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The origin of Mahayana Buddhism

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remains a mystery to this day

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At the end of the last episode I said

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Theravada Buddhism is like a calibration mirror

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When you lose your way in the ever grander Buddhist narratives that came later

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it helps to turn back and look into it

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to see what the Buddha's most original teaching actually looked like

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I said back then

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that Mahayana Buddhism was about to take the stage

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But when I actually traced its origins

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I ran into a deeply unsettling fact

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nobody knows how Mahayana Buddhism actually appeared

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It is not that there are no explanations

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there are actually plenty of them

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but none of them can do what we did with the sectarian schism

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point at a concrete event and say on this day in this place

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Mahayana Buddhism was born

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It has no founder

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no first council

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and no founding document

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It is like a fog

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rising from some valley you cannot identify

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and by the time you notice

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the whole mountain is already covered

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This is probably the biggest unsolved case in all of Buddhist history

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Hello

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everyone

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I am Leo Wang

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I have noticed that in the comments of the last few episodes

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one question keeps coming up did the Buddha really teach Mahayana

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Some of you said

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after watching the episodes on the schism and Theravada Buddhism

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your worldview fell apart

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I understand that feeling

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but let me say this

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if your faith cannot withstand questioning from historical facts

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then it was never solid to begin with

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Breaking it

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is not losing anything

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it is finally a chance to rebuild on more honest ground

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This question comes at exactly the right moment

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We have followed the historical thread of the Dharma all the way here

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witnessing the Buddha's awakening under the Bodhi tree and the schism of the schools

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the precise analysis of the Sarvastivada and Ashoka's imperial push

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and Theravada Buddhism's factory sealed preservation

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Now

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Mahayana Buddhism is about to formally take the stage

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But have you noticed

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every development so far can be traced to a clear starting point

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The schism traces to the ten unlawful points dispute at the second council

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Ashoka's patronage traces to a specific king and stone edicts

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Theravada Buddhism traces to Mahinda

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on the day he carried the Theravada teachings to Sri Lanka

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And Mahayana Buddhism

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Its birth certificate is blank

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In any serious academic work

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you will not find a definite answer

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When

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where

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who started it

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why they started it

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Behind every question is a pile of contradictory speculation

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Let me start with what we can be sure of

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The earliest textual traces of Mahayana Buddhism

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appear roughly between the first century BCE and the first century CE

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The earliest batch are the Prajnaparamita scriptures

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especially the Eight Thousand Line Prajnaparamita

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These texts belong to no known sectarian lineage

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They are not in the Pali Canon

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and not in the Sarvastivada literature either

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It is as if they appeared out of thin air

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In the Gandhara region

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today's border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan

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archaeologists found a set of Buddhist manuscripts in Gandhari

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dating to around the first century CE

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and they include early fragments of the Prajnaparamita sutras

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This is the oldest known physical evidence of Mahayana scripture

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It shows that at least two thousand years ago

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people in northwest India were already copying these new scriptures

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But copying is not the same as composing

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When exactly were these sutras written

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who wrote them

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were they older oral traditions put into writing

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or were they composed directly in writing

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Nobody can say for sure

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This is the first layer of the mystery we can see Mahayana Buddhism already existing

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but we cannot see the moment it was born

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Then comes an even deeper puzzle

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The Mahayana scriptures tell their own story the Prajnaparamita was not newly written by later people

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it had always been there

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it had simply been hidden

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Hidden where

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The traditional answer is the naga palace

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Later Nagarjuna the founder of the Madhyamaka school

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is said to have retrieved these scriptures from the naga palace

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and brought them back to the human world

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This story has its own place within the tradition of faith

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but seen through a historian's eyes

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it dodges the most crucial question

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If the Prajnaparamita really came from the Buddha's own mouth

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why would he hide his most important teaching from his closest disciples

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Why did nobody mention it at the first council

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Why in centuries of sectarian canons

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is there almost no corresponding trace of it

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You can say he was waiting for the right moment

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or that his disciples were not ready

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but these explanations share one weakness they cannot be falsified

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You cannot test them

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you can only choose to believe or not

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Scholars lean toward a different explanation

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The Mahayana scriptures

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were most likely composed by later Buddhist practitioners

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Note

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I said composed

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not forged

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The distinction between these two words is crucial

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In the intellectual tradition of ancient India

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a scripture proclaimed in the Buddha's name

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did not necessarily mean these were Shakyamuni's own literal words

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It could mean that what this scripture expresses agrees with the Buddha's awakening

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and accords with the basic principles of the Dharma

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In an oral culture

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spoken by the Buddha can mean spoken by the Dharma

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It does not necessarily mean Shakyamuni

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personally said these words under the Bodhi tree or at the Deer Park

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This is not sophistry

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Many Brahmin scriptures worked the same way

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The authors of the Upanishads believed they had received eternal truth

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so they transmitted it in the name of ancient sages

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In that culture

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what mattered was not who said it

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but whether it was right

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So

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if you apply modern copyright standards

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and demand to know whether Shakyamuni himself wrote this passage

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you may be using the wrong framework

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to ask a question that does not belong to that era

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So if Mahayana was not invented by someone on some day

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how did it slowly grow into being

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Scholars have several hypotheses

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Let me walk through them

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The first is the stupa worship hypothesis

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Some scholars argue

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that Mahayana Buddhism did not originate inside the monastic order

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but grew out of religious practice around stupas

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Lay believers worshipped and made offerings around relic stupas

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and gradually developed their own spiritual needs

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They were not satisfied with the monastic order's elite path of practice

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they wanted a road ordinary people could walk

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and so the bodhisattva ideal began to sprout

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This hypothesis was once very popular

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because it explains why Mahayana Buddhism stresses

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saving beings engaging the world and all beings can become buddhas

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These do sound like lay people calling out to the monastics do not forget us

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But later inscription archaeology raised serious doubts

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Scholars found

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that among the donors at early stupas

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monks and nuns made up a large share

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not purely lay people

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And the earliest Mahayana scriptures did not especially elevate the lay status

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many passages actually stress the excellence of monastic practice

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So

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the claim that lay people drove Mahayana no longer holds up well

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The second is the forest practitioner hypothesis

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Mahayana Buddhism did not emerge from urban monasteries

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but was born among practitioners in the mountains and forests

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These ascetics kept away from the institutionalized life of the order

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meditating deeply in the wilderness

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and in long meditation heard or saw new teachings

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Scholars who support this note

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that many early Mahayana scriptures set practice in the aranya

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meaning wilderness forest and open country

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In these sutras the bodhisattva is not teaching in a monastery

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but practicing alone in caves and under great trees

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And many Prajnaparamita texts are full of descriptions of deep meditative states

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which likely means the authors themselves

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were practitioners long immersed in meditation

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This hypothesis is persuasive

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but hard to confirm

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Forest practitioners tend to leave no written records

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carve no inscriptions

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and build no monasteries

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The evidence of their existence

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is precisely the absence of evidence

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The third

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and the view scholars increasingly favor

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is that Mahayana Buddhism came from no single source

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but from many streams converging

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Different regions different communities different practice traditions

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within roughly the same historical window

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independently developed some shared themes

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such as the bodhisattva ideal prajna wisdom and the view of emptiness

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and a certain dissatisfaction with the arhat path

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These currents of thought were not launched by one person

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nor decided at one meeting

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They are like groundwater

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seeping to the surface in different places

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and finally merging into a great river

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You can picture it as an emergence event in the history of ideas

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not a top down design

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but a bottom up growth

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You might ask why practitioners in these different places

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came up with similar ideas at roughly the same time

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For that we return to the structural tensions we covered in sectarian Buddhism

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The first tension

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the ceiling on the goal of practice

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The ultimate goal in sectarian Buddhism is to become an arhat

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to end all defilements

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and enter nirvana

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But some began asking an unsettling question

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the Buddha himself did not walk the arhat path

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The Buddha did not just free himself from suffering

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after awakening he spent forty five years teaching beings

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His road was longer wider and far more exhausting than the arhat's

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So why did the later systems of practice

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only encourage us to walk a narrower road than the Buddha's

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Is that not self imposed limitation

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The second tension

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the elitism of the monastic order

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The Abhidharma system grew ever more intricate

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requiring professional training to master

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What about ordinary people

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Are lay followers only able to support the order and store up merit for the next life

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forever auditing the Dharma from the back row

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If the Buddha's teaching was truly meant for all beings

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why can only a tiny few walk the whole path

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The third tension

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the philosophical dead end

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The Sarvastivada broke the world down to extreme precision

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but its assumption that the three times truly exist stirred growing internal debate

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Dissenting voices had already appeared inside the schools

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which later became the Sautrantika

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Some sharp thinkers sensed

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that maybe the problem was not insufficient analysis

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but that the direction of analysis itself needed rethinking

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Three tensions stacked together

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like tectonic plates storing energy underground

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No one needs to plan a revolution

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once the energy hits critical point

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the crust splits on its own

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and new mountains rise on their own

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Mahayana Buddhism

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was very likely just such a mountain building event of intellectual plates

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At this point

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you may still be stuck on that most tangled question

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did the Buddha really teach the Mahayana scriptures

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Let me answer in a different way

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While alive the Buddha left an extremely important teaching

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later called the Four Great References

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He said

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if someone claims to have heard a piece of Dharma

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do not believe it lightly just because that person has authority

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compare those words against the known sutras and vinaya

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If it matches the Dharma and accords with the vinaya

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accept it

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If it does not

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set it aside

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Did you catch that

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The standard he gave was not whether I personally said these words

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but whether these words accord with the principles of the Dharma

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The Buddha himself handed final authority to the Dharma

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not to his own personal authority

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If you truly use the standard the Buddha gave

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to face the claim that Mahayana is not the Buddha's word

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you should not ask who wrote this sutra

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but ask whether what this sutra teaches

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is consistent with dependent origination non self and the end of suffering

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If it is consistent

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it is the Dharma

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no matter who the author is

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If it is not

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then even signed with Shakyamuni's name

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it still is not

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This is why throughout this series I keep doing one thing

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giving you a ruler

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rather than an idol

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Have you seen impermanence

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Has the self loosened

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Do you understand the structure of suffering

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Is your direction out of suffering right

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With this ruler in hand

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you no longer need to agonize over authorship

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because what really matters has changed it is not who said it

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but whether it works

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But we cannot abandon academic honesty

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The rise of Mahayana Buddhism really did change many things

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This was no minor patch

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It redefined the ultimate goal of practice

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from self liberation to saving all beings

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It introduced a new philosophical framework

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Prajna emptiness is far more thorough and radical than the Abhidharma analysis of dharmas

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And it created an entirely new path of practice

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The rhythm and logic of the bodhisattva path differ completely from the arhat path

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These changes run deep

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Are they deepening the Buddha's original insight

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or rewriting the Buddha's original insight

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That question cannot be answered in one episode

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We need to step into act three

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and unpack the inner logic of each key transformation one by one

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And the first core issue of act three

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which is also the detonation point of the whole Mahayana revolution

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is what the ultimate goal of practice should actually be

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Is it to become an arhat who ends all defilements and passes away alone

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or a bodhisattva who saves beings life after life

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This sounds like a simple multiple choice question

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but behind it lies a deep disagreement about the nature of awakening

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Has the arhat really reached the end

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If so

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why did the Buddha go so much further

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If not

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then that goal countless practitioners spent centuries striving to reach

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what exactly was it

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Once this question is seriously asked

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it can never be taken back

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What do you think

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Is the end of practice

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the stillness of one person

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or the awakening of everyone

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Tell me in the comments

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I am Leo Wang

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see you next episode