A certain name is applied to the ultimate stage. But, after a while, this term comes to be taken rather

literally and therefore comes to mean something less than it meant originally. So you now have to go

beyond it with another term that indicates what the first term meant before its meaning became debased.

You see this with the word arahant. In the Pali texts [belonging to the earliest, Hinayana phase] arahant

refers to one who has realized the highest truth by following the teaching of the Buddha. But in the

Mahayana sutras, because the whole notion of the arahant had become rather debased, you needed

something that went beyond that. In this way there arose the Mahayana conception of the Bodhisattva and

the supreme Buddha.44

Sangharakshita considers that Western Buddhists cannot accept these traditional schematisations of theteachings. For a start, they have no basis in history since we know that the Buddha did not literally teachmany of the later doctrines attributed to him. We can also see that the different schools do not fit neatlyinto the classificatory schema. For instance, there are teachings in the Pali Canon, supposedly belongingto the Hinayana, that are clearly directed to individuals at a very high level of attainment. At the sametime, some teachings found in the ‘higher’ yanas of the Tibetan systems are actually quite elementary:
for instance, Sangharakshita considers that some of the practices in the anuyoga-tantra of the Nyingmapa
are probably merely Indian hatha yoga exercises. Again, he says of Dzogchen, which is for the
Nyingmapa the very highest stage of spiritual practice,

If one looks at the actual material it seems to boil down to a quite simple practice of mindfulness.45

Indeed, he says of some teachings in the anuttarayoga-tantra, the summit of some Tibetan systems, thatthey are not really Buddhist at all, but rather unassimilated Hinduism. Finally, these schemata presentanother difficulty. They were meant to comprehend all aspects of the Buddhist tradition. However, theyonly account for what schools and teachings were known to the systematisers - which was limited towhat had at that time been transmitted to their country from India. Modern Buddhists are faced with theentire range of Buddhist schools, ancient and modern. Since several schools have their own classificatorysystems, not only in Tibetan Buddhism but in Chinese and Japanese Buddhism too, there is a problemof reconciling the different systems. This would prove extremely complex, perhaps impossible, andwould be of doubtful spiritual value were it achieved.

The Unity of Buddhism Page 12
Extracted from Sangharakshita: A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition by Dharmachari Subhuti


It is better, Sangharakshita says, to set all these systems aside and go back to the original teachings, ontop of which the later teachings have been stacked. Since we cannot, with modern historical knowledge,
accept the traditional mythic systems, many of the later teachings will be embedded in complexframeworks of ideas in which we can no longer believe. For instance, since we can no longer believe thatthe arahant represents a real alternative goal, we cannot accept the path of the Bodhisattva as a higherpath.

I think it is important to get back to basic principles - back to the simpler, the more easily understandable,
more easy to handle. I think the stack has got so high we have just got to go back. Otherwise we have stack
upon stack of practices which have superseded one another. So you might as well just drop all the later
developments and go back to the original one, which is closer to the Buddha’s own times and to the Buddha
himself. We can do that on account of our historical perspective, whereas formerly Buddhists couldn’t.46

One important reason for a return to basics is the avoidance of certain dangers inherent in the hierarchicalarrangement of teachings. Inevitably people want to move on to the highest stage, missing out the initiallevels. Sangharakshita calls this ‘spiritual snobbism’ and says that it was as common among Tibetansin India as it now is among Westerners in Europe and America.

In Tibetan Buddhism you are supposed to go through all the yanas - the Nyingmapas have nine! Actually,

people go through the first few yanas very quickly and really only ‘practise’ the last one!47

Taking the triyana system literally leads to a serious distortion of spiritual life.

If you are not careful, you end up trying to practise some teaching which is really way beyond you and

barely intelligible, not to say even fantastic in the literal sense.48
For instance, if one thought that there was a real arahant path, one would conceive of the Bodhisattvapath as a really higher alternative. One would then tend to neglect the Hinayana teachings associated withthe arahant path and start trying to practise the Mahayana. This means trying to be a Bodhisattva,
aspiring to Enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. For most ordinary practitioners this cannotbut be a kind of fantasy. They cannot really think of themselves personally as Bodhisattvas saving allsentient beings. At best this leads to a ‘spiritual life’ that is nothing but a harmless dream: at worst itleads to inflation and arrogance.