The prime sources of information regarding Siddhārtha Gautama’s life are the Buddhist texts. The Buddha and his monks spent four months each year discussing and rehearsing his teachings, and after his death his monks set about preserving them. A council was held shortly after his death, and another was held a century later. At these councils the monks attempted to establish and authenticate the extant accounts of the life and teachings of the Buddha following systematic rules. They divided the teachings into distinct but overlapping bodies of material, and assigned specific monks to preserve each one. The teaching was thus preserved orally for three centuries after the Buddha’s death when they were finally recorded on palm-leaf scrolls that were arranged in three baskets. From these teachings arose the present Buddhist sects of today: Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism.
The Three Existing Schools of Buddhism
Theravada
The Theravada (”teaching of the elders”) school upholds the Pali Canon or TipitakaSutta and Vinaya portion of the Tipitaka shows considerable overlap in content to the Agamas, the parallel collections used by non-Theravada schools in India which are preserved in Chinese and partially in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tibetan, and the various non-Theravada Vinayas. Theravada Buddhists number over 100 million worldwide, and in recent decades Theravada has begun to take root in the West and in the Buddhist revival in India.
Mahayana
Mahayana (the “Great Vehicle”) is a vast religious and philosophical structure. It constitutes an inclusive faith characterized by the adoption of new, Mahayana sutras.The fundamental principles of Mahayana doctrine were based around the possibility of universal liberation from suffering for all beings (hence “great vehicle”) and the existence of Buddhas and Bodhisattva embodying transcendent Buddha-nature (the eternal Buddha essence present, but hidden and unrecognized, in all beings).
Vajrayana
The Vajrayana ( the “Diamond Vehichle”) is often viewed as the third major ‘vehicle’ (Yana) of Buddhism, alongside theTheravada and Mahayana. According to this view, there were three ‘turnings of the wheel of dharma’[3]. In the first turningShakyamuni Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths at Varanasi which led to the Hinayana schools, of which only theTheravada remain today (although they object to the term ‘Hinayana’). In the second turning the Perfection of Wisdom sutras were taught at Vulture’s Peak and led to the Mahayana schools. The teachings which constituted the third turning of the wheel of dharma were taught at Shravasti and expounded that all beings have Buddha Nature. This third turning is described as having led to the Vajrayana.