Across the first centuries the Buddhist community divided, first into schools over discipline and doctrine, then by the appearance of new sutras that presented themselves as the Buddha's higher teaching. The schools that carried the Pali Canon south became Theravada; the sutras' heirs carried Mahayana north and east.
The parties
- The early schools that kept the Pali and Sanskrit canons of the first councils
- The movements that composed the Mahayana sutras and set the bodhisattva path above the arahant's
What was disputed
The goal of the path: the arahant's release against the bodhisattva's vow, and the authority of the later sutras.
Causes: doctrinal cultural
Key documents
- The Prajnaparamita Sutras
- The Lotus Sutra
What it produced
Branch
Theravada
The way of the elders, which keeps the Pali Canon as its scripture and the arahant as its goal, and carries the Buddhism of Sri Lanka and mainland…
Branch
Mahayana
The great vehicle, which sets the bodhisattva's vow to liberate all beings above the solitary goal, and reads its own sutras beside the early…
Resolution attempts
- The shared councils and conferences of the World Fellowship of Buddhists (from 1950)
How each side understands it
Theravada memory reads Mahayana as a later development; Mahayana memory reads its sutras as the Buddha's own deferred teaching. Neither reading is the other's, and the record carries both.
Sources
Primary
- The Pali Canon; the Mahayana sutras.
Secondary
- Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (2009).