The origin of Mahayana Buddhism
remains a mystery to this day
At the end of the last episode I said
Theravada Buddhism is like a calibration mirror
When you lose your way in the ever grander Buddhist narratives that came later
it helps to turn back and look into it
to see what the Buddha's most original teaching actually looked like
I said back then
that Mahayana Buddhism was about to take the stage
But when I actually traced its origins
I ran into a deeply unsettling fact
nobody knows how Mahayana Buddhism actually appeared
It is not that there are no explanations
there are actually plenty of them
but none of them can do what we did with the sectarian schism
point at a concrete event and say on this day in this place
Mahayana Buddhism was born
It has no founder
no first council
and no founding document
It is like a fog
rising from some valley you cannot identify
and by the time you notice
the whole mountain is already covered
This is probably the biggest unsolved case in all of Buddhist history
Hello
everyone
I am Leo Wang
I have noticed that in the comments of the last few episodes
one question keeps coming up did the Buddha really teach Mahayana
Some of you said
after watching the episodes on the schism and Theravada Buddhism
your worldview fell apart
I understand that feeling
but let me say this
if your faith cannot withstand questioning from historical facts
then it was never solid to begin with
Breaking it
is not losing anything
it is finally a chance to rebuild on more honest ground
This question comes at exactly the right moment
We have followed the historical thread of the Dharma all the way here
witnessing the Buddha's awakening under the Bodhi tree and the schism of the schools
the precise analysis of the Sarvastivada and Ashoka's imperial push
and Theravada Buddhism's factory sealed preservation
Now
Mahayana Buddhism is about to formally take the stage
But have you noticed
every development so far can be traced to a clear starting point
The schism traces to the ten unlawful points dispute at the second council
Ashoka's patronage traces to a specific king and stone edicts
Theravada Buddhism traces to Mahinda
on the day he carried the Theravada teachings to Sri Lanka
And Mahayana Buddhism
Its birth certificate is blank
In any serious academic work
you will not find a definite answer
When
where
who started it
why they started it
Behind every question is a pile of contradictory speculation
Let me start with what we can be sure of
The earliest textual traces of Mahayana Buddhism
appear roughly between the first century BCE and the first century CE
The earliest batch are the Prajnaparamita scriptures
especially the Eight Thousand Line Prajnaparamita
These texts belong to no known sectarian lineage
They are not in the Pali Canon
and not in the Sarvastivada literature either
It is as if they appeared out of thin air
In the Gandhara region
today's border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan
archaeologists found a set of Buddhist manuscripts in Gandhari
dating to around the first century CE
and they include early fragments of the Prajnaparamita sutras
This is the oldest known physical evidence of Mahayana scripture
It shows that at least two thousand years ago
people in northwest India were already copying these new scriptures
But copying is not the same as composing
When exactly were these sutras written
who wrote them
were they older oral traditions put into writing
or were they composed directly in writing
Nobody can say for sure
This is the first layer of the mystery we can see Mahayana Buddhism already existing
but we cannot see the moment it was born
Then comes an even deeper puzzle
The Mahayana scriptures tell their own story the Prajnaparamita was not newly written by later people
it had always been there
it had simply been hidden
Hidden where
The traditional answer is the naga palace
Later Nagarjuna the founder of the Madhyamaka school
is said to have retrieved these scriptures from the naga palace
and brought them back to the human world
This story has its own place within the tradition of faith
but seen through a historian's eyes
it dodges the most crucial question
If the Prajnaparamita really came from the Buddha's own mouth
why would he hide his most important teaching from his closest disciples
Why did nobody mention it at the first council
Why in centuries of sectarian canons
is there almost no corresponding trace of it
You can say he was waiting for the right moment
or that his disciples were not ready
but these explanations share one weakness they cannot be falsified
You cannot test them
you can only choose to believe or not
Scholars lean toward a different explanation
The Mahayana scriptures
were most likely composed by later Buddhist practitioners
Note
I said composed
not forged
The distinction between these two words is crucial
In the intellectual tradition of ancient India
a scripture proclaimed in the Buddha's name
did not necessarily mean these were Shakyamuni's own literal words
It could mean that what this scripture expresses agrees with the Buddha's awakening
and accords with the basic principles of the Dharma
In an oral culture
spoken by the Buddha can mean spoken by the Dharma
It does not necessarily mean Shakyamuni
personally said these words under the Bodhi tree or at the Deer Park
This is not sophistry
Many Brahmin scriptures worked the same way
The authors of the Upanishads believed they had received eternal truth
so they transmitted it in the name of ancient sages
In that culture
what mattered was not who said it
but whether it was right
So
if you apply modern copyright standards
and demand to know whether Shakyamuni himself wrote this passage
you may be using the wrong framework
to ask a question that does not belong to that era
So if Mahayana was not invented by someone on some day
how did it slowly grow into being
Scholars have several hypotheses
Let me walk through them
The first is the stupa worship hypothesis
Some scholars argue
that Mahayana Buddhism did not originate inside the monastic order
but grew out of religious practice around stupas
Lay believers worshipped and made offerings around relic stupas
and gradually developed their own spiritual needs
They were not satisfied with the monastic order's elite path of practice
they wanted a road ordinary people could walk
and so the bodhisattva ideal began to sprout
This hypothesis was once very popular
because it explains why Mahayana Buddhism stresses
saving beings engaging the world and all beings can become buddhas
These do sound like lay people calling out to the monastics do not forget us
But later inscription archaeology raised serious doubts
Scholars found
that among the donors at early stupas
monks and nuns made up a large share
not purely lay people
And the earliest Mahayana scriptures did not especially elevate the lay status
many passages actually stress the excellence of monastic practice
So
the claim that lay people drove Mahayana no longer holds up well
The second is the forest practitioner hypothesis
Mahayana Buddhism did not emerge from urban monasteries
but was born among practitioners in the mountains and forests
These ascetics kept away from the institutionalized life of the order
meditating deeply in the wilderness
and in long meditation heard or saw new teachings
Scholars who support this note
that many early Mahayana scriptures set practice in the aranya
meaning wilderness forest and open country
In these sutras the bodhisattva is not teaching in a monastery
but practicing alone in caves and under great trees
And many Prajnaparamita texts are full of descriptions of deep meditative states
which likely means the authors themselves
were practitioners long immersed in meditation
This hypothesis is persuasive
but hard to confirm
Forest practitioners tend to leave no written records
carve no inscriptions
and build no monasteries
The evidence of their existence
is precisely the absence of evidence
The third
and the view scholars increasingly favor
is that Mahayana Buddhism came from no single source
but from many streams converging
Different regions different communities different practice traditions
within roughly the same historical window
independently developed some shared themes
such as the bodhisattva ideal prajna wisdom and the view of emptiness
and a certain dissatisfaction with the arhat path
These currents of thought were not launched by one person
nor decided at one meeting
They are like groundwater
seeping to the surface in different places
and finally merging into a great river
You can picture it as an emergence event in the history of ideas
not a top down design
but a bottom up growth
You might ask why practitioners in these different places
came up with similar ideas at roughly the same time
For that we return to the structural tensions we covered in sectarian Buddhism
The first tension
the ceiling on the goal of practice
The ultimate goal in sectarian Buddhism is to become an arhat
to end all defilements
and enter nirvana
But some began asking an unsettling question
the Buddha himself did not walk the arhat path
The Buddha did not just free himself from suffering
after awakening he spent forty five years teaching beings
His road was longer wider and far more exhausting than the arhat's
So why did the later systems of practice
only encourage us to walk a narrower road than the Buddha's
Is that not self imposed limitation
The second tension
the elitism of the monastic order
The Abhidharma system grew ever more intricate
requiring professional training to master
What about ordinary people
Are lay followers only able to support the order and store up merit for the next life
forever auditing the Dharma from the back row
If the Buddha's teaching was truly meant for all beings
why can only a tiny few walk the whole path
The third tension
the philosophical dead end
The Sarvastivada broke the world down to extreme precision
but its assumption that the three times truly exist stirred growing internal debate
Dissenting voices had already appeared inside the schools
which later became the Sautrantika
Some sharp thinkers sensed
that maybe the problem was not insufficient analysis
but that the direction of analysis itself needed rethinking
Three tensions stacked together
like tectonic plates storing energy underground
No one needs to plan a revolution
once the energy hits critical point
the crust splits on its own
and new mountains rise on their own
Mahayana Buddhism
was very likely just such a mountain building event of intellectual plates
At this point
you may still be stuck on that most tangled question
did the Buddha really teach the Mahayana scriptures
Let me answer in a different way
While alive the Buddha left an extremely important teaching
later called the Four Great References
He said
if someone claims to have heard a piece of Dharma
do not believe it lightly just because that person has authority
compare those words against the known sutras and vinaya
If it matches the Dharma and accords with the vinaya
accept it
If it does not
set it aside
Did you catch that
The standard he gave was not whether I personally said these words
but whether these words accord with the principles of the Dharma
The Buddha himself handed final authority to the Dharma
not to his own personal authority
If you truly use the standard the Buddha gave
to face the claim that Mahayana is not the Buddha's word
you should not ask who wrote this sutra
but ask whether what this sutra teaches
is consistent with dependent origination non self and the end of suffering
If it is consistent
it is the Dharma
no matter who the author is
If it is not
then even signed with Shakyamuni's name
it still is not
This is why throughout this series I keep doing one thing
giving you a ruler
rather than an idol
Have you seen impermanence
Has the self loosened
Do you understand the structure of suffering
Is your direction out of suffering right
With this ruler in hand
you no longer need to agonize over authorship
because what really matters has changed it is not who said it
but whether it works
But we cannot abandon academic honesty
The rise of Mahayana Buddhism really did change many things
This was no minor patch
It redefined the ultimate goal of practice
from self liberation to saving all beings
It introduced a new philosophical framework
Prajna emptiness is far more thorough and radical than the Abhidharma analysis of dharmas
And it created an entirely new path of practice
The rhythm and logic of the bodhisattva path differ completely from the arhat path
These changes run deep
Are they deepening the Buddha's original insight
or rewriting the Buddha's original insight
That question cannot be answered in one episode
We need to step into act three
and unpack the inner logic of each key transformation one by one
And the first core issue of act three
which is also the detonation point of the whole Mahayana revolution
is what the ultimate goal of practice should actually be
Is it to become an arhat who ends all defilements and passes away alone
or a bodhisattva who saves beings life after life
This sounds like a simple multiple choice question
but behind it lies a deep disagreement about the nature of awakening
Has the arhat really reached the end
If so
why did the Buddha go so much further
If not
then that goal countless practitioners spent centuries striving to reach
what exactly was it
Once this question is seriously asked
it can never be taken back
What do you think
Is the end of practice
the stillness of one person
or the awakening of everyone
Tell me in the comments
I am Leo Wang
see you next episode