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"All conditioned things are of a nature to decay. ... But if all things are impermanent, as the Buddha claimed, then reality itself is impermanent, the universe is destined to nonexistence, thought is an ephemeral thing, and, logically, Buddhism itself will fade into oblivion. ... In the past fifteen hundred years, Buddhism as a religion has experienced cycles of strength and weakness, but unfortunately the general trend of the religion has been the downward spiral that is characteristic of all things. While Buddhism persists as a religion today, time, popularity, and human conceptions have irrevocable damaged Buddhisms very foundation; erroneous transmission of information, by either not fully transmitting a message, altering a message, or adding to the message, has been a leading cause of the religion’s decay.
Perhaps Buddhism was destined to corruption from its beginnings, as historically it is difficult to study the religion’s early years and to assert exactly what the original ideals and thoughts of the religion were. ... However, the real problem is that our conception of what Buddhism is relies on these early texts. Such texts, though they were produced 200 years post-founding, provide us with information on how Buddhism was before years of corruption and human interaction. ... Herein lies a great paradox; he who takes time and effort to write the canon betrays the fundamentals of Buddhism. ... That is the slow but steady process of the first institutionalization of Buddhism. Up to the time when texts began to be written, we can be certain that Buddhism was fairly uncorrupt. ... " Communities that have been discovered from the early days of Buddhism were built of perishable materials that suggest a lack of organization implying that a life of wandering was indeed practiced.
In the hundred years following the appearance of the most dated texts, Buddhism saw a surge of popularity both in the adoption of the religion by ruling monarchs and in the gradual expansion that time alone caused. ... Herein are visible the beginnings of corruption in Buddhism, in both practice and in the new writings that were supposedly the word of the Buddha himself. ...
The earlier assumption I made that the earliest text do indeed reflect the ideals of Buddhism in its original form (though these writings may or may not be complete) leads us to question whether the institutionalization that occurs in the centuries just prior to the Common Era maintains the ideals set forth. ...
Not surprisingly followers of Buddhism quickly realized the corruption that institutionalization had caused; their reaction was a new surge of literature that caused a schism within the religion. ...
The Mahayana chastised much of what Buddhism had become. ... ” Here the Buddha is prescience of the corruption of Buddhism at the turn of the millennium. ... ”
Herein he criticizes the excessive material worship that has been accepted into modern Buddhism.
But, Mahayana’s rhetorical significance as a text is not only its criticism of Buddhism, but also a return to many of the religion’s earlier ideals and an incorporation of several new ideals.
Approximate Word count = 2446
Approximate Pages = 9.8
(250 words per page double spaced)
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