The Rise of Mahayana Buddhism: A Self-Study of Its Self-Identity and Institutionalization Through Reconstructing the Biographical Process of the Buddha
The present study challenges many traditional views about the origins of Mahayana Buddhism and this provides a new window through which to view its rise. It does this through a new hermeneutics of the bodhisattva ideal as well as of the biographical process of the Buddha Sakyamuni. While the concept of the bodhisattva is shared by both the Mahayana and Hinayana traditions, these traditions define the ideal in fundamentally different ways.
In the second chapter, by reconstructing the biographical process of the Buddha, I examine how the previous lives of the Buddha, related in the Jataka stories were translated into a viable model for ordinary Buddhist practitioners.
In the third chapter, regarding the self-identity of Mahayana in its formative stage, I discuss two different views of the historical nature of Mahayana. One view sees it as a gradual development or outgrowth of Hinayana, while the other sees it as a militant movement, in the sense that the movement denied the earlier tradition and postulated its identity in contradiction to it. I have discussed this through two early Mahayana texts, the Astasahzasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, each of which represents a distinctive view of the historical nature of Mahayana Buddhism.
Finally, in the fourth chapter I examine the concept of anutpattika-dharma-ksanti from two perspectives: the semantic and the philosophical. First, from the semantic perspective, I examine the various meanings of "ksanti" in Buddhist texts written in Pali, Sanskrit, and Chinese. I also explore the possibility of understanding the diversity of meanings of a single word through "polysemous" analysis. From the philosophical perspective, I examine the philosophical issues concerning both "emptiness" and the concept of "ksanti" in the Mahayana tradition. Also, I examine how another Buddhist tradition, the Abhidharma, developed "ksanti" into a technical term defining a type of cognitive function. I discuss how the fundamental differences in their philosophies are illustrated in terms of their different understandings of "ksanti".
