MAHAYANA • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Mahayana

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noun

Mahayana n.

A major school of Buddhism teaching social concern and universal salvation, found in China; Japan; Tibet; Nepal; Korea; and Mongolia.

One of two great schools of Buddhist doctrine emphasizing a common search for universal salvation esp through faith alone; chiefly in China; Tibet; Japan.

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Etymology of 'Mahayana'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Mahayana" Quotes from Famous Books

... apprehension of our essential oneness with the absolute. Hence the way of salvation is by knowledge. In the Mah[a]y[a]na gnosticism was triumphant, and the historic values of Gautama's teaching and personality are lost. The Mahayana illustrates in part what would have followed the triumph of gnosticism in Christianity, for not only would the historic value of the life and teaching of Jesus have been lost, but with it the ...

— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... whatever their religion may have been, were certainly not believers in the Veda. They seem to have made a kind of compromise with Buddhism, and it is probably due to that compromise, or to an amalgamation of Saka legends with Buddhist doctrines, that we owe the so-called Mahayana form of Buddhism—and more particularly the Amitabha worship—which was finally settled at the Council under Kanishka, one of the Turanian rulers of India in the first ...

— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... of people: the monks who could achieve salvation and, secondly, the masses who fed the monks but could not achieve salvation. This religion did not gain a footing in China; only traces of it can be found in some Buddhistic sects in China. Mahayana Buddhism, on the other hand, developed into a true popular religion of salvation. It did not interfere with the indigenous deities and did not discountenance life in human society; it did not recommend Nirvana at once, but placed before it a here-after with all ...

— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

Words linked to "Mahayana" : Mahayana Buddhism, Mahayanist, Buddhism, Yogacara