Buddhism is one of the biggest religions founded in India in the 6th and 5th century B

The Theravada Buddhists believe that they practice the original form of Buddhism as Buddha handed it down to them. Theravada Buddhism dominates the culture of Sri Lanka, but is also very prominent in Thailand and Burma. While Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, spent several decades teaching, none of his teachings were written down until several hundred years later. In the third century, Asoka, the great Mauryan emperor, converted to Buddhism and began to sponsor several monasteries throughout the country (Internet 1). He even sent missionaries out to various countries both east and west. During his reign, the teachings of Buddha spread all across India and Sri Lanka. Disturbed by the prolific growth of Buddhist heresies, a council of Buddhist monks was convened at the Mauryan capital of Patna during the third century BC to purify the doctrine. What arose from that council, more or less, were the definitive teachings of Theravada Buddhism; from this point onwards, Theravada Buddhism undergoes little if any change. When the teachings of Buddha were finally written into a canon, they were written not in Sanskrit, but in a language derived from Sanskrit, called Pali. This language was spoken in the western regions of the Indian peninsula, but from Sri Lanka to Burma, the Pali scriptures would become the definitive canon. We can determine precisely when they were written down, but tradition records that the canon was first written down somewhere between 89 and 77 BC, that is, over four hundred years after the death of Buddha (Evans 97). This canon is called the Tripitaka, or "Three Baskets," for it is divided into three parts, the Vinaya, or "Conduct," the Sutra, or "Discourses," and the Abhidhamma, or "Supplementary Doctrines." The second part, the "Discourses," are the most important in Buddhism (Halverson 132). These are discourses by the Buddha and contain the whole of Buddhist philosophy and morality. The basic doctrines of Theravada Buddhism correspond fairly exactly with the teachings of Buddha. Theravada Buddhism is based on the Four Noble Truths and the idea that all of physical reality is a chain of causation; this includes the cycle of birth and rebirth. Through the practice of the Eightfold Noble Path and the Four Cardinal Virtues, an individual can eventually attain Nirvana. Theravada Buddhism, however, focused primarily on meditation and concentration, the eighth of the Eightfold Noble Path; as a result, it emphasized a monastic life removed from the hustle and bustle of society and required an extreme expenditure of time in meditating (Internet 1). This left little room for the bulk of humanity to join in; Theravada Buddhism was, by and large, an esoteric religion. A new schism then erupted within the ranks of Buddhism, one that would attempt to reformulate the teachings of Buddha to accommodate a greater number of people: the "Greater Vehicle," or Mahayana Buddhism.

The "Great Vehicle" was the name that the Buddhists came up for this new way of thinking, Mahayana Buddhism. The Buddhists spent much of their lives concentrating on reaching nirvana, which was balanced with everyday activities. Judaism also experienced many changes during this time, which was far more drastic than the Mahayana Buddhism religion. The Mahayanists, however, did not see themselves as creating a new start for Buddhism, rather they claimed to be recovering the original teachings of Buddha, in much the same way that the Protestant reformers of sixteenth century Europe claimed that they were not creating a new Christianity but recovering the original form (Andrea 93). The Mahayanists claimed that their canon of scriptures represented the final teachings of Buddha; they accounted for the non-presence of these teachings in over five hundred years by claiming that these were secret teachings entrusted only to the most faithful followers. Whatever the origins of Mahayanan doctrines, they represent an important departure in the philosophy. Like the Protestant Reformation, the overall goal of Mahayana was to extend religious authority to a greater number of people rather than concentrating it in the hands of a few (Andrea 98-99). The Mahayanists managed to turn Buddhism into a more obscure religion by developing a theory of gradations of Buddhahood. At the top was Buddhahood itself, which was lead by a series of lives, the bodhisattvas. This idea of the bodhisattva was one of the most important innovations of Mahayana Buddhism (Internet 2). The bodhisattva, or "being of wisdom," was originally invented to explain the nature of Buddha's earlier lives. Before Buddha entered his final life as Siddhartha Gautama, he had spent many lives working towards Buddhahood. In these previous lives he was a bodhisattva, a kind of "Buddha-in-waiting," that performed acts of incredible generosity, joy, and compassion towards his fellow human beings. An entire group of literature grew up around these previous lives of Buddha, called the Jataka or "Birth Stories" (Halverson 154). While we do not know much about the earliest forms of Buddhism, there is some evidence that the earliest followers believed that there was only the one Buddha and that no more would follow. Soon, however, a doctrine of the Maitreya, or "Future Buddha," began to assert itself (Evans 164). In this, Buddhists believed that a second Buddha would come and purify the world; they also believed that the first Buddha prophesied this future Buddha. If a future Buddha was coming, that meant that the second Buddha is already on earth passing through life after life. So someone on earth was the Maitreya. It could be the person serving you food. It could be a child playing in the street. It could be you. What if there was more than one Maitreya? Five? Ten? A billion? That certainly raises the odds that you or someone you know is a future Buddha. The goal of Theravada Buddhism is practically unattainable. In order to make Buddhism a more mysterious religion, the Mahayanists invented two grades of Buddhist attainment below becoming a Buddha. While the Buddha was the highest goal, one could become a pratyeka-buddha, that is, one who has awakened to the truth but keeps it secret. Below the pratyeka-buddha is the arhant, or "worthy," which has learned the truth from others and has realized it as truth. (Halverson 175) Mahayana Buddhism establishes the arhant as the goal for all believers. The believer hears the truth, comes to realize it as truth, and then passes into Nirvana. This doctrine of arhanthood is the basis for calling Mahayana the "Greater Vehicle," for it is meant to include everyone. Finally, the Mahayanists completed the conversion of Buddhism from a philosophy to religion. Theravada Buddhism holds that Buddha was a historical person who, on his death, ceased to exist. There were, however, strong tendencies for Buddhists to worship Buddha as a god of some sort; these tendencies probably began as early as Buddha's lifetime. The Mahayanists developed a theology of Buddha called the doctrine of "The Three Bodies," or Trikaya (Internet 1). The Buddha was not a human being, as he was in Theravada Buddhism, but the manifestation of a universal, spiritual being. This being had three bodies. When it occupied the earth in the form of Siddhartha Gautama, it took on the Body of Magical Transformation. This Body of Magical Transformation was an emanation of the Body of Bliss, which occupies the heavens in the form of a ruling and governing god of the universe (Evans 32).

The final developments of Buddhism in India involve the growth of Tantric thought in both Buddhism and Hinduism. Vedism had always based itself on magic and ritualistic magic; in the fourth and fifth centuries BC, a new form of Hinduism, Tantrism, focused primarily on magic. As applied Buddhism, Tantrism focused on the use of the physical world. Mahayana Buddhism divided into two central schools, the Madhyamika, or "Doctrine of the Middle Position," and the Vijnanavada, or "Doctrine of Consciousness." Each of these schools believed that all of physical reality was an illusion. The only thing that existed was Void or Emptiness. The Vijnavadans believed that everything we perceived was self-generated and that all our perceptions were caused by previous perceptions in an elaborate chain of causation. This would explain why our perceptions tend to be uniform throughout our lives and why we tend to share our perceptions with others. But, in the end, it's all illusion. The world needs to be rejected as a world of illusion. The Tantric Buddhists, on the other hand, developed a different methodology from this insight that the world is unreal. Just because the physical world doesn't exist doesn't mean that one should reject it. On the one hand, if the physical world doesn't exist, that means that one cannot commit right or wrong. As a way of proving that one is enlightened, all sorts of forbidden acts should be engaged in: fornication, thieving, eating dung, and so forth. A similar movement occurred in England in the seventeenth century. A group of radical Protestants, called the "Ranters," took the Protestant notion of divine election to its farthest extreme. If one is saved and one knows it, that means that one can't sin no matter what one does. In fact, committing all sorts of heinous acts can serve to demonstrate one's salvation. So the ranters would fornicate in the streets and curse and do all sorts of obnoxious things in order to demonstrate their salvation. One form of Tantric Buddhism was similar to this. On the other hand, if the physical world was unreal, one could still use the physical world and one's perceptions of it as a means towards enlightenment. All activities, including sex, can be used as a meditative technique. This was called Vajrayana, or "The Vehicle of the Thunder-Bolt." The Vajrayanans believed that each bodhisattva had consorts or wives, called taras These female counterparts embodied the active aspects of the bodhisattva, and so were worshipped. One learned the teachings of Tantrism from a master, and then one joined a group of others who had been trained. There one would practice the rituals learned from the master. For the Tantrists, the physical world was identical with the Void and human perception was identical with Nirvana. Buddhism, however, was slowly fading off of the Indian landscape; Tantrism came on the scene just as Buddhism began to slowly lose its vitality.