A tree grows eighteen branches.
Which one was planted by the Buddha?
In the last episode, we discussed
that about a hundred years after the Buddha's passing,
the monastic community split in two over a dispute on discipline.
The Sthavira (the Elders) said,
"We follow exactly what the Buddha established."
The Mahasamghika (the Great Assembly) said,
"Times have changed;
rules must evolve as well."
This was the first great schism in Buddhist history.
But the story was far from over.
Once these two camps stabilized,
a new round of internal division began.
Two became four,
four became eight,
and eventually, tradition speaks of eighteen schools.
In reality, there were likely more;
some records list over twenty.
This entire process spanned about three hundred years,
from the 4th century BCE to around the 1st century BCE.
Hello,
everyone.
I'm Wang Lijie.
Today, we are going to draw a panoramic map of sectarian Buddhism.
I don't plan to list all eighteen names for you to memorize—
that's for Buddhist colleges.
What I want to do is help you grasp the key points of divergence
so you can understand why this forest grew the way it did.
You might think division is a bad thing—
how a perfectly good order
shattered into so many pieces.
But I'd like you to look at it from a different perspective.
Consider the development of science.
After Newtonian mechanics was established,
physics didn't just stop.
Then came thermodynamics,
electromagnetism,
relativity,
and quantum mechanics.
These branches occasionally contradict each other.
Even today, quantum mechanics and general relativity haven't been unified.
But would you say physics is in decline?
No.
You would say it's a deep exploration of human cognition in different directions.
Early Buddhist schools were the same.
The Buddha left an extremely concise core framework:
Dependent Origination, Non-Self, and the Four Noble Truths.
But as later practitioners pushed this framework deeper,
they inevitably encountered questions the Buddha hadn't explicitly answered.
Different people gave different answers to these questions.
That is the essence of the sectarian split.
It wasn't a decline;
it was the price of intellectual freedom.
So,
what exactly were they arguing about?
I'll outline the four most central points of contention.
These four questions
cover almost all the underlying logic of the sectarian divisions.
The first debate:
Do things from the past and future
actually still exist?
This sounds like an abstract problem from a philosophy class,
but it's actually directly related to your daily life.
Does the meal you ate yesterday
still exist now?
Common sense tells you
that meal no longer exists.
It has been digested;
it's gone.
But what about your memory of that meal?
The memory remains,
but as for the meal itself,
you would say it is in the past.
Within the Sthavira, there was a very important branch
called the Sarvastivada.
The name itself is its core claim.
"Sarvastivada"
means
all phenomena (dharmas)
That is, all the basic elements that constitute reality,
truly exist in the past, present, and future tenses.
You might find this strange—
how can things in the past still exist?
How can things in the future already exist?
The Sarvastivada school explains it this way:
The substance of a dharma is eternal,
and only its function changes.
It is like an actor;
the person remains the same,
but sometimes they are performing on stage,
and sometimes they are resting backstage.
Being on stage is called the 'present.'
Being backstage is called the 'past' or 'future.'
But the actor themselves does not disappear.
You might ask,
"Isn't this admitting to something eternal and unchanging?"
Didn't the Buddha explicitly say all things are impermanent?
Exactly.
This was precisely where other schools attacked the Sarvastivada.
A branch called the Sautrantika split from the Sarvastivada.
Sautrantika means 'relying on the Sutras.'
Everything is measured by the Buddha's original scriptures.
The Sautrantika said,
"You've made it too complicated."
Past dharmas have already perished;
future dharmas are yet to be born;
only present dharmas truly exist.
Past and future are just projections in our minds—
conceptual constructs.
They are not objective realities.
Does this debate matter?
It is extremely important,
because it relates directly to a core question of practice:
How does karma work?
If the dharmas produced by past actions have perished
and no longer exist,
how can they produce results in the future?
What is the bridge between cause and effect?
The Sarvastivada's answer was:
Those dharmas did not disappear;
they have been there all along,
shifting from an active state to an inactive one.
The Sautrantika's answer was completely different.
They argued karma is transmitted through a mechanism called 'seeds.'
Every action leaves a seed in the consciousness,
which ripens into a fruit when conditions are met.
Did you notice?
This seed theory of the Sautrantika
was later adopted and developed by the Yogacara school.
Yogacara's Alaya-vijnana and seed theory
originated right here.
In my previous lecture on Yogacara, I said
the Alaya-vijnana is like a vast parameter space
storing weights left by all experiences.
The starting point for this idea
is the concept of 'seeds' proposed by the Sautrantika over 2,000 years ago.
See?
A seemingly abstract philosophical debate
traversed centuries
to eventually birth the most sophisticated model of consciousness in Buddhist history.
The second debate:
Is there actually a 'self'?
You might say,
"Didn't the Buddha clearly state 'non-self'?"
What is there to argue about?
That's exactly the problem.
The Buddha did say 'non-self,'
but what exactly did he mean by that?
It is much more complicated than you might think.
There was a school called the Vatsiputriya.
The Vatsiputriya split from the Sthavira nikaya,
and later developed into a larger branch called the Sammitiya.
The Vatsiputriya and their successors, the Sammitiya,
proposed a claim that unsettled all other schools.
They said
there exists something called a 'Pudgala.'
Pudgala is a transliteration from Sanskrit,
meaning a 'person'
or a subject that undergoes samsara and carries karmic results.
Other schools immediately jumped up.
"Aren't you just admitting there is a self?"
The Buddha's core teaching is non-self.
"You are turning back the clock on history!"
The Vatsiputriya response was very sophisticated.
They said,
"I didn't say there is an eternal, unchanging soul."
"That is the Brahmanical position."
"The Pudgala I speak of is neither the same as the Five Aggregates,"
"nor separate from them."
"It is not the aggregates themselves,"
"but it isn't something that exists independently outside them either."
"It cannot be simply defined as 'existing' or 'non-existing'."
This answer sounds slippery,
but if you think about it,
it addresses a real difficulty.
If there is no form of continuous subject,
then who is being reborn?
Who is creating karma?
Who is receiving the karmic retribution?
Who is practicing?
Who finally achieves enlightenment?
If from start to finish there is only a pile of changing aggregates,
why is there a causal link between the aggregates of one moment and the next?
The Buddha himself actually touched on this problem.
Among the fourteen questions he refused to answer,
were questions about the continuity of the subject, like whether the Tathagata exists after death.
The Buddha's attitude was
that such questions cannot be answered with "yes" or "no."
The Vatsiputriya to some extent inherited this attitude.
But the most surprising thing is a historical fact.
According to the observations of Master Yijing,
who traveled from Tang China to India in the 7th century,
the Vatsiputriya and the Sammitiya combined
constituted the largest Buddhist school in India at that time.
Larger than the Sarvastivada,
and larger than the Mahasamghika.
Think about what that means.
The school with the most followers in Buddhist history
was precisely the one criticized by others for deviating from the non-self teaching.
What does this tell us?
It shows that the concept of non-self in actual spiritual practice
is too difficult for ordinary people to grasp.
While the Pudgala theory is philosophically controversial,
it gave ordinary practitioners something to hold onto.
If you tell someone there is absolutely no self,
they feel nihilistic.
If you tell them there's a hard-to-define but existing continuity,
they can understand samsara,
understand karma,
and understand the meaning of practice.
This is the eternal tension between theoretical purity and practical feasibility.
The third debate:
What exactly is the Buddha?
We touched on this question in the last episode.
The Mahasamghika believed the Buddha is a transcendent being.
His physical body is just a manifestation;
his true existence is infinite and omnipresent.
The Sthavira believed the Buddha is essentially a human being,
albeit one who most thoroughly realized human potential.
During the sectarian period,
this divergence deepened further.
Branches of the Mahasamghika proposed even more radical views of the Buddha.
Some schools said
every word the Buddha spoke was of definitive meaning,
directly expressing the ultimate truth.
There were no "expedient" teachings.
Other schools said
the Buddha could answer everyone's different questions with a single sound.
To the Sthavira, these claims looked like deification.
The Sthavira insisted
that the Buddha experienced birth, old age, sickness, and death.
He would get indigestion after eating,
and his feet would ache from walking.
Even in teaching, he needed to adapt his phrasing for different audiences.
These were not flaws of the Buddha,
but precisely where his greatness as a human lay.
He achieved complete enlightenment within human limitations.
Have you noticed an interesting pattern?
Those schools more inclined to deify the Buddha
often tended to develop the teachings more openly.
In contrast, the schools that insisted the Buddha was human
tended to be more conservative,
strictly guarding the original teachings.
This is no coincidence.
When you view the Buddha as a man,
you respect the specific words he left behind more deeply.
Because these were the life's work of a mortal doing his best;
changing one word could distort the whole thing.
But when you view the Buddha as a transcendent being,
you are bolder in your innovation.
Since the Buddha's wisdom is infinite,
he could continue to reveal new teachings through other means.
Both attitudes have their merits,
but the tension between them is real.
The later rise of Mahayana Buddhism
was, in a sense, taking the Mahasamghika line to its extreme.
The fourth debate:
Is enlightenment achieved all at once,
or through gradual stages?
The mainstream Sthavira view is
that practice must be gradual.
From Stream-enterer to Once-returner to Non-returner,
and finally to Arhat,
you proceed step by step.
Each stage requires cutting off specific defilements;
you cannot skip levels.
It's like climbing stairs,
one step at a time.
No matter how fit you are,
you can't jump from the first floor straight to the fourth.
But some branches of the Mahasamghika held a very different view.
They claimed
that the core of enlightenment is a momentary event.
You can eliminate all defilements in a single instant.
Prior gradual practice is just preparation.
It's like fumbling for a light switch in a dark room.
You may search for a long time,
but the moment the light goes on,
the entire room is illuminated at once.
No corner is lit before another.
True enlightenment is sudden.
This debate would recur throughout history.
Centuries later in China,
the famous dispute between Shenxiu and Huineng regarding sudden versus gradual enlightenment
had its roots right here.
Shenxiu said the body is a Bodhi tree requiring constant polishing;
that is the gradual path.
Huineng said since "originally nothing exists," where can dust alight?
That is the sudden path.
Many think this debate originated within Chinese Chan Buddhism,
but it didn't.
Its seeds were sown during the era of Nikaya Buddhism in India.
So,
that concludes the four core debates.
Have you noticed something?
These four questions—
the existence of Dharmas, the self, the Buddha's nature, and the path to enlightenment—
all point to a single, deeper issue.
Is the Buddha's teaching a closed system
or an open system?
If it's a closed system,
then every word the Buddha spoke is the final answer.
The task for posterity is simply to preserve and annotate.
If it's an open system,
then the Buddha opened a door,
and subsequent generations can and should explore the world beyond it.
The Sthavira tended toward the former;
the Mahasamghika toward the latter.
And those schools that split off from the Sthavira,
such as the Sarvastivada,
actually did something quite contradictory.
Verbally, they insisted on staying true to the Buddha's fundamentals,
but in practice,
they developed an incredibly complex Abhidharma philosophical system.
The sophistication of this system far exceeded the scope of the original teachings.
While claiming to be the most orthodox,
they built a massive philosophical edifice outside the Buddha's original framework.
This is the reality of how human thought develops.
No one can truly remain unchanged.
Even the most conservative faction
inevitably creates while trying to preserve.
Now, let's step back and look at the big picture.
The number "Eighteen Schools" shouldn't be taken too literally.
That is just the traditional saying.
The actual schisms likely exceeded eighteen.
Moreover, lists provided by different texts don't fully align.
But what matters isn't the specific number of sects,
but the patterns in how they emerged.
The disagreements between these schools
seemed on the surface to be about nuances of the Dharma,
but at their core, they were different answers to fundamental questions.
And every answer
did not come out of thin air;
each had its own internal logic
and responded to the genuine needs of certain practitioners.
Remember what we've been doing throughout this series?
At every new historical milestone,
we use the coordinate system from the "Factory Settings" episode to ask:
Is this development
closer to or further from what the Buddha saw
under the Bodhi tree?
My view is this:
The process of sectarian division
involved both convergence and divergence.
The convergence part is that
these schools did immense refinement work on the Buddha's framework.
When the Buddha spoke of Dependent Origination,
they probed its specific mechanisms.
When the Buddha spoke of Non-Self,
they analyzed what Non-Self actually meant.
This effort toward refinement was sincere
and necessary.
The divergence part is that
once you dismantle a living experience of awakening
into increasingly sophisticated conceptual systems,
the concepts themselves become new attachments.
The Sarvastivada school developed a classification of 75 dharmas,
dissecting every layer of reality into minimal units for analysis.
This analytical capacity is awe-inspiring.
But the Buddha's original teaching
wasn't for you to memorize a list of 75 dharmas;
it was for you to see Dependent Origination,
to see Impermanence,
and to see the essence of it all.
The more sophisticated the tool,
the easier it is to forget what the tool is for.
But that is the price of intellectual development.
You cannot demand refinement
while also expecting to keep the original simplicity forever.
Like physics evolving from Newton's laws to the Standard Model,
you can't say the Standard Model betrayed Newton.
It simply went further in the direction Newton opened.
As for whether going further always means getting it right,
that's another question.
Some compare the sectarian split to the decline of Buddhism.
I think that's a misinterpretation.
If a system of thought never diverges,
there are only two possibilities:
either it's too simple
to have anything worth debating,
or it's too closed off
to allow debate.
The Buddha's teachings were not simple,
nor did he ever forbid discussion.
So divergence was inevitable.
One could even say
that the divergence itself proved the vitality of this thought system.
The greatest legacy of the sectarian era
was its cultivation of a rigorous tradition of philosophical inquiry.
Without the 300 years of conceptual sharpening during the sectarian period,
Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka philosophy would have been impossible.
Nagarjuna didn't invent his arguments for Emptiness out of nowhere.
He stood in the philosophical arena built by the Sarvastivada and Sautrantika,
using the logical weapons they had polished
to dismantle the very edifices they had built.
Similarly,
without the Sautrantika's Seed Theory,
the later Yogacara school of Asanga and Vasubandhu could not have emerged.
The system of eight consciousnesses and the theory of seed perfuming
are fruits of Sautrantika thought blooming centuries later.
So you see,
Sectarian Buddhism was not a period of decline,
but a period of infrastructure building.
It was like a construction site,
appearing messy
and shrouded in dust,
but the foundations of all great later schools
were laid during this time.
Now,
concerning the most influential sect,
the Sarvastivada,
what kind of philosophical edifice did it actually build?
How did its 75-vibhaga system slice reality into its thinnest parts?
Is its claim that 'all exists in the three times' and that 'dharmas exist forever'
actually logically sound?
These questions
we will deconstruct specifically in the next episode.
Do you think the Vatsiputriya's answer regarding Anatman and Pudgala—
neither identical to nor different from the five aggregates—
was a retreat,
or a deeper insight?
On this question,
I would love to hear your thoughts.
I am Wang Lijie,
and I will see you next time.