Word: hinayana
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Schisms. Buddhism split into two great branches: 1) the Hinayana, or Little Vehicle, which in modified form adheres to Buddha's original doctrines and survives in Ceylon and Southeast Asia; 2) the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, which attaches importance to repetitive prayer and elaborate ritual, has taken on the trappings of magic and multiple gods, and is practiced also in China, Japan and Korea...
...with this rule, Toynbee finds the modern world riven by a gulf even deeper and wider than that between the Communist and non-Communist worlds, namely, the chasm between "the whole Judaic group of ideologies and religions" on the one hand and the "Buddhaic group" (Hinduism, the Mahayana and Hinayana forms of Buddhism) on the other. For the East, like ancient Greece, sees history as cyclical, recurrent, and hence irrelevant, while Christianity, Judaism and Islam see it governed by Intellect and Will, i.e., God. But in assigning history this divine importance, they "have reopened the door to self-centeredness...
...discipline, which foreshadowed a great split in Buddhism. At the third council, about 244 B.C., it was decided to send out missionaries to other countries; and at the fourth, in the 1st century A.D., the big split crystallized. It divides the Buddhist world to this day between the traditional Hinayana Buddhists, who look upon Buddha as a human teacher, and the more recent and increasingly influential Mahayana Buddhists, who worship him as a divine being...
...Hinayana countries include Ceylon, Burma, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand. Mahayana countries include China, Japan, Korea, Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal. India, where Buddhism began, now contains only a small number of Buddhists. Most Indians are Hindu...
...acquisition is the Young Men's Buddhist Association. It was modeled after the Y.M.C.A. by its founder, former British Army Colonel John Ryan, now a Buddhist priest. Ryan, who pinch-hits as American propagandist, giving weekly showings of U.S. Information Service movies in the town hall, embraces the Hinayana or southern variety of Buddhism...