A View on Buddhism - Buddhism Tradition Development

The history of Buddhism is a huge subject. Not only does it cover over 2,500 years of history, but it has spread over time thoughout Asia and beyond. In each individual country, the local culture tended to have a strong influence on the outer appearance of the religious practices, and which aspects of Buddhism were emphasized by the locals. To understand the origin of the various schools and traditions, some insight in the history is essential.
Mahinda introduced Buddhism to Sri Lanka in the third century BCE. After this brief introduction, Buddhism became the dominant religion on the island, and Sri Lanka turned into a center of religious learning. The new religion substituted Hinduism and became well-accepted by the low/middle class.

It emerged three great divisions of the Sangha on the island, each of which centered on a monastery in the ancient capital of Anuradhapura. Mahavihara, great monastery, is the oldest of the monasteries and was established by Mahinda in the third century, the Abhayagiri-vihara in the first century BCE, and the Jetavana in the third century CE. None of the writings of the monks of Abhayagiri and the Jetavana monasteries survived, which makes it hard to tell how their traditions differed from those of the Mahavihara. There appeared to be a rivalry between them due to a Mahavihara opposition to their Mahayana sympathies, which is simplistic and problematic.

The schools of Chinese Buddhism are divided into two categories, those that have a more or less direct Indian counterpart and those which have a more or less direct Indian counterpart and those that are native to China. The principal schools are the Vinaya, the Kosa, the Madhyamaka, the Yogacara, and the Mantrayana. Those schools in principal are also the schools of Korean and Japanese Buddhism. Some schools developed more significant local traditions than others. Chinese Buddhists don’t represent separate ordination lineages; instead they focus on a lineage of teachings and interpretations of Buddhist thoughts and practice. It appears that movement between the schools was normal but the early attempts to establish the norms of Buddhist monastic practice in China seemed to of been hindered by a need of knowledge of the Vinaya.

Ch’an, which derives from the Sanskrit dhyana, is used in Indian Buddhist theory to designate the attainment of a deep state of peace by the means of calm meditation. The Ch’an tradition looks at Bodhidharma as the legendary hero and Indian monk who is said to have come east in the fifth or sixth century CE as the first patriarch of Ch’an. It is likely that the history lies even farther back of Ch’an roots in Chinese Buddhism with Tao-an, Hui-yuan, and Tao-sheng. Bodhidharma is said to of emphasized the teachings of the Lanka atara Sutra and the conjectural basis of Ch’an centers on the ideas of the tathagatagararbha and emptiness as pointing past all abstract forms of thought. By the middle of the sixth century all Indian Buddhist text had been translated into Chinese.

Although over five different Ch’an schools had emerged by the ninth century, only two remained important after the government’s suppression of Buddhist monasticism in the Lin Chi and Ts’ao Tung. The Ch’an literary and intellectual traditions centers on the stories of the sayings and the deeds of these CH’an masters. They may be portrayed as behaving in unexpected and spontaneous ways and responding to questionbs with riddles in order to jolt their pupils into a state of awakening.

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