General Overview
hinayana (Skt.): Literally, “small vehicle." In the vajrayana system, the first of the three yanas or vehicles. Hinayana emphasizes individual liberation from conditioned existence or samsara. Hinayana is subdivided into the shravakayana and pratyekabuddayana.
The first movement of Hinayana has its origins around 500BC. As the ancient form of Buddhism, it is still found in Sri Lanka and most of the continental Southeast Asia. The emphasis in this movement is on monastic life, where one reaches the level of arhat and therefore gains individual saintliness and freedom at the end of his life. According to the teachings, Buddha was a human being who reached nirvana, and ultimately gained freedom from the vicious round of life and death. He recognised his true nature of being and his followers called hime the Buddha-the Awakened One!
Background Of Hinayana Buddhism
The term Hinayana refers to the group of Buddhist schools or sects that appeared before the common era and those directly derived from them. The word Hinayana, which means "small vehicle," that is, "lesser means of progress" toward liberation. Indeed, the Mahayana charged those of Hinayana with selfishly pursuing only their own personal salvation, whereas they themselves claimed an interest in the liberation of all beings and vowed to postpone their own deliverance until the end of time. In other words, the ideal of the practitioners of the Hinayana was the arhat (Pali, arahant), the saint who has attained nirvana, while that of the Mahayana was the bodhisattva, the all-compassionate hero who, resolving to become a Buddha in some far-distant future, dedicated the course of his innumerable lives to saving being of all kinds. It would be more correct to give the name "Early Buddhism" to what is called Hinayana, for the term denotes the whole collection of the most ancient forms of Buddhism: those earlier than the rise of Mahayana and those that share the same inspiration as these and those that share inspiration as these and have the same ideal, namely the arhat.
Although it is directly descended from the earliest Buddhism - that originally peached by the Buddha himself, this early Buddhism is distinguished from it by the continual additions and reformulation of its adherents and teachers in their desire to deepen and perfect the interpretation of the ancient teaching. This constant, and quite legitimate, effort gave rise to many debates, controversies, and divisions that resulted in the appearance of a score of sects or schools. The actual original teaching of the Buddha is accessible to us only through the canonic texts of these schools, texts that were set down in writing only about the beginning of the common era and reflect the divergence that already existed among these sects. Moreover, only a very small part in this vast canonic literature has survived, either in its original Indian language or in Chinese or Tibetan translation, and for this reason our knowledge of the doctrine taught by the Buddha himself still remains rather vague and conjectural.
The many differences that exist between canonic texts involve not only their wording or written form but also a certain number of doctrinal elements and rules of monastic discipline. Despite the disaggregative pressures to which they were exposed, despite their geographical expansion and sometimes considerable dispersion, notwithstanding the vicissitudes of history, which often posed new problems for them, most of the schools preserved a remarkable internal cohesiveness throughout several centuries. Still, schisms did occur within many of them, leading to the formation of new schools. However, the relations among these various groups were generally good. Their disputes remained at a level of more or less lively discussion and degenerated into more serious conflicts only when involving questions of economics or politics.
Several factors account for these divisions and for the formation of the above mentioned schools. First of all, the Buddhist monastic community never know a supreme authority, imposing its unity by powerful and diverse methods, as was long the case in Christianity with its papacy. If we believe some canonic texts that seem to faithfully reflect reality, the Buddha himself was probably faced with several instances of insubordination on the part of certain groups of his monks and was not always able to overcome them. The oldest traditions, furthermore, agree that he did not designate a successor to head the community but only counseled his followers to remain faithful to his Doctrine (Dharma). This is a fragile defence against the forces that tried to break up the community once it was "orphaned" by the death of its founder.
For at least five centuries, the Buddha's teaching was actually preserved by oral transmission alone, very probably in different, though related, dialects. This, and the absence of an authoritative ecclesiastical hierarchy in the sangha, constitute two obvious sources of progressive distortion and alternation of the message left by the Blessed One to his immediate disciples. Furthermore, this message was not entirely clear or convincing to everyone it addressed, leading Buddhist preachers to furnish explanations and interpretations of the teaching. Finally, the teaching given by the Buddha was far from a complete system containing solutions to all the problems that might occur to the minds of people as diverse as those it was destined to reach.
