The School of the Great Vehicle (of salvation). also called the Northern School as it embraces Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea and Japan. Cp. Theravāda. The Mahāyāna gradually developed from the primitive teaching, and no sharp line of demarcation has ever existed; the doctrines of the Mahāsanghika School (q.v.) contain all the basic elements of the developed Mahāyāna. The teaching of the M. is more distinctly religious, making its appeal to the heart and intuition rather than to the intellect.
It seeks the spiritual interpretation of the verbal teaching, and endeavours to expound that teaching in a variety of forms calculated to appeal to every type of mind and every stage of spiritual development. That this method is but a concession to man’s limitations, an accommodation of Truth to the intelligence of the hearer, must be borne in mind when considering certain M. teachings, especially of the ‘Pure Land’ School, which appear fundamentally opposed to the original teaching of the Buddha. Discountenances asceticism of any kind, its ‘Sangha’ being a body of teachers rather than monks. It is pantheistic rather than atheistic. The Theravāda, so far as it recognizes a transcendental Reality, conceives of it as obscured by the phenomenal: in M. the Real is being ever revealed by the phenomenal. The Goal of the Theravāda is the attainment of Arahatship, self-salvation; that of the M. is Bodhisattva-hood, renunciation of Nirvana in order to help humanity in its pilgrimage thereto.
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