Buddhism: Differences between the Mahayana and Theravada branches

[TDAS04]

For those of you who are experts on Buddhism, what are the main differences between these two branches?  How would you describe the differences to someone who is not especially familiar with Buddhism?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

anvi knows more about Buddhism than I do since I'm a humble Asian Studies undergraduate (soon to be BA) and he has taught it for many years but here's a try.

Theravada means 'way of the elders' and is as such the older branch, tracing some of its monastic lineages back to if I'm not mistaken a scant few generations after Shakyamuni Buddha himself. It's centered in South and Southeast Asian culture--Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, places like that--and can be roughly characterized as more individualistic (in something roughly approximating but by no means identical to the Western sense), with a focus on personal liberation from suffering and the figure of the arhat, who attains an individual and irrevocable liberation and commands respect as a guide but cannot really 'save' anyone else. The cosmology is a bit sparser than in Mahayana because there's less of a history of syncretism with pre-existing folk religions but the canons of monastic rules can get pretty complex. There's emphasis placed on the distinction between the rules of life suitable for lay practitioners and those suitable for monks. Monastic institutions are still very powerful in many Theravadin countries.

Mahayana means 'great vehicle'--Mahayana Buddhists will sometimes disparagingly refer to Theravada as Hinayana, 'lesser vehicle'--and is in general the more pluralistic, syncretism-happy branch, with whole pantheons of deities and bodhisattvas that led some early Jesuit missionaries to interpret it as in practice more similar to Catholicism than Theravada was. It aims for the liberation of all sentient beings and believes that a liberated being can share their liberation with others, which is where the ideal of the involved, self-sacrificing bodhisattva as opposed to the exemplary solitary arhat comes in. It's centered in Northeast and Central Asian culture--think Japan, Korea, China, Vietnam, and arguably Mongolia and Tibet, although some classify those last two as their own branch called Vajrayana (Vajrayana is also present in Japan to some extent in the forms of Shingon and Tendai). Mahayana monasticism isn't necessarily weaker than Theravada monasticism, but it is different in social function and to an extent more integrated.

[anvi]

Looks to me like Nathan has outlined the most important differences between Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhism quite well.  The difference between the two major movements' conception of the religiously ideal person, the solitary monastic renunciate for the former and the bodhisattva, who takes a vow to remain in the world until he/she can help all other suffering beings attain nirvāṇa before them, is quite central.

There is also a fairly pronounced philosophical difference between the two movements on the relationship between the world of rebirth (saṃsāra) and nirvāṇa is also important.  Thereavādins generally think that freedom from desirous attachments, which leads to the extinguishing (nirvāṇa) of desires and the rebirth process sharply distinguishes this state of mind and eventual state of existence from the world of rebirth.  Mahāyāna Buddhists tend to dissolve the distinction between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra, saying that they are but two aspects of the same experience of living in the world.  The differences between these two schools on this matter are not necessarily as sharp as the Mahāyāna Buddhists would have one believe, but they are there.

Mahāyāna is a quite diverse movement of Buddhism, with different schools and sub-schools in both South and East Asia, while Theravāda, with notable exceptions, tends to stick rather closely to traditional forms of orthodoxy.