Chapter 4. An overview of the transformation of Mahāyāna soteriology¶

This chapter surveys how the five Mahāyāna traditions, Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, tathāgatagarbha, esoteric Buddhism, and Pure Land, each reconstruct soteriology. It asks what they change, what they add, and how they relate to early teaching, providing an overall map for the essays that follow.

In the first row, “disciple” means a śrāvaka, or hearer; the question concerns a bodhisattva who remains in saṃsāra for a long time. The second row specifies immeasurable compassionate vows. In the fourth, “other-power” is explicitly qualified as Pure Land. The Chinese fifth row says “three great aeons (exoteric),” while the second row says “three incalculable aeons”; the English diagram uses “incalculable” in both places. The final “following parts” refers to the subsequent essays.

From hearer to bodhisattva: expanding the subject of liberation

Early Buddhist soteriology centers on the individual's liberation from suffering. Hearer (śrāvaka) practitioners listen to the Buddha's teaching and cultivate the eightfold path toward individual liberation, arhatship (arhatva). Within this framework, liberation is fundamentally a private matter. I liberate myself from my suffering; you liberate yourself from yours. The Buddha shows the path, but each person must walk it to the end.

One of the Mahāyāna movement's most conspicuous soteriological changes is the establishment of the bodhisattva ideal. A distinction from Volume 1 must first be recalled. The early term "bodhisattva" refers to an individual practitioner proceeding toward Buddhahood, its prototype being the Buddha's own bodhisattva practice over successive lives. Vowing to take this path, far longer than the arhat path, was originally a heroic personal choice for a few, not a universal destination everyone ought to pursue (see Volume 1, 4.3). A correction of emphasis is needed here. In the discourses, the word most often appears in an autobiographical formula, "when I was not yet fully awakened, while still a bodhisattva," followed by what happened then. It refers to Gotama before awakening in this life. The long race across lifetimes is another use (Volume 1, Part II, Essay 13, Chapter 6).

The Mahāyāna gradually universalizes this path of the few into an ideal one ought to adopt. The basic direction of the aspiration to awakening (bodhicitta) is to seek Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings. Some scriptures and vows further formulate this as declining one's own ultimate nirvāṇa before beings are saved. But this is not the sole formula shared by all Mahāyāna texts. The later doctrine of nonabiding nirvāṇa seeks precisely to explain why Buddhahood and continuing to benefit others do not conflict.¹ Liberation is thus no longer merely an individual matter. It is placed within a vision of benefit shared by all sentient beings.

This expansion has powerful moral appeal. In some Mahāyāna texts, the image of the hearer attaining liberation alone is disparaged as "Hīnayāna," the "lesser vehicle." What is criticized is the scope of concern, not wisdom itself. The discourses already distinguish the two. The Tathāgata awakens to the Dhamma himself without having heard it before, while hearers follow the Dhamma and the path. The one who opens the path and those who follow are equal in the exhaustion of suffering, unequal in their abilities (Volume 1, Part II, Essay 13, Chapter 6). By contrast, the bodhisattva ideal appears vast and noble.

Yet texts or interpretive models that describe the bodhisattva path as "deferring nirvāṇa" face a serious question. If nirvāṇa is suffering's complete cessation, and the bodhisattva remains involved in rebirth to save sentient beings, what is the bodhisattva's state of existence? Is the bodhisattva in suffering, or in some special state that transcends suffering without leaving it? Doctrines of nonabiding nirvāṇa, Buddha bodies, and continuing activity offer different answers. The Mahāyāna systems bear this tension in different ways, but it prompts a redefinition of liberation's nature.

From arhatship to Buddhahood: raising liberation's goal

The expansion of the subject accompanies a substantial elevation of liberation's goal. Early Buddhist practice aims at arhatship, suffering's complete cessation, the total severing of craving, and the end of rebirth. The Mahāyāna sets Buddhahood (buddhatva) as the goal: perfect wisdom (prajñā), limitless compassionate vows (karuṇā), and concern for and salvation of all sentient beings at all times.

The scale of this elevation is astonishing. Arhatship is a finite goal attainable within an individual's lifetime. Buddhahood is an almost infinite ideal, requiring practitioners to accumulate merit and wisdom through three great incalculable kalpas (asaṃkhyeyakalpa, uncountable units of time). Raising the goal radically extends the time dimension. Exoteric Mahāyāna practice is an undertaking across countless kalpas, not a matter of this life. This makes liberation extremely difficult to verify in time. Yet Mahāyāna practitioners often confidently declare that their present practice leads toward Buddhahood. That confidence itself deserves examination.

The higher goal also increases soteriology's theoretical burden. Early Buddhist arhatship has clear defining criteria, the abandonment of the ten fetters (saṃyojana) and the sequence of the four fruits. Though difficult to attain, these criteria are theoretically clear and offer a trackable course in practice. Their clarity needs a slight qualification. A genealogy of subdivisions is already underway within the discourses. The three Training Discourses divide stream-enterers into those with seven returns, those going from family to family, and those with one seed; nonreturners are divided into five kinds beginning with those who attain parinibbāna in the interval. The destination is the treatises' system of stages (Volume 1, Part II, Essay 13, Chapter 6). Buddhahood's contents, such as omniscience (sarvajñatā), boundless compassionate vows, and the three bodies (trikāya), involve extensive additional metaphysical theory.² What complete Buddhahood is like, and how one can say it has been reached, increasingly depend on the traditions' complex theoretical frameworks. No relatively simple measure of progress in practice can settle them any longer.

Deepening liberation's basis: from right view to emptiness, consciousness-only, and Buddha-nature

Early Buddhist soteriology makes right view (sammā-diṭṭhi) the first condition of the path to liberation. Right view consists in correctly understanding the four noble truths. This is a practical understanding that requires no highly complex metaphysical theory. A person with little literacy and limited philosophical training has the foundation of knowledge and view for liberation if that person can truly understand and realize suffering, origin, cessation, and path. Some small southern Buddhist circles often make the point that the Buddha's first generation of disciples often had little literacy. What did they know of metaphysics? They attained the fruits all the same.

The Mahāyāna traditions change significantly on this point. The Madhyamaka (Mādhyamaka) system proposes that liberation's key condition is a correct understanding of emptiness (śūnyatā), that all phenomena, including the "I," lack intrinsic nature (svabhāva). This understanding requires systematic philosophical training, gradually dismantling the view of real existence through reductio (prasaṅga) analysis. Yogācāra proposes instead that the key is recognizing "consciousness-only" (vijñapti-mātra). The so-called external world is only a manifestation of consciousness. True liberation is consciousness's transformation of the basis (āśraya-parāvṛtti), from defiled storehouse consciousness (ālayavijñāna) into the four pure wisdoms, including great perfect mirror wisdom. The tathāgatagarbha tradition goes further. Sentient beings originally possess Buddha-nature (buddha-dhātu). Liberation manifests an originally present pure nature of mind; it does not acquire a new state. Chan takes this idea to its extreme. In sudden awakening one sees one's nature, realizing liberation here and now with no need for gradual practice.³

Each theory has its own soteriological logic, which subsequent essays will analyze in turn. Here the chapter points to a structural trend. Liberation's theoretical basis grows more complex and increasingly requires systematic philosophical training and a corresponding lineage system to master. Soteriology gradually turns from a practical, relatively accessible framework into specialized knowledge that requires extensive theoretical preparation to enter. This transformation has intellectual achievements, but also a cost. For ordinary practitioners without philosophical training, liberation becomes ever more distant in theory.

The savior's gradual appearance: from self-refuge to another's power

Early Buddhism explicitly excludes the place of an external savior. The Buddha points out the path, but does not save; practitioners must walk it to the end themselves. This principle of reliance on one's own effort undergoes a series of erosions as the Mahāyāna develops.

First come the blessings of Buddhas' and bodhisattvas' compassionate vows. In the Mahāyāna context, awakened bodhisattvas not only practice themselves but help other beings in various ways, protecting through supernatural powers, guiding through teaching, and easing beings' suffering through resonant compassion. This introduces external power into the account of practice, but retains the need for practitioners' own effort.

Next, guru yoga (guru-yoga) in the esoteric tradition elevates the guru to a key position in liberation. Without the guru's empowerment (abhiṣeka) and transmission, practitioners cannot enter advanced practices. The guru's blessings are considered necessary for accomplishment. This is an important development of the savior figure. External authority not only points out the path but in some sense becomes a conditioning factor in the transformation through practice.

Pure Land takes this trend to its extreme. In some versions, especially Japan's Jōdo Shinshū, it ultimately becomes complete reliance on another's power (tariki). Beings are wholly unable to save themselves. Only the power of Amitābha's original vows (pūrvapranidhāna) can receive and guide them to rebirth in the Pure Land. Practitioners' work is to open themselves to this other power through faith (śraddhā) and aspiration (praṇidhāna).⁴ In this version, soteriology changes its structure fundamentally. It no longer concerns how suffering's causes, craving and ignorance, are directly counteracted. It concerns how practitioners properly receive salvation by an external power.

This course from reliance on one's own effort to another's power is not a single linear development. The traditions intersect and stand in dialectical relations. But as an overall trend it is real, and soteriological criticism must address it seriously.

Polarization in time: three great kalpas and Buddhahood in this very body

Mahāyāna soteriology presents a peculiar polarization in time. Exoteric teaching stretches time indefinitely; the esoteric vehicle compresses it indefinitely.

Exoteric Mahāyāna, especially the full practice of the bodhisattva path, requires accumulation over three great incalculable kalpas. This scale exceeds what human experience can imagine. In time, it makes soteriology a pure object of belief, rather than a promise that could be verified within any finite period. The Mahāyāna can of course argue that each life's practice is part of the bodhisattva path, and that present practice has value even if final attainment lies infinitely far away. Yet this does not remove a soteriological difficulty. Assessing the credibility of a promise that takes countless kalpas to verify faces a fundamental epistemological challenge.

In sharp contrast stands Vajrayāna's claim of "Buddhahood in this very body," customarily called "accomplishment in one lifetime" in the Tibetan tradition. Through particular empowerments, deity yoga (iṣṭadevatā-yoga), guru yoga, and the pointing-out instructions of Dzogchen (rDzogs-chen) or Mahāmudrā, practitioners can achieve ultimate liberation in this very life, even attaining Buddhahood through one lifetime of diligent practice.⁵ This dramatically reverses exoteric teaching's lengthy timescale. The esoteric compression of time has its own logic. If the problem is failure to recognize one's original awakened nature, the idea of being originally a Buddha, then once it is directly pointed out and one abides in it stably, no accumulation over time is needed. Recognition is immediate, and so is awakening.

Yet this compression likewise creates difficulty in verification. If Buddhahood in this very body is possible, how should a practitioner who has become a Buddha be identified? In the esoteric tradition, the power to identify this is concentrated in gurus and lineage systems. Structurally, this bears closely on the recognition of attainment that concerns soteriological criticism.

Historical and wider forces behind these transformations

Each of Mahāyāna soteriology's transformations has its causes. The concern here is their historical and wider impetus, the external conditions in the history of religious institutions and society that brought these transformations about. As for the internal impetus behind each tradition's transformation, the Preface states this book's diagnosis in psychodynamic terms, the particular attachment concealed within each. The two must not be confused. Why a tradition's soteriology arose historically, what it is attached to psychologically, and whether it holds philosophically are three different questions.

The rise of the bodhisattva ideal was partly a reaction against Buddhism's excessive academicization in the Abhidharma era. Abhidharma analyzes dharmas into seventy-five, in the Sarvāstivāda, or eighty-two, in the southern tradition, constructing an extremely precise metaphysical system. Yet in appeal and accessibility this system increasingly lost the vitality of early Buddhist teaching. With its generous moral appeal and vast cosmic concern, the bodhisattva ideal rekindled religious enthusiasm.

The rise of the doctrine of emptiness was partly a philosophical reaction against Abhidharma's dharma realism. If dharmas have fixed intrinsic natures, how could grasping dharmas themselves, not just grasping the "I," lead to liberation? By thoroughly deconstructing intrinsic nature, Nāgārjuna's doctrine of emptiness offered a philosophically more consistent route of criticism.

The rise of tathāgatagarbha doctrine and Pure Land has a wider social and religious background. Lay followers and ordinary practitioners found highly academic philosophical Buddhism hard to enter. They needed a more direct and approachable soteriology. "You are originally a Buddha" and "Amitābha will come to receive you" are powerful calls to ordinary people in this context.

The following essays will analyze each tradition's specific circumstances to show how its soteriology departs from early teaching.

Two preliminary statements are needed. First, the course of transformation this chapter traces chronologically can easily read as a curve of one-way decline. The later the development, the heavier the metaphysical commitments, the harder verification becomes, and the farther it moves from the original intention. Chapter 7 of Essay 13 in Part II of Volume 1 has already marked this narrative shape as something to guard against. Its judgment is that leakage and self-purification proceed together, a prolonged struggle of two forces, not a curve of one-way decline. This volume takes the same position. The following essays examine the traditions one by one. Each has mechanisms of self-purification and openings for leakage. Judgments are made separately, without presupposing a general downward line.

Second, Chapter 7 of Essay 13 in Part II of Volume 1 leaves a list of interfaces matching several places left undeclared in the discourses with later developments. The failure of predication in the group concerning the Tathāgata after death connects with later doctrines of the permanent Buddha body; the phrase "consciousness nonmanifest and boundless" with the tradition of permanent mind or consciousness; and the guarantee furnished by the list of predictions with the systematization of the bodhisattva path. These three linked cases are taken up across Essays 3 and 4 of this volume and share the origin of the transformations described here. Their common shape deserves recording in advance. The discourses leave several blank places, and later traditions mostly fill them with positive teachings. Whether the manner of filling itself requires argument will be examined in the respective essays.

References¶

This chapter is a broad map, identifying each tradition's main transformations only at the level of an overview. Each tradition's detailed doctrines, scriptural evidence, and specialist literature are treated in its own essay. The following general sources concern only the map's key factual claims.