Ashoka

One of the most significant events in the history of Buddhism is the chance encounter of the monk Nigrodha and the emperor Ashoka Maurya.  Ashoka, succeeding his father after a bloody power struggle in 268 bc, found himself deeply disturbed by the carnage he caused while suppressing a revolt in the land of the Kalingas.  Meeting Nigrodha convinced Emperor Ashoka to devote himself to peace.  On his orders, thousands of rock pillars were erected, bearing the words of the Buddha, in the brahmi script -- the first written evidence of Buddhism.  The third council of monks was held at Pataliputra, the capital of Ashoka's empire. There is a story that tells about a poor young boy who, having nothing to give the Buddha as a gift, collected a handful of dust and innocently presented it.  The Buddha smiled and accepted it with the same graciousness he accepted the gifts of wealthy admirers.  That boy, it is said, was reborn as the Emperor Ashoka. Ashoka sent missionaries all over India and beyond.  Some went as far as Egypt, Palestine, and Greece.  St. Origen even mentions them as having reached Britain.  The Greeks of one of the Alexandrian kingdoms of northern India adopted Buddhism, after their King Menandros (Pali:  Milinda) was convinced by a monk named Nagasena -- the conversation immortalized in the Milinda Pañha.  A Kushan king of north India named Kanishka was also converted, and a council was held in Kashmir in about 100 ad. Greek Buddhists there recorded the Sutras on copper sheets which, unfortunately, were never recovered. It is interesting to note that there is a saint in Orthodox Christianity named Josaphat, an Indian king whose story is essentially that of the Buddha.  Josaphat is thought to be a distortion of the word bodhisattva.

Mahayana

Mahayana began in the first century bc, as a development of the Mahasangha rebellion.  Their more liberal attitudes toward monastic tradition allowed the lay community to have a greater voice in the nature of Buddhism.  For better or worse, the simpler needs of the common folk were easier for the Mahayanists to meet.  For example, the people were used to gods and heroes.  So, the Trikaya (three bodies) doctrine came into being:  Not only was Buddha a man who became enlightened, he was also represented by various god-like Buddhas in various appealing heavens, as well as by the Dharma itself, or Shunyata (emptiness), or Buddha-Mind, depending on which interpretation we look at -- sort of a Buddhist Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! More important, however, was the increased importance of the Bodhisattva.  A Bodhisattva is someone who has attained enlightenment, but who chooses to remain in this world of Samsara in order to bring others to enlightenment. He is a lot like a saint, a spiritual hero, for the people to admire and appeal to. Along with new ideas came new scriptures.  Also called Sutras, they are often attributed to Buddha himself, sometimes as special transmissions that Buddha supposedly felt were too difficult for his original listeners and therefore were hidden until the times were ripe.  The most significant of these new Sutras are these:

Prajñaparamita or Perfection of Wisdom, an enormous collection of often esoteric texts, including the famous Heart Sutra and Diamond Sutra.  The earliest known piece of printing in the world is, in fact, a copy of the Diamond Sutra, printed in China in 868 ad.

Suddharma-pundarika or White Lotus of the True Dharma, also often esoteric, includes the Avalokiteshwara Sutra, a prayer to that Bodhisattva.

Vimalakirti-nirdesha or Vimalakirti's Exposition, is the teachings of and stories about the enlightened householder Vimalakirti.

Shurangama-samadhi or Hero's Sutra, provides a guide to meditation, shunyata, and the bodhisattva.  It is most popular among Zen Buddhists

Sukhavati-vyuha or Pure Land Sutra, is the most important Sutra for the Pure Land Schools of Buddhism.  The Buddha tells Ananda about Amitabha and his Pure Land or heaven, and how one can be reborn there. There are many, many others.  Finally, Mahayana is founded on two new philosophical interpretations of Buddhism: Madhyamaka and Yogachara.

Madhyamaka

Madhyamaka means "the middle way."  You may recall that Buddha himself called his way the middle way in his very first sermon.  He meant, at that time, the middle way between the extremes of hedonistic pleasure and extreme asceticism.  But he may also have referred to the middle way between the competing philosophies of
eternalism and annihilationism -- the belief that the soul exists forever and that the soul is annihilated at death.  Or between materialism and nihilism....  An Indian monk by the name of Nagarjuna took this idea and expanded on it to create the philosophy that would be known as Madhyamaka, in a book called the Mulamadhyamaka-karika, written about 150 ad. Basically a treatise on logical argument, it concludes that nothing is absolute, everything is relative, nothing exists on its own, everything is interdependent.  All systems, beginning with the idea that each thing is what it is and not something else (Aristotle's law of the excluded middle), wind up contradicting themselves.  Rigorous logic, in other words, leads one away from all systems, and to the concept of shunyata. Shunyata means emptiness.  This doesn't mean that nothing exists.  It means that nothing exists in and of itself, but only as a part of a universal web of being.  This would become a central concept in all branches of Mahayana.  Of course, it is actually a restatement of the central Buddhist concepts of anatman, anitya, and dukkha!

Yogachara

The second philosophical innovation, Yogachara, is credited to two brothers, Asanga and Vasubandhu,  who lived in India in the 300's ad.  They elaborated earlier movements in the direction of the philosophy of idealism or chitta-matra.  Chitta-matra means literally mind only.  Asanga and Vasubandhu believed that everything that exists is mind or consciousness.  What we think of as physical things are just projections of our minds, delusions or hallucinations, if you like.  To get rid of these delusions, we must meditate, which for the Yogachara school means the creation of pure consciousness, devoid of all content.  In that way, we leave our deluded individual minds and join with the universal mind, or Buddha-mind.

Tantra

The last innovation was less philosophical and far more practical:  Tantra.  Tantra refers to certain writings which are concerned, not with philosophical niceties, but with the basic how-to of enlightenment, and not just with enlightenment in several rebirths, but enlightenment here-and-now! In order to accomplish this feat, dramatic methods are needed, ones which, to the uninitiated, may seem rather bizarre.  Tantra was the domain of the siddhu, the adept -- someone who knows the secrets,  a magician in the ways of enlightenment.  Tantra involves the use of various techniques, including the well-known mandalas, mantras, and mudras.  mandalas are paintings or other representations of higher awareness, usually in the form of a circular pattern of images, which may provide the focus of one-pointed meditation.  Mantras are words or phrases that serve the same purpose, such as the famous "Om mani padme hum."  Mudras are hand positions that symbolize certain qualities of enlightenment. Less well known are the yidams.  A yidam is the image of a god or goddess or other spiritual being, either physically represented or, more commonly, imagined clearly in the mind's eye.  Again, these represent archetypal qualities of enlightenment, and one-pointed meditation on these complex images lead the adept to his or her goal. These ideas would have enormous impact on Mahayana.  They are not without critics, however:  Madhyamaka is sometimes criticized as word-play, and Yogachara is criticized as reintroducing atman, eternal soul or essence, to Buddhism.  Tantra has been most often criticized, especially for its emphasis on secret methods and strong devotion to a guru.  Nevertheless, these innovations led to a renewed flurry of activity in the first half of the first millenium, and provided the foundation for the kinds of Buddhism we find in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and elsewhere in east Asia.

Ch'an

Another school that was to be particularly strongly influenced by Chinese thought was the Meditation School -- Dhyana, Ch'an, Son, or Zen.  Tradition has the Indian monk Bodhidharma coming from the west to China around 520 ad.  It was Bodhidharma, it is said, who carried the Silent Transmission to become the First Patriarch of the Ch'an School in China: From the very beginning, Buddha had had reservations about his ability to communicate his message to the people.  Words simply could not carry such a sublime message.  So, on one occasion, while the monks around him waited for a sermon, he said absolutely nothing.  He simply held up a flower.  the monks, of course, were confused, except for Kashyapa, who understood and smiled.  The Buddha smiled back, and thus the Silent Transmission began. Zen Buddhism focuses on developing the immediate awareness of Buddha-mind through meditation on emptiness.  It is notorious for its dismissal of the written and spoken word and occasionally for his rough-house antics.  It should be understood, however, that there is great reverence for the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, even when they are ostensibly ignoring, poking fun, or even turning them upside-down. Zen has contributed its own literature to the Buddhist melting-pot, including The Platform Sutra, written by Hui Neng, the Sixth Patriarch, around 700 ad., The Blue Cliff Record, written about 1000 ad., and The Gateless Gate, written about 1200 ad.  And we shouldn't forget the famous Ten Ox-Herding Pictures that many see as containing the very essence of Zen's message.