Theravada And Mahayana Buddhism

One of the most ancient and noteworthy religions in the world is known as Buddhism. Buddhism was founded by a man named Siddhartha Gautama. Siddhartha lead a quite unusual and varied life. Siddhartha was born a prince and had been lead down a path to follow his father’s footsteps as king. However, Siddhartha ventured out of his kingdom, disobeying his father who had always pampered and showered his son with glorious gifts. Siddhartha saw what his father had always sheltered him from, poverty, suffering, illness and death. These events lead Siddhartha on a great and powerful journey to what he saw as his salvation. Siddhartha suffered greatly and from poverty and starvation to become Buddha as we know him today. This information is vital to …show more content…
The Eightfold path is to have the right understanding, intentions, speech, actions, work, effort, meditation, and contemplation. In these aforementioned ways, the two branches are almost identical. Another primary difference of Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism is Theravada study the Pali Canon scripture. The collection of these scriptures is called Tipitaka (Pali) or Tripitaka (Sanskirt), which is said to mean “three baskets”. The meaning of three baskets was chosen to group the subject matter into three separate groups. The Pali Canon is an outline for the rules and ways of living for monastic life. Which include “begging, eating, relations with monks and nonmonks, and other disciplines.” (Molloy 2015 …show more content…
Prior to Buddhism the Tibetan religion was that of the command of nature. Being that it was a more primitive religion they gave offering of animal sacrifices, dances, incantations and bones to control the weather which to them was controlled by a demonic being. When Tantric Buddhism was introduced, the religion became mixed with Buddhism and elements of the old religion with shamans. Monks then held many duties of teachers, doctors and shamans and “were expected to bring health, control weather, and magically protect worshipers from death.” (Molloy 2015 p165) A vast difference between Tibetan Buddhism and the aforementioned branches is the use of sexual imagery which eventually caused celibacy to die out as well. Tibetan Buddhists also consumed meat and alcohol. However, this did not sit well with a monk by the name of Tsong Kha-pa who then developed an additional sect of Tibetan Buddhism to reinstitute the stricter monastic practices. This sect was known as Gelug-pa which means “party of virtue” or more commonly known as the Yellow Hat sect due to the apparel the monks to don during religious services. The Dalai Lama is the head of the Gelug-pa sect. Tibetan Buddhism consists largely of Tripitaka and Tenjur, which is based on Mahayana