Aspects of Mahayana Buddhism and its Relation to Hinayana c2.3

c2.3

Your aim, rather modest, is to present a clear view of the relations, historical and doctrinal, between the two Vehicles, and your book responds very well to your purpose. In your treatment of the numerous questions interesting in themselves and more interesting by reason of their general significance, you have not omitted to direct your attention to the exposition of the process of ideas, the action of foreign influences, the stages covering some centuries and an extensive region, by which the early form of Buddhism developed into the wonderful efflorescence of beliefs, myths and metaphysics of the Great Vehicle. It will be clear to your readers that the systems of the Great Vehicle are an adaptation of the theories of the Small Vehicle: prāptis and bījas, asaṃskṛtas, kāyas, the tathatā itself, the Sukhāvatīs and the heaven of Maitreya, etc. It is necessary to understand that there was never anything like Protestantism in the history of Buddhism. It is this that you show very well in the course of an examination of an important point.