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Welcome to those who are interested in the Hinayana article, especially if you are new to wikipedia. Please remember to strive for a Neutral Point of View, and that we are writing an encylopedia (see What Wikipedia is not). Please read the archives above, as there are many issues which have been covered in some manner or another. Moreover, there is a collaborative replacement article championed by Munge at Talk:Hinayana/Article Sandbox. Discussion below focusses as much on that as it does the current article.
Amended to indicate what the inferiority actually applies to. I am also aware of the more subtle implication - that the followers of an "inferior" path are also somehow inferior. This is why it's important to indicate exactly what the inferiority is concerned with. In the Pali, IIRC the only being currently engaged in the path to Samyaksambuddhahood is Maitreya.
I think I get where you are coming from, but I don't like "contemporary" - after all Candrakirti and Atisha were hardly contemporary! I also understand the more neutral proposal of "Buddhists who reject the provenance of the Mahayana Sutras", but this possibly opens up a huge can of worms - there are many Mahayana schools who only accept some Mahayana sutras, and there may well have been non-Mahayana schools who accepted some Mahayana sutras also. Moreover, it focusses on the usage of 'Hinayana' as referring to schools/doctrines, rather than practices, whereas the emphasis of Hinayana in Mahayana sutras is on practices, rather than schools. Lastly, there is an inconsistency of numbers in the Lotus sutra - the 'haughty monks' that walk out of the discourse are far less in number than the Sravakas etc. present: To me, this indicates that the early Mahayana knew many followers of the Sravakayana that did not reject the Mahayana sutras: Something that I consider eminently feasible. After all, IIRC the initial assertion of the Mahayana is that it is worthwhile walking the longer journey of a Bodhisattva than it is to take the swifter journey of a Sravaka, albeit developments of Mahayana (Ch'an, Tantra etc.) talk about 'lightning' paths to Buddhahood.
I am not sure of any scriptural evidence AGAINST the statement that Hinayana is "concerned with the achievement of Nirvana as a Sravakabuddha or a Pratyekabuddha, as opposed to the achievement of liberation as a Samyaksambuddha", maybe you could be more explicit in describing your objections to it? (20040302 17:08, 7 May 2006 (UTC))
While on the topic of the opening paragraph, this article does a great job of saying what it is not to be confused with, but WHAT ARE THE CORE CONCEPTS OF THIS TAKE ON BUDDHISM? I came here to find out, and instead of a clear concise description of this sect, I get a comparison to other sects I haven't ever heard of. In the interest of a clear encyclopedia, I feel this should be addressed. Thank you, 96.226.243.86 (talk) 04:31, 22 October 2013 (UTC)
In the main article I've posted a cite that suggests that the term was not coined simply to refer to the paths leading to those two achievements. Rather, the passage refers to bodhisattvas who reject the provenance of the 8000 Lines. The passage doesn't consider them sravs or prats. Similar to Conze. See esp. Lopez. --Munge 06:18, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
I pulled the following Attachment to the view of self contravenes the teachings of no-self (anatman), non-attachment (viraaga), and right view (sammaditthi) attributed to the historical Gautama Buddha, and accepted throughout history by nearly all Buddhists.
Of course I accept this, but I don't think that this is the place to start having to comment cites. The article is getting long enough already, and I trust that most people who have got this far into reading the article know enough about Buddhism (or can use hyperlinks to wiki articles) to understand this. I do get your point, so added a wikilink to anatman. I have made several other edits, primarily to reduce the bulk of your comments, without losing their purpose (except of course where you broaden the scope of the text to indicate that non-Bodhisattvas are also subjects of the text) (20040302 09:45, 9 May 2006 (UTC))
The hyphenation of samyaksambuddha as "samyaksam-buddha" is wrong, both in terms of spelling and as a guide to etymology. It wrongly implies that there is an element "samyaksam". Actually there are two layers of compounding here:
A prefix like "sam" is normally considered an integral part of the word it is attached to. So you could hyphenate "samyak-sambuddha", but not "samyaksam-buddha". It is better not to have any hyphen at all, though.RandomCritic 11:32, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Why does the article contain text (in parentheses) indicating that the Diamond Sutra cite refers to bodhisattvas? i didn't notice the word "bodhisattva" in that chapter of the Sutra. Muller does use the phrase "any person" in the relevant paragraph. And why does the article say that "..the Diamond Sutra associates the term hinayana with practices and doctrines that lead to Sravakabuddhahood or Pratyekabuddhahood"? I didn't notice any reference to those categories in theDiamond Sutra. --Munge 16:36, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Diamond Sutra...would have used ཐེག་དམན་ if Hinayana were present.
For that matter, I'm not aware of any passage from the Lotus Sutra that uses the word hinayana. Perhaps you can clarify that, or perhaps we should delete those paragraphs as well. --Munge 03:57, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
A long time ago in a Talk: page not so far away, 20040302 wrote:
I also refer you to Paul Williams' book
Some months back, I bought Buddhist Thought by Williams,. From p96:
The "like jackals" thing is footnoted so anyone can chase that down if they like. The reference is to Williams' Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations, p21
Sure, there are apologias. Sure, you can argue the insulted parties are all dead. Sure, M vs. H is fundamentally different kind of opposition, unlike Protestant v. Catholic. What is clear, though, is that Williams perceived the term as "polemical" and "abusive". A term containing a value judgement, not simply a category. --Munge 04:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
"...Hinayana, inferior or lesser vehicle: pejorative for those Buddhists who did not accept the new Mahayana teaching..." from the glossary of The Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines & its Verse Summary, translated by Edward Conze, 1973, Four Seasons Foundation, San Francisco, p324.
Also, the title of Chapter 5, section 2 of Conze's Buddhist Scriptures is "Mahayana polemics against the Hinayana". What's in that section? It's the chapter of the Lotus Sutra that includes the parable of the carts. Munge 04:27, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Still, if there's no explicit use of the word hinayana in the Lotus, I support deleting the Lotus cite and all the interpretive text currently there. We could revisit that later. It's pretty low priority, considering what needs to be done here. --Munge 05:10, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
To amplify what I linked to last year, the Lotus Sutra (e.g. see this page translated by Burton Watson) also discourages or forbids contact between bodhisattvas and those who aspire to be sravakas (which Watson translates as "voice hearers"). True, bodhisattvas are also discouraged or forbidden to associate with non-Buddhists, hunters, and so on (including wrestlers, actors, heretics, and so on). But those in training to be sravakas are singled out for special extra avoidance measures, e.g. bodhisattvas aren't supposed to stay in the same room or attend the same talk.
If we decide that the Lotus is truly relevant to the Hinayana wiki, the part about keeping their distance from sravaka aspirants seems just as important as the parable of the carts. --Munge 05:05, 20 May 2006 (UTC)
One of the difficulties in making generalizations about Mahayana, especially early Mahayana, is that there seem to have been unconnected, different Mahayana communities dotted around Indian, working within or affiliated with existing non-Mahayana groups. The possible dynamics and implications of this situation are described by Joseph Walser in his recent book "Nagarjuna in Context". One might surmise that the use of the term Hinayana only arose in the texts belonging to Mahayana followers who had reached critical mass in terms of dominance. In situations where they were still in the minority, the terminology would have been less pejorative, hence the use of Sravaka. But an interesting feature of some early Mahayana sutras is that they even speak of bodhisattva sravakas and at times the two terms are even used as synonyms. The case of the Lotus Sutra is interesting. It suggests a situation of considerable conflict -- both towards Sravakas and also towards other Mahayana groups of which it does not approve. One might even imagine that when it was being compiled, its protagonists were holed up in just one or two small beleaguered communities. The millenarian undertones may be diagnostic of this. In any case, all the Mahayana groups in India were very small in number wherever they were. Gregory Schopen suggests that in the early medieval period there were probably more Mahayanists in China than in India.--Stephen Hodge 02:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I formerly thought there were no occurrences of 'hīnayāna in the Lotus but thanks to S. Hodge for correcting me.
Elsewhere, links to The Lotus Sutra, translated by Burton Watson, 1993, Columbia University Press, are now broken. Here are the excerpts that I believe correspond to the occurrences of the word or word part hinayana:
Sanskrit is here two occurrences in chapter 2, verses 55 and 57; one occurrence in chapter 6, verse 13.
In identifying Mahayana with ekayana, it seems to say that teachers who do not accept the authority of this sutra commit a serious error; perhaps due to cowardice or even greed. And maybe the parable of the prodigal son in Chapter 4 implies a pathetic quality to the error. --Munge 10:29, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
Preciesely who asserts that the term was not coined in a pejorative manner?
According to Fundamental attribution error article, a person makes such an error occurs when making incorrect assumptions about someone else's disposition. In what case do those who criticize the usage of hinayana criticize the disposition of Mahayanists, authors who commit errors, or anyone else?
I have occasionally read statements by Mahayanists asserting hinayana practices are upaya for those of inferior disposition. That, my friends, just might be a fundamental attribution error. --Munge 07:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
At Talk:Hinayana/Article Sandbox I've arranged some quotes and translations from Asanga's Mahayanasutralamkara and Vasubandhu's commentary on that work. Most notably, Asanga compares hinayāna with things that are best avoided, namely "poison, weapons, lightning bolts, and enemies" (from a translation edited by Robert Thurman). In another passage, strategically located in Chapter 1, verses 3-4, Thurman et al apparently agree with articles by Samuels and also by Cohen, who translate Asanga as saying that Mahayāna and hinayāna are mutually contradictory in terms of their goals, teachings, and practices (and these translators substantially concur, despite their different attitudes toward the subject, and despite the fact that the passage in question doesn't explicitly use the word hinayāna. In part, they agree because surrounding passages make the context quite clear).
Vasubandhu's commentary identifies sravakayāna as "only for the individual's ultimate liberation, instruction is for that purpose only". Tradition holds that Vasubandhu was Asanga's half-brother, and was converted from Sarvāstivādin to Mahayāna dharma by Asanga. Though he might have had a convert's fervor, still, Vasubandhu's interpretation carries substantial weight if only because he was a contemporary of Asanga.
Bottom line: Asanga strongly amplified preexisting criticism against hinayāna. Citing a quote from him as an example of goodwill toward "hinayānists" is unjustified. --munge 09:13, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
For those that view the term as being relevant to traditions, some hold the view that Hīnayāna is cognate with solely the Early Buddhist Schools, while others hold the view that Hinayana is also cognate with the modern Theravada tradition. Moreover, many hold that the term was coined to be purposely pejorative, while others do not
I don't know how this article should be tagged, it needs some template on the top. could anyone who knows put it there? Greetings, Sacca 03:08, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I made quite a few edits to balance the article. The issue of the Many's and some's remains. It needs some references to publications.Greetings, Sacca 08:08, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
In the section headed "Origins of Hīnayāna: Vehicles and Paths", there is a quotation puportedly from the VS. However, the form given in the recently published Sanskrit edition (Institute for Compreghensive Studies of Buddhism Taisho University 2004) is different. It merely has namaḥ sarva-buddha-bodhisattvebhyaḥ, with no reference to anybody else. The salutation, as given in the article, derives from the Tibetan translation. Furthermore, it is not foound in any of the three Chinese translations. Therefore, I suggest that this quote has little probative value for the situation in India -- it seems more likely that the salutation was expanded by somebody in Tibet.--Stephen Hodge 02:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I see someone deleted the uncited use of the phrase "fundamental attribution error". I support that deletion. But the above statement also appears to be incorrect. I am not aware of any such debate except on Wikipedia. As far as I can tell, nobody in history, except the author of the statement, asserted that Hīnayāna was coined in any other way but as a term of disparagement.
Somewhat OT, tonight I made some forward motion on Hinayana/Article Sandbox--munge 08:10, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
The rough draft article formerly at Hinayana/Article Sandbox is now at Talk:Hinayana/Sandbox. My understanding is that some people supported the move because they believe that the draft should not be in the main namespace of Wikipedia, but that it's OK to be in the Talk: namespace.
There are still some extensive notes at Talk:Hinayana/Article Sandbox. Considering that I seem to be the only one who makes contributions of substance to that page, maybe I should move those notes, maybe to User talk:Munge/Hinayana Notes. Comments? --munge 04:03, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:22, 9 November 2007 (UTC)
The points were quite ironic and contradicting. This article seemed to be pro-mahayāna. If a Theravadians(Striving mainly for Arahantship) were not Hīnayāna, yet striving for any attainments other than the Samma-sambodhi is a Hīnayāna, isn't that pointing directly to beings who strive for arahantship and Paccekabodhi, which includes Theravadas?
Maybe by adding this sentence "According to the Mahayana Sutras, the Mahayanist believed that..." before all definations of 'Hīnayāna', in context to attainments, that will neturalise the whole article.
The term "Hīnayana" does not exist in the Pāli Tipiṭaka. In the eyes of Theravada, Arahantship is not Hīna at all.
Furthermore, in the eyes of Theravada Suttas regarding the difference between a Buddha and a Arahant was:
"So what difference, what distinction, what distinguishing factor is there between one rightly self-awakened and a monk discernment-released?"
... ...
The Blessed One said, "The Tathagata — the worthy one, the rightly self-awakened one — is the one who gives rise to the path (previously) unarisen, who engenders the path (previously) unengendered, who points out the path (previously) not pointed out. He knows the path, is expert in the path, is adept at the path. And his disciples now keep following the path and afterwards become endowed with the path.
"This is the difference, this the distinction, this the distinguishing between one rightly self-awakened and a monk discernment-released."[[1]]
Thus, respecting the viewpoints of different tradition, it is beneficial to state the points clearly, that such views and defination about Hīnayāna is purely a Mahayāna idea.
Buddhosavaka (talk) 21:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
There's often confusion between these. Perhaps things could be clarified. In Theravada they are
In Theravada the term arahant covers all 3 goals, as in theory does buddha, tho' that is usually confined to sammasambuddha.
Mahayana normally, if not exclusively, uses bodhisattva to refer to mahabodhisatta & arhant to refer to savakabuddha. It often seems to use savaka to mean savakabuddha, & perhaps sometimes to mean savakabodhisatta. As far as I know it uses Buddha only in the sense of sammasambuddha. It uses pratyekabuddha to refer to both path & goal (see intro to the Waymans' translation of the Srimala for this). Peter jackson (talk) 11:01, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
In the Vajrayana practice tradition of Buddhism the Hinayana is seen as one of the three major yanas (or 'vehicles') of Buddhism, alongside the Mahayana and Vajrayana. According to this view, there were three 'turnings of the wheel of dharma'[1]. In the first turning, Shakyamuni Buddha taught the dharma as the Four Noble Truths at Varanasi which led to the Hinayana schools, of which only the Theravada remain today (although they object to the term 'Hinayana'). In the second turning, the 'Perfection of Wisdom' sutras were taught at Vulture's Peak and led to the Mahayana schools. The teachings which constituted the third turning of the wheel of dharma were taught at Shravasti and expounded that all beings have Buddha Nature. This third turning is described as having led to the Vajrayana.
I pulled this for several reasons - first of all, it's not about Hinayana but about the Yogācāra interpretation the turnings of the wheel of Dharma - so it shouldn't be in the 'in brief' section. Secondly, the structure of the three turnings of the wheel does NOT belong to Vajrayana, but to the Yogācāra tradition. There are many Vajrayana traditions which are Madhaymaka rather than Yogācāra (such as the Gelugpa school), so there is no entailment that Yogācāra means Vajrayana. It maybe that the cited reference states what is written above - in which case the structure of the paragraph needs to qualify that. To be clear, the Gelugpa accept Asanga and Vasubandhu as valid and significant teachers, but they maintain that regarding Sunyata, the Madhaymikas got it right.
Another problem that I have with this inclusion is that it ignores the contents of the preceding paragraphs - as the article states, the term 'Hinayana' is not about schools as much as it is about doctrines, practitioners or thoughts. (20040302 (talk) 10:17, 20 January 2010 (UTC))
I'm not totally convinced that pulling out entire dictionary sections is a good idea - and I believe that the article is mature enough not to need the following. Likewise, as mentioned in the edit, we should have just one etymology section on the article, not two. If we are to have one higher up, it needs to be brief. If we are to have a lengthy one, then we should remove the one at the top. (20040302 (talk) 10:22, 20 January 2010 (UTC))
The Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary (Oxford, 1899), gives a translation of 'Hīnayāna' as: Proper Noun: "simpler or lesser vehicle. Name of the earliest system of Buddhist doctrine (opposite to Mahayana; see Yana)."
Hīna is defined in the same dictionary as follows:
According to Pali Text Society's Pali-English Dictionary (1921-25), the word 'hīna is defined thus:
Hīna:
References
In a footnote in A Few Good Men: the Bodhisattva Path According to The Inquiry of Ugra (pg. 173), Jan Nattier provides an interesting summary of the argument for the derogatory nature of the term hīnayāna:
It is important to point out that the term hīnayāna does not mean "small vehicle". The Indian epithet hīna, from the root √hā "discard, shun; be deficient", carries a range of strongly negative associations, including "lower, weaker, deficient, defective, low, vile" and "mean" (see MW 1296b-c); the standard Tibetan equivalent theg-pa dman-pa "low vehicle" accurately captures this negative connotation, as does the express lieh-sheng 劣乘 "inferior vehicle" used by Dharmarakṣa and some other early Chinese translators. In fact, the English expression "small vehicle" is not based on the Indian term at all, but on the Chinese expression hsiao-sheng 小乘 "little vehicle" used by Kumārajīva and others. It may well be that Kumārajīva (whose own background was originally Sarvāstivādin) deliberately chose a less offensive, though technically inaccurate, expression to translate hīnayāna.
Perhaps some of this material would be appropriate to quote in the article.—Greg Pandatshang (talk) 05:31, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
I think in addition to the various issues that have been talked about here, there are some fundamental problems with trying to analyze the Mahayana sutras. That is to say, they usually take transcendent stances and often use seemingly-contradictory language in an attempt to communicate higher truths. For example, in the Lotus Sutra, we have quotes about the Buddha saving people however they need to be saved: as a shravaka, bodhisattva, tirthika, or anything else. In the 16th chapter, the Buddha tells a parable about a doctor saving his sons, providing the various vehicles as skillful means, to return them to their health when they refuse the highest teaching. Then there is the parable of the carts, which people are very quick to interpret, and often wrongly in my opinion. Mahayana sutras are often quite difficult in this way to use for scholarly purposes because they require substantial interpretation.
My main feeling, after reading many Mahayana sutras, is that a consistent position is that shravakas are at times criticized for being interested in their own salvation. However, successful shravakas who have reached the arhat stage are very revered for their accomplishments, although they are still viewed as not being at the end goal (buddhahood). Bodhisattvas are not criticized in the same way, because in Mahayana, it is viewed that a bodhisattva is moving closer to buddhahood by letting go of everything and not grasping samadhi or any other attainments. Therefore, the Mahayana sutras don't worry about bodhisattvas not reaching the supreme vehicle, because the bodhisattva vehicle will eventually lead there by cultivating samadhi through prajna, rather than just going into higher and higher samadhi stages, and becoming stuck in the nirvana with remainder.
As for the term "hinayana", I don't believe it refers to any one fixed thing, but rather is a label for any path that is viewed as clinging, especially to ideas about suffering. That is, if someone thinks "I'm suffering and I need to be saved", a bodhisattva might scorn this thinking as the hinayana because there is a sense of self. Whereas a shravaka sees suffering, a bodhisattva aims to realize the equality of all things by letting go and disengaging the five skandhas. This is very clearly communicated even in the tiny Heart Sutra by negating each of the Four Noble Truths. At its core, Mahayana has a very different way of interpreting the Sutra Pitaka, which often aims what it views as the highest interpretation.
We should also remember that Mahayana monks in India (and still today in Mahayana countries) use vinayas from the early Buddhist schools. That means that technically all Buddhists monastics who follow the precepts are in fact from the early Buddhist schools. Also, in India, monks would have first studied the Sutra Pitaka, which is referenced commonly in the Mahayana sutras. Therefore, the teachings of the Sutra Pitaka formed a basis for the Mahayana teachings. It seems problematic to me that there could then be a simplistic Hinayana / Mahayana dichotomy, given the common traditions and common textual basis.
I just wanted to provide a few things to consider, even if you read them and disagree with me. Tengu800 (talk) 13:37, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
What exactly did the Mahayana, or Bodhisattvas, criticize the Hinayana for? I've always thought that it was because the Hinayana did not seek the liberation of others, but only for themselves. Is this accurate? This paragraph was the most I could find which clearly specified what the Mahayana were critical of (though it is often said that they were indeed critical),
"The Mahayanists were bothered by the substantialist thought of the Sarvastivadins and Sautrantikas, and in emphasizing the doctrine of emptiness, Kalupahana holds that they endeavored to preserve the early teaching.[21] The Theravadins too refuted the Sarvastivadins and Sautrantikas (and other schools) on the grounds that their theories were in conflict with the non-substantialism of the canon. The Theravada arguments are preserved in the Kathavatthu.[22]
yet that paragraph is not very clear to the uninitiated. I feel like others may have the same difficulties in understanding when I have when they read this page, and may benefit from a clear explication on this topic on this page. makeswell (talk) 15:31, 20 October 2010 (UTC)
The article starts with the statement: "Hinayana is a Sanskrit and Pali term...". Where in the Pali Canon is the term Hinayana used? 02 October 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.22.178.141 (talk) 15:34, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
From the article: "To identify entire schools as "Hīnayāna" that contained not only śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, but also Mahāyāna bodhisattvas as well, would be attacking the schools of their fellow Mahāyānists as well as their own. Instead, what is demonstrated in the definition of Hīnayāna given by Yijing, is that the term referred to individuals based on doctrinal differences with the Mahāyāna tradition"
That is good to know. But a section describing these actual differences individual "Hīnayāna" figures had with the Mahāyāna tradition would be a real nice addition to all this etymology :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8108:1CC0:11D4:441A:BF6C:2288:ACE1 (talk) 17:35, 2 September 2014 (UTC)