Tradition

Mahayana

The Great Vehicle. The bodhisattva path. The Buddhism of East Asia and the philosophical tradition of Nagarjuna and Asanga.

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Knowledge

TraditionsMahayana

Mahayana

The Great Vehicle — the movement that reframed the Buddhist goal from individual liberation as an arahant to the universal awakening of all beings as a bodhisattva, and reframed the metaphysical ground from analysis of dharmas to the emptiness (sunyata) of all phenomena.

TextsMahayana

The Lotus Sutra

The most influential Mahayana sutra in East Asia. The teaching of the One Vehicle, the eternal Buddha, and the universal possibility of buddhahood. Composed c. 1st century BCE to 1st century CE.

TextsMahayana

The Heart Sutra

The most chanted Mahayana scripture — 260 Chinese characters in Kumarajiva, fewer in the Tibetan, distilling the entire Perfection of Wisdom literature into the single declaration that form is emptiness, emptiness is form.

TextsMahayana

The Diamond Sutra

The Perfection of Wisdom that cuts like a diamond. The world's oldest dated printed book (868 CE, found at Dunhuang). The defining scripture of the Chan/Zen school.

TextsMahayana

The Bodhicaryāvatāra

Śāntideva's 8th-century classic in ten chapters of verse — the most beloved Mahayana practice text on cultivating bodhicitta and walking the path of the bodhisattva.

Stone relief carving of a bodhisattva on a Central Javanese temple wall

Core TeachingsMahayana

Bodhicitta

The aspiration to attain complete buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings — the defining commitment of the Mahayana path, and the seed from which the bodhisattva's entire activity grows.

Archival photograph of a Borobudur relief panel depicting the Mahisa Jataka, a past-life tale of the Buddha illustrating the perfections

Core TeachingsMahayana

The Six Paramitas

Six perfections that the bodhisattva cultivates across countless lifetimes: generosity, ethical conduct, patience, joyous effort, meditative concentration, and wisdom. The structural curriculum of the Mahayana.

Gilt bronze image of Nāgārjuna, teacher and philosopher of emptiness

ConceptsMahayana

Sunyata

Emptiness is the absence in all phenomena of independent, intrinsic existence. It is not nothingness but the positive recognition that everything arises in dependence on other things — the deepest reading of the Buddha's teaching.

FiguresMahayana

Nagarjuna

South Indian philosopher of the second century CE who articulated the doctrine of emptiness (sunyata) as the middle way between existence and non-existence. The Mulamadhyamakakarika is the founding text of the Madhyamaka school. The Mahayana traditions of East Asia and Tibet count him as the second Buddha; his analysis stands at the center of every later Mahayana school.