One school of Buddhism holds that the oldest written texts (the Pali
canon) embody Buddhism as the Buddha taught it. This school, Theravada, has been
most influential in Burma, Thailand, and Southeast Asia. In the West, it has
been wonderfully taught as Vipassana meditation. The ideal of this approach is
the liberation of the individual, and many of its practitioners are monks.
As I understand it, original Buddhism underwent a revival around 500
A.D., when the Mahayana school developed. Mahayana Buddhism is more social,
colorful, and varied than Theravada (called Hinayana by the Mahayanists).
Mahayana Buddhism centers around the ideal of the Boddhisattva, the
person who reaches an enlightened state that permits total liberation, but turns
away from it to work in the world to help others. Boddhisattvas are rather like
saints in Catholicism, except that they reincarnate. Imagine being able to visit
the living incarnation of St. Francis or St. Paul!
A third school of
Buddhism developed in Northern India and Tibet--Vajrayana, or Tantric Buddhism.
Tantra is best known in the West for its paintings of deities in sexual
intercourse, and early visitors thought this referred only to sexual practices.
Now it is clear that these images are metaphors for the union and transcendence
of duality, separation, opposites.
Several Vajrayana masters arrived in
America after the Tibetan diaspora. Their practices appear to build on the
Theravada meditation, but extend to include other practices, such as