One school of Buddhism holds that the oldest written texts (the
Pali canon) embody Buddhism as the Buddha taught it. This school,
Theravada, has been most influential in Burma, Thailand, and Southeast
Asia. In the West, it has been wonderfully taught as Vipassana
meditation. The ideal of this approach is the liberation of the
individual, and many of its practitioners are monks.
As I understand it, original Buddhism underwent a revival around
500 A.D., when the Mahayana school developed. Mahayana Buddhism
is more social, colorful, and varied than Theravada (called Hinayana
by the Mahayanists).
Mahayana Buddhism centers around the ideal of the Boddhisattva,
the person who reaches an enlightened state that permits total
liberation, but turns away from it to work in the world to help
others. Boddhisattvas are rather like saints in Catholicism, except
that they reincarnate. Imagine being able to visit the living
incarnation of St. Francis or St. Paul!
A third school of Buddhism developed in Northern India and Tibet--Vajrayana,
or Tantric Buddhism. Tantra is best known in the West for its
paintings of deities in sexual intercourse, and early visitors
thought this referred only to sexual practices. Now it is clear
that these images are metaphors for the union and transcendence
of duality, separation, opposites.
Several Vajrayana masters arrived in America after the Tibetan
diaspora. Their practices appear to build on the Theravada meditation,
but extend to include other practices, such as