Fri, 22 Oct 2010
Better Than The Rest
One of the favorite pastimes of Buddhists on the Internet is arguing why their particular tradition is better than the rest. To help out in these arguments, here's a scorecard of the different dimensions that Buddhists can be ranked along.
The first dimension is motivation. There are four motivations one can practice with and they are ranked from the most selfish to the most compasionate. The lowest is to practice for the benefit of this life. Then one can practice for the benefit of your future lives. Or you can practice for the sake of your own liberation from rebirth. Or the highest motivation, which is to practice so that all beings may be liberated. The highest motivation is the Mahayana motivation.
The second dimension is philosophical view. The lowest view is to see the composite as unreal and the indivisible as real. The next higher is to see conceptualized as unreal and immediate perception as real. Still higher is to see the subject-object dicotomy as unreal and their nondual union as real. And the highest is to see all that is dependent as unreal and the emptiness of what is dependent as real. The name for the highest view is the Madhyamika, or Middle Path.
The third dimension is practice. The lower practice is to cultivate the causes of enlightenment, the two accumulations of merit and wisdom. The higher practice is to rely on the result, that is, that the body, speech and mind of the buddha, which are present as potential in all sentient beings. The lowwer practice is sutra practice and the higher is tantra.
So that's the traditional ranking, according to Tibetan Buddhism, and it's no surprise that it comes out the highest according to its own standards. There's another ranking of doctrines in T'ien Tai school of Chinese Buddhism, but I don't know it well enough to describe it.
