Mahayana

A philosophical school of Mahayana Buddhism.

An East Asian Mahayana school.

A Chinese Mahayana school built on the Lotus Sutra.

This tradition's early sutra literature, notably the Lotus Sutra's parable of the burning house, frames arhatship as a provisional teaching superseded by the bodhisattva path, a framing Theravada rejects as a description of itself.

The raised palm of reassurance, read as the removal of fear rather than as a command to stop.

The acharya is the master authorised to teach and interpret a body of doctrine, and the title runs across the Indian Buddhist scholastic tradition.

Held in the Mahayana countries, under the Dharmaguptaka discipline in the Chinese sphere and the Mulasarvastivada in the Tibetan.

The full ordination of women has continued without a break in the Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Taiwanese sangha through the Dharmaguptaka lineage.

The site is held in common across the Mahayana world, which maintains national temples around it in a range of architectural traditions.

The Bodhicaryavatara, Shantideva's guide to the bodhisattva path, is this tradition's most beloved single text on bodhicitta in practice.

Generosity opens the standard Mahayana list of six perfections, and it is practised for the sake of all beings rather than for the giver's own release.

The seal of the first sermon, and the gesture the teaching Buddha of Mahayana image-making most often carries.

Meditative concentration is the fifth of the six perfections in the Mahayana enumeration.

The mantra that closes the Heart Sutra, and the sutra is chanted daily across the Mahayana world.

Chanted daily in Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese temples, and among the longest formulas in ordinary liturgical use.

Patience is the third of the six perfections and is treated at length in the Mahayana literature as the antidote to anger.

The flower that grows out of mud without being stained by it names the sutra at the centre of the tradition, and the buddhas and bodhisattvas are seated on it in every Mahayana image.

The birthplace is held in common, and the monasteries built around the garden by Mahayana countries make the site an inventory of the tradition's national forms.

The mantra of Avalokiteshvara, whose vow to hear the cries of the world is the Mahayana account of what a bodhisattva is for.

Wisdom is the sixth perfection and the one the Mahayana literature treats as giving the other five their name, since without it they are practices rather than perfections.

Mahayana keeps the monastic order while placing the bodhisattva vow, which laypeople take as well, alongside monastic ordination rather than beneath it.

Ethical conduct is the second of the six perfections, and in the Mahayana it is undertaken within the bodhisattva vow rather than solely as monastic restraint.

The Mahayana traditions receive the first council as the origin of the shared early canon, while holding that the sutras of the great vehicle were preserved by other means.

The Kashmir council under Kanishka belongs to the Sarvastivada, the school whose scholastic inheritance stands behind much of the northern tradition, and the northern reckoning numbers it fourth where the Theravada numbers Aluvihare.

Received as a historical council, and the schism that followed it is where the northern traditions locate the beginning of the division of the schools.

The downturned open palm of giving, paired on the image with the gesture of reassurance so that the two hands say granting and protecting together.

Diligence is the fourth of the six perfections, the energy that sustains a path measured in aeons.

The Mahayana sutras present the arhat attainment as real but incomplete, a lesser aim than the bodhisattva vow to remain until all beings are free. The criticism is of the ideal rather than of the persons who reached it.

The northern traditions preserve a different account of the councils of this period and do not number Pataliputra among them. Where the Pali chronicles give a council that vindicated one school, the northern sources give a history of schism that this council does not resolve.

The earlier caves are pre-Mahayana and the later ones are not, so the site records the change rather than one side of it.

Anatta, that there is no permanent unchanging self, is affirmed across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The Bhaishajyaguru Sutra, devoted to the Medicine Buddha, is canonical scripture in this tradition.

Mahayana monastic ordination, using the Dharmaguptaka or a related Vinaya lineage across East Asia, is also bhikkhu ordination in the formal sense, though local titles such as heshang or osho are more commonly used in practice.

Mahayana bhikkhuni ordination, unlike the Theravada lineage, was never interrupted; East Asian traditions including Taiwan, Korea, Vietnam and mainland China maintain a continuous bhikkhuni sangha.

The Bodhicaryavatara, Shantideva's guide to the bodhisattva path, is this tradition's most beloved single text on bodhicitta in practice.

Bodhicitta, the resolve to attain awakening for the sake of all beings, is this tradition's defining commitment.

Buddhahood as a goal open to all beings, not the achievement of one historical person, is this tradition's central claim.

Buddha-nature, that all beings already possess the potential for buddhahood, is taught across this tradition's sutras.

Dependent origination, that phenomena arise in dependence on conditions, is the central explanatory principle shared across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The Diamond Sutra, a Perfection of Wisdom text, is among the most revered and widely studied scriptures of this tradition.

Dukkha, the unsatisfactoriness of conditioned existence and the first Noble Truth, is affirmed across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The one vehicle is a Mahayana claim before it is a Tiantai one, argued in the Lotus Sutra against the view that the arhat path and the bodhisattva path lead to different goals.

He took the bodhisattva precepts in public, lectured on scripture and wrote commentaries, and styled himself a bodhisattva emperor.

The seven-sevens memorials shape Mahayana funerary custom in East Asia.

The Heart Sutra compresses the Prajnaparamita literature central to this tradition and is its most widely recited scripture.

The Karandavyuha Sutra, source of the mantra Om Manipadme Hum and an early text on Avalokitesvara, is canonical scripture in this tradition.

Karma, action and its consequence, is affirmed as the mechanism of rebirth across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The figure is Maitreya, the buddha of the age to come.

The Lotus Sutra's one-vehicle teaching, that all beings attain buddhahood, is foundational to this tradition's self-understanding.

The mountain is Ksitigarbha's seat in the Chinese four-mountain scheme. The atlas holds no entry for him.

Nirvana, the cessation of craving and the end of rebirth, is the shared goal named across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The Perfection of Wisdom sutras as a family, from the longest recensions to the Heart and Diamond Sutras, are this tradition's scripture on emptiness.

Samsara, the beginningless round of rebirth from which the Buddhist path seeks release, is affirmed across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Sunyata, emptiness of inherent existence, is central to this tradition's Prajnaparamita literature.

The Four Noble Truths, the Buddha's foundational diagnosis of suffering and its cure, are affirmed as the basis of the path across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The Noble Eightfold Path, the fourth Noble Truth's prescribed practice, structures the path across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

Also accepted, from the same textual root, in Mahayana tradition.

The ten perfections, paramitas, cultivated across many lives toward buddhahood, are this tradition's path structure alongside the eightfold path.

Going for refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha is the formula of Buddhist identity across schools, including this tradition.

The three marks, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self, are held as characteristics of all conditioned things across Buddhist schools, including this tradition.

The distinction between conventional and ultimate truth is this tradition's tool for holding emptiness together with everyday reality.

Non-injury is held in Mahayana and argued from compassion for all beings rather than from the karmic cost to the agent, which is the ground on which much of East Asian Mahayana made vegetarianism a monastic rule.

The three roots of unwholesome action, greed, hatred and delusion, are held in Mahayana, and the bodhisattva literature adds the further fault of abandoning beings.

Impermanence is held in Mahayana as one of the three marks, and the Mahayana argument for emptiness is built on it rather than against it.

Giving is the first of the six perfections in Mahayana, and the perfection of it consists in the giving being empty of giver, gift and recipient alike.

Dharma in Mahayana carries the double sense the earlier tradition gave it, the teaching and the order of things, alongside the technical use of dharmas as the constituents whose emptiness the tradition argues for.

The absorptions are retained in Mahayana under the Sanskrit dhyana and keep their place in the training, while the distinctively Mahayana meditative literature grows up beside rather than out of them.

Nirvana as not finally separate from samsara, and its entry deferred by the bodhisattva until all beings are released.

Collected absorption is held in Mahayana, and the Mahayana sutras name samadhis of their own that have no counterpart in the earlier lists.

The five aggregates are retained in Mahayana analysis, and the Heart Sutra's declaration that all five are empty of own-being is the move Mahayana makes upon them.

The four immeasurables are cultivated in Mahayana without limit toward all beings, and the boundlessness is doctrinally load-bearing rather than rhetorical, since the bodhisattva vow is taken for all of them.

The six realms are held in Mahayana as the destinations of rebirth, and the asura are counted as a realm in their own right.

The six sense bases are retained in Mahayana as the account of how experience arises.

The Mahayana six perfections, later extended to ten, with wisdom as the sixth that gives the other five their direction.

The three realms of desire, form and the formless are held in Mahayana as the frame of the cosmos beings are reborn within.

It carries the Mahayana philosophy and the bodhisattva vow alongside its tantric methods, and its scholastic curriculum is largely Indian Mahayana material.