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Seated Buddha Vairocana. Aboriginal 8th aeon China. Tang absolutism (618-907) Brainstorm address the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Superiority claims by followers of the Great Vehicle acquisition their best arrant announcement in the appliance of the appellation “Hinayana.” The aboriginal allotment of this term, hina, actually agency “inferior,” “lowly,” “faulty,” or “deficient.” The English announcement “small vehicle” is not a apprehension of the Sanskrit appellation “Hinayana” but rather a delicacy acclimated in Chinese translations. The basal abstraction that stands abaft the appliance of the appellation “Hinayana” is to accommodate a adverse to the Mahayana, in the faculty of juxtaposing those who accept not boarded on the bodhisattva path, for this acumen actuality advised inferior, to those who accept committed themselves to advance to buddhahood.

The appellation “Hinayana” appearance in the adventures of Vasubandhu’s about-face to the Mahayana. According to this biography, at aboriginal Vasubandhu had no acceptance in the Mahayana, as he believed this was not accomplished by the Buddha. Afterwards his conversion, however, Vasubandhu offered several arguments to adverse the abiding claiming of establishing a absolute accord amid the Mahayana and the chat of the Buddha. Artlessly stated, the botheration basal this affair is the acquainted charge to accredit axial scriptures advised angelic by advertence them to the actual Buddha. This addiction is common in altered Buddhist traditions and is not bedfast to followers of the Mahayana.

One altercation to authorize a affiliation amid the actual Buddha and the Mahayana traditions takes the anatomy of asserting that such article were begin in a accumulating of texts that were not allotment of a common address undertaken by the aggregation of the alleged eighteen schools. Actuality clumsy to accept Mahayana teachings, so the altercation goes, the aggregation of these eighteen schools had not included them at the aboriginal common recitation, sangiti, which according to attitude was captivated anon afterwards the Buddha’s death.

Here the announcement “schools,” nikayas, refers to the altered apostolic allotment traditions that came into actuality over the advance of time in age-old India. The cardinal “eighteen” in about-face is apparently best taken in a allegorical sense, in band with a accustomed addiction for numbers actuality acclimated in this way in age-old Indian literature, rather than actuality an authentic absorption of actual reality.

Due to not including Mahayana article in their common recitation, the eighteen schools came to be appointed as Hinayana. In this way, the appliance of the appellation “Hinayana” to the eighteen schools emerges in a arguable context. It serves as an expedient acknowledgment to the claiming of defective approved authority.

The Chinese pilgrims Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing address from their campaign in India that they begin associates of the eighteen schools practicing both Hinayana and Mahayana. If all eighteen schools accord to the Hinayana, it is hardly accessible that some of them were practitioners of the Mahayana. The two agreement “Hinayana” and “Mahayana” are mutually exclusive. Either one follows the bodhisattva aisle or one does not.

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The band-aid comes already it is accustomed that the acumen amid these two alternatives is a abstruse one. In contrast, associates in the eighteen schools apropos altered apostolic allotment traditions. The two distinctions accept no all-important affiliation to anniversary other. Actuality allotment of a academy in the faculty of a apostolic allotment attitude comes about through demography ordination. Practicing the bodhisattva path, in contrast, is a abstruse accommodation that has no address on whether one takes allotment or not, let abandoned into which academy one ordains. In fact, followers of the Mahayana can be begin amid both monastics and laity.

In this way, the bearings the Chinese pilgrims encountered in the citizenry of Buddhism clarifies that associates in any of the eighteen schools needs to be differentiated from one’s vocation. Some monastics, who charge accept been associates of one of the eighteen schools, did commence on the Mahayana. Others did not. This implies that the appliance of the appellation “Hinayana” for all the eighteen schools is after a accomplishments in actual reality.

Not alone is the appellation “Hinayana” not applicative to the eighteen schools, it appears to be absolutely a artefact of imagination. In the words of Jonathan Silk,

the referent of the appellation “Hinayana,” aback it occurs in Buddhist texts themselves, is never any exact academy or organization, but a articulate fiction… a axiological absurdity is appropriately fabricated aback we brainstorm references to “Hinayana” in Mahayana abstract to administer to alleged Sectarian Buddhism, abundant beneath to Aboriginal Buddhism.

In the aforementioned vein, Peter Skilling explains:

There was never, during any aeon of Indian history, anywhere or at any time, any anatomy of bodies or any amusing group—any sect, any faction, any apostolic order, or any lay community—which articular itself as “Hinayana.” The Hinayana never existed, anywhere or at any time, as an enactment or organization, as a amusing movement, as a affected actual agent. Nor was Hinayana a date or aeon in the development of Buddhism. What, then, was the referent of the term? What was its civic reality? Its referent was a anatomy of ideas, not a amusing body. The Hinayanist was authentic by Mahayanist polemics; he was a arbitrary construction, not a amusing identity. He was a harbinger man, a will-o’-the-wisp … Buddhism is a circuitous article which has acquired over a all-inclusive breadth for added than two thousand years. To force its development—whether amusing or historical, whether abstract or ritual or art-historical—into an bogus and bifold Hinayana/Mahayana archetypal is a axiological distortion.

Once the appellation “Hinayana” turns out to be alone a arbitrary assemble stemming from arguable discourse, the catechism arises: why has it been so broadly acclimated in the West by practitioners and advisers alike?

The boundless acceptance of the appellation “Hinayana” in Western publications appears to date aback to the World’s Parliament of Religions captivated in 1893 in Chicago, which had a absolute appulse on the accession of Buddhism in the West. The Japanese appointment at this accident answer the appellation “Hinayana” as allotment of their attack to authorize the actuality of Mahayana Buddhism. From their viewpoint, Theravada Buddhism was a anatomy of Hinayana. Their presentation and the terminological acceptance accustomed in this way had a abiding impact, in accurate through the abounding biographer D.T. Suzuki, a adherent of the Rinzai adumbrative at the World’s Parliament of Religions.

As in the case of the eighteen schools, in this case, too, the use of the appellation “Hinayana” emerges in a arguable setting. Another affinity is that, already again, it has no base in reality. The aspiration to become a Buddha in the approaching is a acclaimed and accustomed vocation in the Theravada countries of Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, accurate to in inscriptions and texts as able-bodied as actuality actively accomplished by some of its abreast eminent members. Back some Theravadins convenance the bodhisattva path, it is not able to accredit to the Theravada traditions unilaterally as Hinayana. The capital aberration compared to Mahayana traditions is not that in the Theravada traditions the bodhisattva aisle is not accomplished at all, but alone that it is not advised the sole applicable anatomy of practice.

As would accept become axiomatic from the actual surveyed beforehand in this chapter, the aspiration to become a buddha oneself is the artefact of a bit-by-bit evolution, based on the abstracted actualization of assorted accordant account and notions in the advance of articulate manual of the texts. For this reason, applying the appellation “Hinayana” to aboriginal Buddhism is an anachronism, back the ambiguous aspiration to become a buddha in the approaching was not yet accepted in the aboriginal Buddhist period. The acumen amid Hinayana and Mahayana presupposes the actuality of the bodhisattva aisle as an ideal to be emulated, which one may either adios or abroad adopt. For such a accommodation to be accessible and anatomy the base for a allusive distinction, the bodhisattva ideal aboriginal of all has to appear into existence.

In sum, to use the aspersing appellation “Hinayana” for a Buddhist academy or academy is artlessly fiction.

From Superiority Conceit in Buddhist Traditions: A Actual Perspective, by Bhikkhu Analayo (Wisdom Publications, 2021)

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