Buddhism

The Development of Buddhism

With the death of the Buddha, the community of his followers (the sangha) immediately faced a crisis: what were they to do in the absence of the master? The lay followers who had remained householders undertook to honor his bodily relics, which were enshrined in monuments called Stupas. This was the beginning of a cult of devotion (Bhakti) to the person of the Buddha that was to focus not only on stupas but on many holy sites (such as the bodhi tree), which became centers of pilgrimage, and eventually on Buddha images as well.
On the other hand, those Buddhists who had become monks and nuns undertook the gathering and preservation of their departed master's teachings (the dharma). According to tradition (the historicity of which many scholars have contested), a great council of 500 enlightened monks was held at Rajagrha, immediately after the Buddha's death, and all the Buddha's sermons (the sutras) and the rules of the discipline (vinaya) were remembered and recited.

In the years that followed, the monks gradually consolidated their communal life. Originally, like many other wandering mendicants of their time, they had tended to be constantly on the move, congregating only once a year for the three months of the monsoon. Gradually, these rain - retreats grew into more structured year round monastic settlements. As new monastic communities developed, it was inevitable that some differences in their understanding of both the Buddha's teaching (dharma) and of the rules of the order (vinaya) should arise. Within 100 years of the Buddha's death, a second council took place at Vaisali, during which the advocates of certain relaxations in the vinaya rules were condemned. Then, c. 250 BC, the great Buddhist emperor Asoka is said to have held a third council at Pataliputra to settle certain doctrinal controversies.

It is clear from the accounts of these and other Buddhist councils that whatever the unity of early Buddhism may have been, it was rapidly split into various sectarian divisions. One of the earliest and most important of these divisions was that between the Sthavira (Elder) and the Mahasamghika (Great Council) schools. Within the former developed such important sects as the Sarvastivada (whose canon was in Sanskrit) and the Theravadins, whose canon is in Pali and who today are the only surviving representatives of the whole of the Hinayana, or "Lesser Vehicle," of Buddhism.

The Mahasamghika, also a Hinayanist sect, died out completely, but it is important because it represents one of the forerunners of the Mahayana doctrines. These doctrines were to include a different understanding of the nature of the Buddha, an emphasis on the figure of the Bodhisattva, and on the practice of the perfections (paramitas).

In addition, within the Mahayana, a number of great thinkers were to add some new doctrinal dimensions to Buddhism. One of these was Nagarjuna, the 2d century AD founder of the Madhyamika school. Using subtle and thoroughgoing analyses, Nagarjuna took the theory of dependent origination (pratityasamutpada) to its logical limits, showing that the absolute relativity of everything means finally the emptiness (sunyata) of all things.

Another important Mahayana school arose in the 4th century AD when the brothers Asanga and Vasubandhu sought to establish the doctrine of Vijnanavada - that the mind alone exists and that objects have no reality external to it. This idealist doctrine and Nagarjuna's emptiness were to play important roles in the further developments of Buddhist thought outside of India. Within India itself, they paved the way for yet another stage in the elaboration of the religion: the development of Buddhist tantra.

Tantric Buddhism, which is sometimes separated from the Mahayana as a distinct "Thunderbolt - Vehicle" (Vajrayana), became especially important in Tibet, where it was introduced starting in the 7th century. It was, however, the last phase of Buddhism in India, where the religion - partly by reabsorption into the Hindu tradition, partly by persecution by the Muslim invaders - ceased to exist by the 13th century.