Ekayana
Encyclopedia
Ekayāna is a Sanskrit
word that can mean "one path" or "one vehicle". The word took on special significance as a metaphor
for a spriritual journey in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
(II.iv.11 and IV.v.12). Notably, in that text the phrase vāk
ekayānam translates approximately to "the one destination of the Vedas
is the spirit of the word".
Buddhism
is obscured in history and legend, the historical appearance of the Ekayana is also unknown. At some point the term became in use and appeared in the canonical
texts of Mahayana Buddhism. The Ekayana sutra
s of primary influence are the Lankavatara Sutra
, the Avatamsaka Sutra
(The Flower Garland Sutra), the Lotus Sutra
(The Sutra of The White Lotus of the True Dharma), and the Shurangama Sutra
(especially with its Shurangama Mantra
encompassing worship of the entire Buddhist Pantheon Hindu pantheon The Heroic Gate Sutra). Other Ekayana sutras are the Śrīmālādevī Simhanada Sūtra (The Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala), the Sraddhotpanna Sutra, and the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra (The Mahayana Sutra of The Great Parinirvana).
After the division of the Mahayana from the Early Buddhist Schools
, the Mahayana itself began to develop into sectarian tendencies as different philosophical trends developed, notably the Madhyamaka
, the Yogacara
, the Tathagatagarbha. While the actual historical order of appearance of the various texts is in considerable doubt, the principle common to the Ekayana texts is that they seek to unite the different Dharma
teachings into "one vehicle" that encompasses all Dharmas and, in that sense, becomes the supreme Dharma teaching. The central point of this unification process is that it is not a single doctrine that is the "one vehicle" of Buddhism but that the actual experience of awakening, i.e., bodhi
, is the one vehicle.
The Indian Sutras of the Ekayana develop the various themes of Buddhism from their unique perspectives, yet share the "One Vehicle" approach to Buddhism. Thus, the Lankavatara Sutra expresses the incisive psychological analysis of the Ekayana, the Avatamsaka Sutra expresses the grandeur of the metaphysical or philosophical all-inclusiveness of the transcendent vision of the Ekayana, and the Lotus Sutra expresses the profundity of the devotional aspect of the Ekayana.
Woven in the Ekayana Sutras are several common themes which may be outlined as: (1) Buddhism is the religious development of the One Buddha Mind, (2) the One Mind is known by many names such as Dharmakaya
(the body or essence of Dharma), Buddha-nature, Tathagata-garbha (the Buddha-Matrix
, the Fundamental Treasury of the Tathagata
, the womb of the One-Who-Comes-Thus), Shunyata
(Emptiness), Alaya-vjnana (the Storehouse of Consciousness), etc., (3) since all the teachings of Buddhism, including both Mahayana and the Early Schools, are essentially teachings about the One Buddha Mind they must be taken as an organic whole and this reconciliation of apparent oppositions or contradictions within Buddhist teachings is the synthesis of Ekayana, (4) as all beings share equally the One Mind there is an absolute basis for human equality, (5) realizing this absolute basis of the One Buddha Mind is not accomplished as an intellectual pursuit but must be accomplished by experiential practice, and (6) since all people share this One Mind there is no fundamental distinction between monastics and lay practitioners in the potential for—or actual realization of—awakening in Buddhism.
(J. Tendai) and Huayen (J. Kegon) Buddhist sect
s were able to present a synthesis of the diversity of Buddhism that was understandable and palatable by the Chinese worldview.
) school of Buddhism affected this synthesis in a unique way by focusing on the practice of meditation as taught in the Lankavatara as the core method of personally realizing the Ekayana teachings while at the same time acknowledging the transcendental and devotional aspects represented by the Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutras respectively. The Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma
(c. 5th to 6th century), who is considered the founder of the Chan school of China, was said to have brought the "Ekayana school of Southern India" to China and passed it down along with the Lankavatara Sutra to his primary disciple Huike
(487-593), known as the Second Founding Ancestor of the Chan lineage. Huike's successors were known by the name of "Lankavatara masters," and it was the missionary work of Huike and his followers that laid the foundation of the Chan school.
Guifeng Zongmi
(780 - 841) was an accredited master of both the Chan and Huayan (Avatamsaka) Buddhist lineages. In his treatise, The Original Person Debate (原人論, Yuan Ren Lun), he explicitly identifies the Ekayana teachings as the most profound type of spiritual realization and equates it with the direct realization of one's own nature:
Thus, according to Zongmi who was a lineage master of both Huayan and Chan, he clearly distinguished the Ekayana from the Mahayana, and the Mahayana teachings of Yogacara (his Mahayana class 3) and Madhyamaka (his Mahayana class 4) were eclipsed by the more profound Ekayana teaching of "manifesting nature."
, the one-vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sutra also inspired the formation of the Nichiren
sect.
(DN 22). That influential text uses the term ekāyana to describe a number of meditation
techniques intended for the cultivation of mindfulness. While ekāyana (formed from the words eka and ayana) is not the same term as ekayāna (formed from eka and yāna), both terms express the metaphor of a journey toward the attainment of Buddhist awakening. Past and present East Asian Buddhists have seen the same combination of characters (一乘) signifying ekāyana in the Agamas (Chinese
translation of the Nikayas) as well as ekayāna in Chinese translations of Mahayana texts. Nevertheless, in contrast to yāna, whose etymological
root is yā, the root of ayana is ya. While both roots connote
"going" in Sanskrit, the distinction remains somewhat significant because yā is more likely than ya to also connote a "vehicle".
Sanskrit
Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
word that can mean "one path" or "one vehicle". The word took on special significance as a metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for a spriritual journey in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
The Upanishad is one of the older, "primary" Upanishads. It is contained within the Shatapatha Brahmana, and its status as an independent Upanishad may be considered a secondary extraction of a portion of the Brahmana text. This makes it one of the oldest texts of the Upanishad corpus...
(II.iv.11 and IV.v.12). Notably, in that text the phrase vāk
Saraswati
In Hinduism Saraswati , is the goddess of knowledge, music, arts, science and technology. She is the consort of Brahma, also revered as His Shakti....
ekayānam translates approximately to "the one destination of the Vedas
Vedas
The Vedas are a large body of texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism....
is the spirit of the word".
Ekayana in Indian Buddhism
Just as the development of MahayanaMahayana
Mahāyāna is one of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for classification of Buddhist philosophies and practice...
Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...
is obscured in history and legend, the historical appearance of the Ekayana is also unknown. At some point the term became in use and appeared in the canonical
Canonical
Canonical is an adjective derived from canon. Canon comes from the greek word κανών kanon, "rule" or "measuring stick" , and is used in various meanings....
texts of Mahayana Buddhism. The Ekayana sutra
Sutra
Sūtra is an aphorism or a collection of such aphorisms in the form of a manual. Literally it means a thread or line that holds things together and is derived from the verbal root siv-, meaning to sew , as does the medical term...
s of primary influence are the Lankavatara Sutra
Lankavatara Sutra
The Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra is a sutra of Mahāyāna Buddhism. The sūtra recounts a teaching primarily between the Buddha and a bodhisattva named Mahāmati...
, the Avatamsaka Sutra
Avatamsaka Sutra
The is one of the most influential Mahayana sutras of East Asian Buddhism. The title is rendered in English as Flower Garland Sutra, Flower Adornment Sutra, or Flower Ornament Scripture....
(The Flower Garland Sutra), the Lotus Sutra
Lotus Sutra
The Lotus Sūtra is one of the most popular and influential Mahāyāna sūtras, and the basis on which the Tiantai and Nichiren sects of Buddhism were established.-Title:...
(The Sutra of The White Lotus of the True Dharma), and the Shurangama Sutra
Shurangama Sutra
The ' is a Mahāyāna Buddhist sūtra, and has been especially influential in the Chán school of Chinese Buddhism.- Etymology :According to Ron Epstein, roughly means "indestructible." The word is composed of Śūraṅ , with Gama...
(especially with its Shurangama Mantra
Shurangama Mantra
The Shurangama Mantra is a dharani or long mantra of East Asian Mahayana and Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist origin that is popular in China, Japan, and Korea, although relatively unknown in modern Tibet, even though there are several Shurangama Mantra texts Sadhana, Shastra in the Tibetan Buddhist...
encompassing worship of the entire Buddhist Pantheon Hindu pantheon The Heroic Gate Sutra). Other Ekayana sutras are the Śrīmālādevī Simhanada Sūtra (The Lion's Roar of Queen Srimala), the Sraddhotpanna Sutra, and the Mahayana Mahaparinirvana Sutra (The Mahayana Sutra of The Great Parinirvana).
After the division of the Mahayana from the Early Buddhist Schools
Early Buddhist schools
The early Buddhist schools are those schools into which, according to most scholars, the Buddhist monastic saṅgha initially split, due originally to differences in vinaya, and later also due to doctrinal differences and geographical separation of groups of monks.The original saṅgha split into the...
, the Mahayana itself began to develop into sectarian tendencies as different philosophical trends developed, notably the Madhyamaka
Madhyamaka
Madhyamaka refers primarily to a Mahāyāna Buddhist school of Buddhist philosophy systematized by Nāgārjuna. Nāgārjuna may have arrived at his positions from a desire to achieve a consistent exegesis of the Buddha's doctrine as recorded in the āgamas...
, the Yogacara
Yogacara
Yogācāra is an influential school of Buddhist philosophy and psychology emphasizing phenomenology and ontology through the interior lens of meditative and yogic practices. It developed within Indian Mahāyāna Buddhism in about the 4th century CE...
, the Tathagatagarbha. While the actual historical order of appearance of the various texts is in considerable doubt, the principle common to the Ekayana texts is that they seek to unite the different Dharma
Dharma
Dharma means Law or Natural Law and is a concept of central importance in Indian philosophy and religion. In the context of Hinduism, it refers to one's personal obligations, calling and duties, and a Hindu's dharma is affected by the person's age, caste, class, occupation, and gender...
teachings into "one vehicle" that encompasses all Dharmas and, in that sense, becomes the supreme Dharma teaching. The central point of this unification process is that it is not a single doctrine that is the "one vehicle" of Buddhism but that the actual experience of awakening, i.e., bodhi
Bodhi
Bodhi is both a Pāli and Sanskrit word traditionally translated into English with the word "enlightenment", but which means awakened. In Buddhism it is the knowledge possessed by a Buddha into the nature of things...
, is the one vehicle.
The Indian Sutras of the Ekayana develop the various themes of Buddhism from their unique perspectives, yet share the "One Vehicle" approach to Buddhism. Thus, the Lankavatara Sutra expresses the incisive psychological analysis of the Ekayana, the Avatamsaka Sutra expresses the grandeur of the metaphysical or philosophical all-inclusiveness of the transcendent vision of the Ekayana, and the Lotus Sutra expresses the profundity of the devotional aspect of the Ekayana.
Woven in the Ekayana Sutras are several common themes which may be outlined as: (1) Buddhism is the religious development of the One Buddha Mind, (2) the One Mind is known by many names such as Dharmakaya
Dharmakaya
The Dharmakāya is a central idea in Mahayana Buddhism forming part of the Trikaya doctrine that was possibly first expounded in the Aṣṭasāhasrikā prajñā-pāramitā , composed in the 1st century BCE...
(the body or essence of Dharma), Buddha-nature, Tathagata-garbha (the Buddha-Matrix
Uterus
The uterus or womb is a major female hormone-responsive reproductive sex organ of most mammals including humans. One end, the cervix, opens into the vagina, while the other is connected to one or both fallopian tubes, depending on the species...
, the Fundamental Treasury of the Tathagata
Tathagata
Tathāgata in Pali and Sanskrit) is the name the Buddha of the scriptures uses when referring to himself. The term means, paradoxically, both one who has thus gone and one who has thus come . Hence, the Tathagata is beyond all coming and going – beyond all transitory phenomena...
, the womb of the One-Who-Comes-Thus), Shunyata
Shunyata
Śūnyatā, शून्यता , Suññatā , stong-pa nyid , Kòng/Kū, 空 , Gong-seong, 공성 , qoγusun is frequently translated into English as emptiness...
(Emptiness), Alaya-vjnana (the Storehouse of Consciousness), etc., (3) since all the teachings of Buddhism, including both Mahayana and the Early Schools, are essentially teachings about the One Buddha Mind they must be taken as an organic whole and this reconciliation of apparent oppositions or contradictions within Buddhist teachings is the synthesis of Ekayana, (4) as all beings share equally the One Mind there is an absolute basis for human equality, (5) realizing this absolute basis of the One Buddha Mind is not accomplished as an intellectual pursuit but must be accomplished by experiential practice, and (6) since all people share this One Mind there is no fundamental distinction between monastics and lay practitioners in the potential for—or actual realization of—awakening in Buddhism.
Ekayana in Chinese Buddhism
While the "One Vehicle" Buddhism died in India along with the rest of Buddhism, it became a key aspect of the Chinese acculturation and acceptance of Buddhism. The Chinese assimilation of Buddhism met in the vast diversity of Buddhist texts the problem of sorting through them for the core of Buddhist teaching. This problem was solved by the greatest Buddhist minds of China by taking up one or more of the Ekayana Sutras as central to the understanding of the diversity of Buddhism. The doctrines and practices of TiantaiTiantai
Tiantai is an important school of Buddhism in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. In Japan the school is known as Tendai, and in Korea it is known as Cheontae. Tiantai is also called the "Lotus School", due to its emphasis on the Lotus Sūtra as its doctrinal basis...
(J. Tendai) and Huayen (J. Kegon) Buddhist sect
Sect
A sect is a group with distinctive religious, political or philosophical beliefs. Although in past it was mostly used to refer to religious groups, it has since expanded and in modern culture can refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and...
s were able to present a synthesis of the diversity of Buddhism that was understandable and palatable by the Chinese worldview.
Ekayana in Zen
The Chinese Chan (ZenZen
Zen is a school of Mahāyāna Buddhism founded by the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma. The word Zen is from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Chán , which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit word dhyāna, which can be approximately translated as "meditation" or "meditative state."Zen...
) school of Buddhism affected this synthesis in a unique way by focusing on the practice of meditation as taught in the Lankavatara as the core method of personally realizing the Ekayana teachings while at the same time acknowledging the transcendental and devotional aspects represented by the Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutras respectively. The Indian Buddhist monk Bodhidharma
Bodhidharma
Bodhidharma was a Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th/6th century AD. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Ch'an to China, and regarded as the first Chinese patriarch...
(c. 5th to 6th century), who is considered the founder of the Chan school of China, was said to have brought the "Ekayana school of Southern India" to China and passed it down along with the Lankavatara Sutra to his primary disciple Huike
Huike
Dazu Huike is considered the Second Patriarch of Chinese Chán and the twenty-ninth since Gautama Buddha.-Introduction:As with most of the early Chán patriarchs, very little firm data is available about his life...
(487-593), known as the Second Founding Ancestor of the Chan lineage. Huike's successors were known by the name of "Lankavatara masters," and it was the missionary work of Huike and his followers that laid the foundation of the Chan school.
Guifeng Zongmi
Zongmi
Guifeng Zongmi was a Tang dynasty Buddhist scholar-monk, installed as fifth patriarch of the Huayan school as well as a patriarch of the Heze lineage of Southern Chan.He wrote a number of vitally important essays on the contemporary situation of Buddhism in Tang China, and is one of the most...
(780 - 841) was an accredited master of both the Chan and Huayan (Avatamsaka) Buddhist lineages. In his treatise, The Original Person Debate (原人論, Yuan Ren Lun), he explicitly identifies the Ekayana teachings as the most profound type of spiritual realization and equates it with the direct realization of one's own nature:
"Buddha's teaching itself goes from shallow to profound. In outline there are five classes: 1. The teachings of human and heavenly beings. 2. The Small Vehicle's (Hinayana) teaching. 3. The Great Vehicle's (Mahayana) teaching of Dharma characteristics (dharmalaksana). 4. The Great Vehicle's teaching of destroying characteristics. 5. The One Vehicle's (Ekayana) teaching of manifesting Nature."
Thus, according to Zongmi who was a lineage master of both Huayan and Chan, he clearly distinguished the Ekayana from the Mahayana, and the Mahayana teachings of Yogacara (his Mahayana class 3) and Madhyamaka (his Mahayana class 4) were eclipsed by the more profound Ekayana teaching of "manifesting nature."
Ekayana in Japanese Buddhism
As the various forms of Buddhism influenced by the Ekayana sutras came to JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, the one-vehicle teaching of the Lotus Sutra also inspired the formation of the Nichiren
Nichiren
Nichiren was a Buddhist monk who lived during the Kamakura period in Japan. Nichiren taught devotion to the Lotus Sutra, entitled Myōhō-Renge-Kyō in Japanese, as the exclusive means to attain enlightenment and the chanting of Nam-Myōhō-Renge-Kyō as the essential practice of the teaching...
sect.
Ekayana in the Pali Canon
The Nikayas feature a related term, ekāyana (typically translated as "direct way" or "only way") in the Satipatthana SuttaSatipatthana Sutta
The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta are two of the most important and widely studied discourses in the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism...
(DN 22). That influential text uses the term ekāyana to describe a number of meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
techniques intended for the cultivation of mindfulness. While ekāyana (formed from the words eka and ayana) is not the same term as ekayāna (formed from eka and yāna), both terms express the metaphor of a journey toward the attainment of Buddhist awakening. Past and present East Asian Buddhists have seen the same combination of characters (一乘) signifying ekāyana in the Agamas (Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
translation of the Nikayas) as well as ekayāna in Chinese translations of Mahayana texts. Nevertheless, in contrast to yāna, whose etymological
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
root is yā, the root of ayana is ya. While both roots connote
Connotation
A connotation is a commonly understood subjective cultural or emotional association that some word or phrase carries, in addition to the word's or phrase's explicit or literal meaning, which is its denotation....
"going" in Sanskrit, the distinction remains somewhat significant because yā is more likely than ya to also connote a "vehicle".