Buddhist history is marked by a foundational schism into two branches—Hinayana ("the little raft," a monastic path emphasizing self-effort toward individual enlightenment embodied in the ideal of the arhat) and Mahayana ("the great raft," emphasizing relatedness, grace, and lay accessibility, embodied in the ideal of the bodhisattva who defers personal enlightenment to liberate others)—which the tradition traces to perennial disagreements over whether the person is fundamentally independent or related, whether humanity stands alone in an indifferent universe or is aided by it, and whether wisdom or compassion constitutes the highest human faculty. Within Mahayana, Zen Buddhism represents an intuitive sect that rejects discursive reason as an obstacle to enlightenment, using the koan (a deliberately irrational paradox) to exhaust and collapse rational thought so as to precipitate a non-conceptual, experiential insight.
Buddhist history is marked by a foundational schism into two branches—Hinayana ("the little raft," a monastic path emphasizing self-effort toward individual enlightenment embodied in the ideal of the…