Page:The Development of Mahayana Buddhism - The Monist 1914.pdf/1



UROPEAN Buddhist scholars are wont to divide Buddhism into two schools, Northern and Southern. By Southern Buddhism they understand that form which prevails mostly in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam; while Tibetan Lamaism, and Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Buddhism they consider as belonging to the Northern school. This geographical division, however, does not seem to be quite correct and justifiable; for we know that the Buddhism of Tibet is as different from the Buddhism of Japan as the latter is from that of Ceylon or Burma, not only in some of its teachings but principally in its practical aspects. Take, for instance, the Chinese or Japanese Zen sect or the sect of the Pure Land, and compare it to Tibetan Buddhism as it is known to us today, and we shall find that the difference between the two is wider perhaps than that between the so called Southern Buddhism and the Japanese Buddhist sect called Risshu or Vinaya sect.

A better way of classifying the different schools of Buddhism is to divide them into the Buddhism of Arhats and the Buddhism of Bodhisattvas; understanding by the former that Buddhism whose ideal attainment is Arhatship, and by the Buddhism of Bodhisattvas that system of Buddhist teachings which makes the conception of Bodhisattvahood its most salient feature. Or we may retain the old way of classifying the followers of the Buddha into two groups: the Mahâsanghika and the Sthâvira. Or,