Word: mahayana
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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...
Education. In the vast (1,400 rooms) winter palace of Potala, the Palace of Gods, and in the smaller summer palace two miles away, the young Dalai Lama spent his days studying religion and philosophy, and training in the practices of dyhyana (meditation) as developed by the Mahayana Buddhist School. His mother was the only female he was allowed to receive within his household of servants, monks, abbots and the State Oracle, given to appropriately vague pronouncements ("A powerful foe threatens . . ."). The few Western visitors who, bearing sacred scarves, got audiences, found him a studious, insatiably curious and dedicated...
...religions 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...
...Buddhists in Thailand. Cambodia and Laos go by a slightly different calendar, will celebrate the 2,500th anniversary next year. Buddhists in China, Japan and Korea, forming the large Mahayana branch of the religion, go by a vastly different calendar, mark this year as the 2,983rd anniversary...
...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...