Word: hinayana
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More than 90% of Thais are practicing Buddhists, and the symbols of religion are omnipresent: young men in saffron robes practicing the 227 rules of tripitaka (the summation of Hinayana Doctrine), temples that dominate the jumbled skyline of humid, traffic-jammed Bangkok. Another symbol of Thai unity is the country's constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 51, whose official title is King Rama IX. A talented jazz saxophonist who was born in Cambridge, Mass. (where his father was a medical student), the shy monarch travels constantly throughout the country. He personally hands out diplomas to all graduates of state...
...fundamentalist Buddhists stuck to Buddha's narrow, escapist but arduous path and came to be known, to their distaste, as the Hinayana, or "lesser chariot." They prefer the name Theravada, or "doctrine of the elders." The "greater chariot," or Mahayana, branch attempted to enlarge and socialize the Middle Way. Their Buddha became less the example who must be emulated, more the savior who had mystically improved the lot of all mankind. By giving nearly equal weight to concern for others and to withdrawal for the self, Mahayana provided a platform for political engagement as Theravada could...
Greater & Lesser Vehicles. The two great Buddhist traditions are Hinayana and Mahayana. Hinayana, the so-called Lesser Vehicle, is generally more austere and uncompromising; it holds that only monks and nuns have hope of reaching nirvana. Mahayana, the Greater Vehicle, offers hope of enlightenment to laymen as well, and stresses the compassionate concern of the Buddha for humanity. The highest Mahayana ideal is the bodhisattva, or enlightened one, who sacrifices himself for others, and Mahayana mythology contains numerous examples of sacrifices as an act of love as well as a means of liberation. Zen Buddhism, one of the subdivisions...
Schisms. Buddhism split into two great branches: 1) the Hinayana, or Little Vehicle, which in modified form adheres to Buddha's original doctrines and survives in Ceylon and Southeast Asia; 2) the Mahayana, or Great Vehicle, which attaches importance to repetitive prayer and elaborate ritual, has taken on the trappings of magic and multiple gods, and is practiced also in China, Japan and Korea...
...with this rule, Toynbee finds the modern world riven by a gulf even deeper and wider than that between the Communist and non-Communist worlds, namely, the chasm between "the whole Judaic group of ideologies and religions" on the one hand and the "Buddhaic group" (Hinduism, the Mahayana and Hinayana forms of Buddhism) on the other. For the East, like ancient Greece, sees history as cyclical, recurrent, and hence irrelevant, while Christianity, Judaism and Islam see it governed by Intellect and Will, i.e., God. But in assigning history this divine importance, they "have reopened the door to self-centeredness...