Buddhism

The historical Buddha achieved enlightenment and began his 50 years of teaching near Varanasi, along the banks of the Ganges in India. During his time as a teacher, he established the pattern of monastic existence which dominated Buddhism for over a thousand years. It's probable that until after his death in the mid-fifth century B.C., his own monastic community was the only one following his teachings, though he also had followers among the laity who chose not to leave the secular world.

By about 386 B.C., the were a number of Buddhist communities in India, each following its own interpretation of the Buddha's teachings. They met in that year to try to resolve their differences. In this they failed. But the world is richer for the written records they left, the first attempt to set down the Buddha's teachings in a form not subject to the fallibility of human memory.

By the first century A.D., these early differences had been multiplied. Buddhism during these years was also influenced by developments with Brahmanisn which gave rise to Hinduism. Some Buddhist communities adopted ritual practices taken from ancient Indian traditions, practices such as offering flowers to Buddhist images, chanting mantras to aid in meditative practices, and performing the ancient Vedic fire ritual now adapted as part of Buddhist practice.

During the second and third centuries A.D., these early Buddhist practices combined with intense philosopical speculation and internal developments within the Buddhist community to create Mahayana Buddhism, which by this time is clearly separate from what is now termed Theravada, the developed form of the more traditional practices.

Among the writers and teachers of early Mahayana Buddhism, the seminal figure is Nagarjuna (in Japanese, Ryumyo). He was born in southern India in the latter half of the second century and was noted as a Brahim scholar before becoming a Buddhist priest. Historically, he is most famous as the founder of the Madhyamika school of Buddhism, which taught that it is an error to believe in either the reality or the unreality of things. He considered both views to be wrong. He taught that reality, the true nature of the universe, is beyond simple categories that can be defined with words.

In the Shingon tradition, Nagarjuna is the link between the known historical past and the traditionally accepted transmission of truth stretching back to the Supreme Buddha, Dainichi Nyorai.

Another crucial development of the Mahayana was the Boddhisattva idea. A Bodhisattva is an enlightened being who has foregone entry into nirvana until all beings are brought to the same stage of perfection. Bodhisattvas helped to make Buddhism more accessible to lay practicioners. Just as Catholic saints are often seen as more readily approachable than God, Bodhisattvas have often been the primary object of worship and entreaty by lay Buddhists.

The final major development of Buddhism in India was Vajrayana. This school arose during the fifth and sixth centuries and, by the early seventh century, was most influential at a large Buddhist university at Nalanda, in eastern India. From here, it spread to Tibet and China. It was in China that Kobo Daishi became the dharma heir of Hui-kuo and brought Vajrayana to Japan in the form of Shingon.

Vajrayana developed out of Mahayana. It was, in a sense, an intensification of the developments that had seen the adoption of ritual practices. This it combined with intense psychological methodologies in the quest for enlightenment. Vajrayana developed as an esoteric tradition. In fact, Shingon is often referred to in Japanese as mikkyo or "the secret teaching" or 'secret religion."