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Tibetan Buddhism and the Three Yanas ~ ~ Tibetan Buddhism and the Three Yanas ~ By Cortland Dahl In the last class, we talked a lot about the life of the Buddha. One of the main themes that you can see in the life of the Buddha is that he was deeply in touch with the human condition. He really had, from any outward perspective, all that life can offer. He had wealth. He had power. He had a loving relationship. He had virtually all of his more sensory impulses fulfilled. He led this very sheltered existence. Yet, even within that, there was still a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. There was something driving him to search inside his own heart and mind to see if there was a lasting sense of contentment that he could find that would not be dependent on all of these changing, fluctuating circumstances that he saw all around himself. That prompted him to go search outside his palace, where he had grown up and where he had lived this sheltered existence. He got in touch with the facts of human existence – that we are born a rather painful birth, that we age, we get sick, and we die. And, throughout, there is this constant sense, even in our best moments there is always, or often, a sense that things are not quite right. We might experience intense suffering at times and we might experience great happiness at times. But, even in those moments of great happiness, there is this nagging sense or this nagging recognition that these moments of happiness are not going to last forever, that, as much as we try to hang on to these experiences of happiness and pleasure, by their very nature they will elude us, by their very nature, they will come to an end. This was what prompted the Buddha to see if he could find some understanding or some insight that would liberate himself and that he could teach to others to be free from this round of suffering and dissatisfaction. That was the basis, you could say, for the teachings of 1 | S IX PARAMITAS | T HE PATH OF THE BODHISATTVA the Buddha. It was a deep, deep inquiry into the very basic facts of human existence. That was roughly 2500 years ago. After the Buddha first taught, for roughly 1500 to 1600 years, the teachings continued to grow and evolve in India; all sorts of sects and lineages and all sorts of permutations of his teachings slowly took shape in India. About 1600 years later, the teachings were eventually wiped out with the Muslim invasions. But within that 1600-year period, especially starting 600 to 700 years after the Buddha taught, the teachings started to spread, as I previously mentioned – north into China, through the Himalayan regions, to Southeast Asia, to Sri Lanka, and to many other regions. Even though the teachings were eventually wiped out in ancient India, they were retained in these other cultures. Interestingly, if you look at the historical process that was underway and how the teachings of the Buddha took root around the world, at each point in time, when you had different people often coming to India to study these teachings and going back to their home country, they took a specific slice. Perhaps – just as is happening now – you might have somebody go to Nepal or India and study with a particular teacher or study at a specific monastery, or go to Thailand or Sri Lanka and come back and teach or pass on these teachings here. The same thing happened in many of these ancient countries. People would go to ancient India, they would receive teachings, attaining various levels of mastery of those teachings, and then they would go back to China or to Tibet or to Sri Lanka, and then those teachings would be passed on. So in each of these countries you find really different flavors of Buddhism. How Buddhism took root in China looks very different from how it took root in Tibet, and that looked very different from how it took root in Burma or in Sri Lanka. In Tibetan Buddhism you find a really unique flavor of Buddhism that reflects the time at which Buddhism started to travel from India to Tibet. Buddhism first began to be transmitted to Tibet quite a while after the Buddha lived – about 1200 to 1300 years. It was a very fascinating time for Buddhism at that point in ancient India. Prior to that time, what you had was a kind of fragmentation where you had 2 | S IX PARAMITAS | T HE PATH OF THE BODHISATTVA many different kinds of schools and practices that were quite independent and distinct from one another. Buddhism spread out in all these different directions and you had many, many sub-schools and sub-lineages. To a degree, that still was the case when Buddhism began to be transmitted to Tibet. But another strand that began to occur at that time was that there were certain lineages that began to gather all the different teachings and practices together and to create one cohesive whole out of all the different varieties that had developed over the preceding some 1200 years. So rather than there being one little strand that shot off and then was brought to a different country, what happened in Tibet was that the type of Buddhism that came was from these lineages that had taken all of the vast array and tried to create a cohesive whole out of it. That was then what was brought to Tibet. The way this is presented in Tibetan Buddhism is through what we call “the three yanas.” “Yana” literally means a “vehicle.” But in a more liberal translation you could just say an “approach” – the three approaches or the three forms of study and practice in the Buddhist tradition. Terms you will hear again and again and again in the Tibetan tradition are the Hinayana, the Mahayana, and the Vajrayana. These are all related, of course, as they are all coming from this common source of the teachings of the Buddha, they are all geared towards understanding the causes and conditions of human suffering and dissatisfaction, and they are all meant as remedies or antidotes or ways that we can begin to free ourselves from suffering and dissatisfaction. In that sense, they are all rooted in this common point of origin with the historical Buddha. But they differ in terms of what they emphasize, they differ in terms of how one actually practices, and there are different principles that are emphasized or deemphasized in each of these traditions. In the Hinayana, for example, the emphasis is on renunciation – really seeing how our attachment to things, to experiences, to people – or even the fixation we have on ideas that we have about ourselves – how these actually lead to suffering and dissatisfaction. So there is a lot of 3 | S IX PARAMITAS | T HE PATH OF THE BODHISATTVA emphasis on letting go and relinquishing our attachment to these experiences and these factors that we oftentimes cling to. Another emphasis in the Hinayana teachings is on the principle of selflessness. Rather than the view that there is an eternal soul – or “atman” as it was known in Indian philosophy – the idea is that when we actually investigate our own experience, we do not find anything that remains unchanging from one moment to the next. What we actually see is this constantly changing flow of experience that is shifting, that is fluctuating, that never remains the same. This is important because it is said, in one of the core teachings of the Buddha, that it is our mistaken belief that there is a real, permanent, lasting identity that we can cling to that is actually at the root of our suffering. The idea is that when we have a really rigid, solid fixation on our own identity, we immediately create this barrier between self and other. That dualistic fixation, the subject-object split, you could say, that happens then sets the stage for a lot of emotional patterns that play out. We have aversion to certain experiences, we want to chase after or hold on to other experiences, and other experiences we just tune out. That, of course, then sets the stage for many different varieties of suffering and dissatisfaction. All of that is rooted in this belief that there is a solid, independent, unitary, somewhat lasting and immutable self that underlies our experience. So the Buddha taught – especially in these Hinayana teachings – an emphasis on investigating experience so that we can see if that is actually the case. By seeing the components of experience, by seeing how they are always changing, by seeing how there is nothing fixed and immutable in our experience, we begin to loosen up that fixation. That then opens us up to others, it opens us up to things as they are rather than the ideas we have about them. Therefore, it really loosens up all of the factors that are keeping the cycle of dissatisfaction and suffering going. That is the kind of emphasis in those teachings. There is a lot you could say about the Hinayana, but those are two of the focal points in the Hinayana teachings. 4 | S IX PARAMITAS | T HE PATH OF THE BODHISATTVA In the Mahayana teachings, which are the second of the three vehicles, the emphasis is not only on these factors that I just mentioned. Another element that comes to the fore and is emphasized is compassion and altruism – really reflecting very deeply on one’s motivation not only for spiritual practice and spiritual study, but for whatever we do in our lives.
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