Hinayana Buddhism

For those new to Buddhism, whether it’s out of curiosity or because studying Buddhism is part of a required course taught in a university, they first learn that Buddhism starts with the doctrine of impermanence, suffering and insubstantiality.  In other words, all that we perceive through our senses and think about is fundamentally unreal.  Furthermore, nothing we perceive has a permanent essence or nature.  Nor can we affirm anything positive of something or negative.  The Buddha even says, “Regard the world (loka) as void (suññam) and ever.  It is the king of Death” (Sutta-Nipata 1119).

But is is all there is to Buddhism?  The answer is, no.

Judging from what I have seen of some course materials including the many books published about Buddhism for the neophyte, Buddhism is made to stop at the quay—never to cross to the other shore which is where real Buddhism is to be found.  Mainly what the curious and the student learn is hinayana Buddhism by which I  mean  the vehicle (yana) of deficient (hina) Buddhism (I use this term without meaning it to refer to any particular school of Buddhism.).  Said again, the stuff about Buddhism the curious and the student learn is not comprehensive.  It is only half—the negative half.  In fact, in hinayana, very little is mentioned about nirvana and if it is, it usually errs. 

On the subject of nirvana or a higher reality or substance which the Buddha teaches, which isn’t empty, he alludes to it in such a way so as not to admit any kind of access except by way of mystical intuition, or gnosis.  This is meant to stop us dead in our tracks so we won’t hold out any hope that we can access ultimate reality, in this case nirvana, by way of sustained metaphysical inquiry or logical dialectic.  If we do so, we inevitably end up outside of the precincts of Buddhism.  We end up with a counterfeit teaching.  This is hinayana.  

By holding on to such a teaching as hinayana what we continually fail to realize is that our ignorance (S., avidya) bars and deceives us from understanding the true teaching.  This means that we are unable to study what Buddha actually taught.  In this sense, we are bespelled by hinayana, so much so that we mistake this shore for the transcendent shore! 

Comments

[ryan wilber]

I appreciate your post, yet i wish you would have included teaching on the positive half of the buddhism if you are going to state that hinayana is the negative half. possibly they are two sides of one coin as people say?

[doubleohoh]

You must have very strong neck muscles...!

[coochy-coo]

You forgot to mention that theravada/hinayana reifies avijja/avidya as a coherent though temporal subjective entity in and of itself. The negation of an eternal Subject (atman) which gains nibbana by the heretical theravadins is at the very core of their own 'ignorance'. The wise know avijja is an attribute coordinate to a Subject, or "ignorance OF what BY what (Subject)"?

Avijja however only means ignorance conventionally so, such that there are 2 modalities of avijja, noetic and empirical. Avijja as relates to #1 of paticcasamuppada refers to the attribute of the Absolute (citta), to which what citta IS (principle) cannot be differentiated from what citta ‘does’ (attribute). To which is meant emanationism, or avijja.

Avijja is literally meant Emanationism, the extrinsic attribute of the Absolute which is the indefinite dyad (aoristos dyas) for all creation, if the Absolute were devoid of an attribute, creation would be impossible, for even the most simplex of things have at least one attribute, the illumination of light and fluidity of water, for example (both attributes of a simplex principle). From the perspective of the Absolute, the very ‘stuff’ of will (citta/Brahman), there is no attribute, it is will utterly and only; as such the nature of the Absolute and its ‘act’ must be wholly indistinguishable, otherwise the presupposition of two subjects, the Absolute and X, would be posited and the very premise of Monism (Monism in meaning = 1 only) and of Emanationism would be utterly negated.

Avijja is a compound term composed of the privative A (not, opposite to, other than, lack of) and VIJJA (Light, Soul, Atman, Brahman). The very nature of the Absolute (vijja), which is objectively directed (a) away from its very Subject (vijja/Brahman), which is also that very same nature of the Atman (“Atman is [of the nature of] Brahman”-Up, and Buddhism: ‘Brahmabhutena attano’).

The confusion over avijja lies in the fact that it is both subjectively and objectively directed simultaneously. Avijja itself being the “light from itself (directed)” is meant that avijja has the Subjective (Self and Absolute) as its object, namely the concealment or privation (a) of the Subject (Atman) from itself. Avijja is objectification by its very definition, i.e. Emanationism. The object of avijja is the Absolute (the light, or vijja, from itself, a), meaning that the Subject, the Absolute, is self-objectifying, i.e. the very nature of will (citta,chit,Brahman) itself, being ‘to will’, not to itself, but to other. Avijja is itself objectification (by the Subject to other), but the very lack of (a) wisdom (vijja) in the will of a being is as pertains its nature, the Subject to which avijja is the very object of.