Buddhism, one of the major religions of the world, was founded by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, who lived in northern India from c.560 to c.480 BC. The time of the Buddha was one of social and religious change, marked by the further advance of Aryan civilization into the Ganges Plain, the development of trade and cities, the breakdown of old tribal structures, and the rise of a whole spectrum of new religious movements that responded to the demands of the times (Metzner, 1996).
These movements were derived from the Brahmanic tradition of Hinduism but were also reactions against it. Of the new sects, Buddhism was the most successful and eventually spread throughout India and most of Asia. Today it is common to divide Buddhism into two main branches. The Theravada, or "Way of the Elders," is the more conservative of the two; it is dominant in Sri Lanka, Burma (Myanmar), and Thailand. The Mahayana, or "Great Vehicle," is more diverse and liberal; it is found mainly in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan, and among Tibetan peoples, where it is distinguished by its emphasis on the Buddhist tantras (Metzner, 1996). The purpose of this paper is to examine the major teachings of Mahayana Buddhism.
In order to fully understand Mahayana Buddhism, it is important to first understand what is believed to be the original teachings of the Buddha---teachings which are termed "the Four Noble Truths." These truths have been summarized by Garfield (1994) who reports that the first of the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha held, is suffering (duhkha). By this, he meant not only that human existence is occasionally painful but that all beings--humans, animals, ghosts, hell-beings, even the gods--are caught up in samsara, a cycle of rebirth, a maze of suffering in which their actions (KARMA) keep them wandering not only in a particular life but in one life to the next (Reincarnation). Relevant to this teaching of suffering and impermanence is the no-self (an...