The language of the Bodhisattva Ideal arose, we have seen, as a corrective to a degeneration in thehistorical tradition. Lacking a historical perspective that would have enabled them to acknowledge thatthere had been a degeneration, the Mahayanists had to create a myth. They had to accept the shrunkenideal they had inherited, with its individualistic conception of the goal, and present the Buddha asteaching something further. The Bodhisattva Ideal, lofty and inspiring as it is, is not to be taken literally.
It is simply meant to reintroduce the altruistic dimension to the Buddhist ideal. If it is taken literally itbecomes a trap. Sangharakshita considers it safer and more spiritually efficacious to return to theessential principles of spiritual life embodied in the basic teachings. One needs no higher teachingsbeyond these. One simply needs to understand them ever more deeply and apply them ever more fullyin one’s own life.

This return to basic principles does not mean ignoring or discarding later developments. It simply meansseeing them in the context of the earlier teachings. Sangharakshita views the entire later Buddhisttradition as having grown out of the Buddha’s own teaching - as filling it out, amplifying and elaboratingit, but not as superseding it or adding newer and higher stages. Not only does this greatly simplify thetask of finding teachings to apply within our own spiritual practice, but it brings us closer to the Buddha.
Those Buddhists, notably of Tibet and Japan, who are practising teachings that come from the laterstages of the historical evolution of Buddhism are far removed from its origins. In their own culturalcontext this has not mattered since they have seldom been confronted with the original teachings. Themodern practitioner, however, increasingly faces the entire Buddhist tradition and cannot ignore theBuddha and his original teachings. It must be possible to refer one’s own practice back to the origins ofBuddhism otherwise one will find oneself in a strange position.

It might be rather disconcerting then to read the Pali Canon, and recognize absolutely nothing that you

yourself are practising! It is difficult to see your connection, then, with the founder of your religion. So we

don’t want to be in that position. We have to be familiar with the earlier forms and base ourselves on them,

and appreciate the later developments as growing out of those earlier forms.49
A common history and doctrine are practical exemplifications of the underlying unity of Buddhism. Themost spiritually perspicacious alone will be able to discern the transcendental unity lying behind theextraordinary diversity of historical Buddhism and its present-day representatives. Most will onlyrecognise their identity with other Buddhists because they perform the same practices, follow the samedoctrines, and honour the same historical founder.

TESTING THE TEACHINGS

The Unity of Buddhism Page 13
Extracted from Sangharakshita: A New Voice in the Buddhist Tradition by Dharmachari Subhuti


While the entire Buddhist tradition can be seen in principle as an elaboration or rounding out of aspectsof the basic teachings of the Buddha, evaluation is still required. Buddhism went through many twistsand turns in its 2,500-year history. As well as many brilliant and spiritually efficacious new elaborations,
there were also many degenerations and distortions. We must test individual teachings to see whetherthey do indeed conduce to the attainment of Enlightenment. This criterion has, however, its limitations:
in the end, only the Enlightened can know what conduces to Enlightenment. Indeed, that pragmaticcriterion can be used to justify mere heterodoxy and indulgence. Some trends in Buddhist history havetended to emphasise adaptability more than faithfulness to the letter of tradition, and this had led todegeneration and distortion. The Mahayana and Vajrayana have particularly suffered from this tendency.
Eventually, after having flourished in the land of its birth for more than fifteen hundred years, the Mahayana

carried liberalism to extremes and exalted the spirit above the letter of the teaching to such an extent that

the latter was almost lost sight of and the Dharma deprived, at least on the mundane plane, of its distinctive

individuality.50

The Buddhism of Nepal and the last Buddhist remnants in Indonesia are, for instance, nowindistinguishable from Hinduism except in name alone. The need to constantly find new ways ofcommunicating the Dharma in new contexts must be balanced by a concern to keep alive what theDharma really is. Teachings and practices must be evaluated in the light of the experience of theEnlightened.

Some guidance is to be found in the scriptures, which provide an important safeguard against excessiveliberalism. Although most Buddhists do not blindly rely on the authoritative word of a sacred book, asso many Protestant Christians have done on the Bible, nonetheless the scriptures are an outstandingsource of guidance and insight for most Buddhists. Sangharakshita’s view of the Buddhist tradition asa whole can equally be applied to the scriptures. These form a vast body of material, for each school hasits own canon, in parts overlapping with others and in parts special to it. Collectively, it is anextraordinary spiritual treasury, which by its sheer diversity testifies to the spiritual vitality of theBuddhist tradition. Set down over a period of some thousand years from the time of the Buddha’sparinirvana or death, much of it cannot be taken as recording the Buddha’s actual words. There ishowever a common core of material found in all the canons, presumably therefore predating the schools’separation from each other. In that core is what we have called ‘Basic Buddhism’, the nearest we can getto the actual teaching of the Buddha. Even those parts that are later, and therefore less likely to havecome directly from the Buddha, are nonetheless for the most part entirely in the spirit of that earlierteaching. They are genuine elaborations of it, exploring themes opened up in the original teaching,