Essay on "Mahayana Buddhism"

/>The rise in popularity of Mahayana has been associated to many sources but among them three have been commonly pointed out as the major contributors towards the rapid increase in popularity of the Mahayana Buddhism. At the top of this list are the early schools of the Buddhist and a lot of terms used in these schools and those used in Mahayana have been related more often than not which indicate that there was a lot of incorporation of words from the Buddhist schools into the Mahayana Buddhism thus qualifying the schools as one of the origins. In addition to the texts, there are also a number of doctrinal ideas that are common between the sub-schools and the Mahayana thus bringing a similarity between the two in terms of content an indication that the schools contributed in the origin. Next source recorded in this list is the Biographical literature of the Buddha; this literature had its composition done by individuals who are claimed to have been the strong proponents of Buddha and thus was in the medium that eulogized Buddha (Williams, 15). Due to the content of such literature that mainly praised Buddha it was evident that they borrowed a piece from the early schools, however these borrowed ideas were more or less urbanized thus had a strong contribution towards the augmentation of Mahayana Buddhism, this is because the manner in which the poets expressed their work differed from that of scholars since scholars focused mostly on doctrines which was not the case with poets (Williams, 15).

Coming last in the list of the popular sources does the Stupa worship which played a great role in spreading Buddhism to the population especially that comprise uneducated laymen. The basic background of Stupas consisted simple monuments to Gautama Buddha, these had no great significance until they were turned into devotion places and at the same time being used as points to reach the populace with a greater success recorded among the illiterate individuals. Since… READ MORE