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Indian Mahayana Buddhist practice included numerous elements of devotion and ritual, which were considered to generate much merit (punya) and to allow the devotee to obtain the power or spiritual blessings of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. These elements remain a key part of Mahayana Buddhism today. Some key Mahayana practices in this vein include:
In the Twelve Gate Treatise (十二門論, Shih-erh-men-lun), the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna (c. 1st–2nd century) works to refute the belief of certain Indian non-Buddhists in a god called Isvara, who is "the creator, ruler and destroyer of the world". [23] Nagarjuna makes several arguments against a creator God, including the following: [24]
The notion of Buddha-nature and its interpretation was and continues to be widely debated in all schools of Mahayana Buddhism. Some traditions interpret the doctrine to be equivalent to emptiness (like the Tibetan Gelug school); the positive language of the texts Tathāgatagarbha sutras are then interpreted as being of provisional meaning, and ...
Buddhism also sees the Dharmakaya as being non-dual with the whole cosmos, while Christian theology generally affirms a creator-creature distinction in which the created world (created ex nihilo) and its creatures are generally seen as ontologically distinct from God (and dependent on God for their being). Furthermore, Mahayana's classic ...
Mahayana Buddhists venerate numerous Buddhas, more so than the Theravada tradition, including Maitreya and Amitābha, who are seen as beings of great wisdom and power who preside over pure lands that one can travel to after death. Mahayana and Vajrayana traditions also recognize five primary Buddhas:
The worship of Mahayana sutra books and even in anthropomorphic form (through deities like Prajñāpāramitā Devi) remains important in many Mahayana Buddhist traditions, including Newar Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism and East Asian Buddhism. This is often done in rituals in which the sutras (or a deity representing the sutra) are presented ...
The Basic Points Unifying the Theravāda and the Mahāyāna is an important Buddhist ecumenical statement created in 1967 during the First Congress of the World Buddhist Sangha Council (WBSC), where its founder Secretary-General, the late Venerable Pandita Pimbure Sorata Thera, requested the Ven. Walpola Rahula to present a concise formula for the unification of all the different Buddhist ...
Cook, Francis H. (1972). 'The meaning of Vairocana in Hua-Yen Buddhism, Philosophy East and West 22 (4), 403-415; Park, Kwangsoo (2003). A Comparative Study of the Concept of Dharmakaya Buddha: Vairocana in Hua-yen and Mahavairocana in Shingon Buddhism, International Journal of Buddhist Thought and Culture 2, 305-331; Reeves, Gene (2008).