chen starts to resemble the simple mindfulness of the Pali Canon. Similarly in East Asian Vajrayana Kukai adopted a hierarchical structure for the various teachings, in which the Hinayana and Mahayana both rated as merely provisional teachings which were not effective in attaining enlightenment.

It is difficult to know what to make of this building of ever higher teachings, and more secret practices. If one accepts the Pali Canon as evidence (and most Buddhists would) then there is ample evidence that the so-called 'Hinayana' practices were efficacious. It is also clear that an Arahant was definitely one who had attained the goal set out by the Buddha. The differences between the Arahant Ideal (as the Mahayana designates the Hinayana goal), and the Bodhisattva Ideal (as the Mahayana designated itself) are not so much differences in goal or aim, as they are differences of emphasis - one emphasising the subjective, internal transformation of self; the other emphasising the altruistic, other regarding aspects of the teachings.

See also

• Hinayana
• Mahayana
• Vajrayana
• Yanas
• Buddhist philosophy

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Buddhist polemics", http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhist_polemics, used and available under the GNU Free Documentation License.