Aha, "what's something you learned recently?"
Good one, I had to go about my day for a while to get my thoughts in order to answer!
So, I am reading about Mahayana Buddhism lately, and it's very curious because:
- There are topics that seem daunting and confusing from the outsider's perspective, but when you look at the inside, you can see it's very daunting and confusing for Buddhists too and they can't stop arguing about it;
- The stereotypical image of Buddhism consists of disparate elements from different periods and branches of... let's put it this way, accretion of ideas around Gautama and his Doctrine. It's not a base from which real-world Buddhism differentiates, it's a salad with desert mixed in;
- Buddhism differentiation doesn't work like Christianity, which differentiates through denominations with specific beliefs each, that can be neatly put onto a big and beautiful tree with distinct areas of overlap and disagreement. It's more like a bunch of ideas that are more or less popular in different contexts or schools of thought, some of which work better with each other and some that don't.
For example, the "central idea" of Mahayana is that there is only one way of achieving enlightment - through aiming to become a Buddha yourself and, through compassion, to help all sentient beings achieve enlightment as well. According to this view, you can't just "peace out" from samsara on your own for your own sake only.
I want to emphasize that's not a universal opinion! Therevada Buddhists and, you can argue to some extent, early Buddhists as well, do and did believe that the path of an Arhat ("peace out" on your own) is not only valid, but the only path possible for most beings.
This Mahayanist idea of "one path", "one vehicle", "the Great Vehicle" has excellent synergy with ideas, for example, like:
- tathagatagarbha - "seed of Buddha" within all sentient beings as a potential for enlightment, or as enlightment that is basically already there, but merely not seen through the clouds of illusion;
- the idea that the Buddha remains in some form in our world to continuously help us - after all, it would be pretty lame to think he really did "peace out" leaving so many sentient beings in misery. Plus who doesn't like the idea of divinity being present and available for personal help and connection;
- the ideas about cosmic Buddha and his cool magic powers (the latter is popular outside Mahayana too, but you can tell how they are really synergic with the previous points);
- therefore, ideas about cool magic powers of advanced practitioners (Bodhisattvas - on the path to Buddhahood);
- nirvana isn't real
Now wait a second, you could ask, what the heck?! What is the point then?!
And that's what I am getting to here. The idea of a Bodhisattva's path to Buddhahood is not a very straightforward one - they are supposed to stay in samsara out of compassion and out of desire to help ALL sentient beings attain enlightment. It's a paradox. The only way to attain enlightment is to help everyone else do it before you, and thus no one is getting anywhere. Plus what the hell do you about *the* Buddha and our clearly unenlightened world then.
But Buddhists have had a lot of time, smart scholars and emotional involvement to solve this paradox, and one way they've solved it is the actual "thing I found out lately" - that's the concept of "non-abiding / not-fixed nirvana".
The idea is that since 1) there is no "ultimate reality" to escape to; and 2) there is no inherently existing thing that could do so; there isn't really nirvana as either a transformation or as a cessation of something real. Nirvana is a state of that fundamental flow of consciousness when it is pure and undistorted by illusion. It is inseparable from samsara because samsara likewise isn't a thing, it is merely a distorted state of that consciousness flow. "Achieving nirvana" doesn't equal stopping action, it is more like an automatization whose principle is compassion. An enlightened being doesn't see itself as a helper and it doesn't see any being being helped - but in its enlightened state it is free from the illusory voes of samsara and it automatically, thoughtlessly waves these illusions away, always in the perfect contextual way without ever considering that fundamentally unreal context. Thus it is both enlightened and compassionate, both freed and present.
One final note - this is my summary of this idea, and adherents to specific Buddhist philosophical schools might disagree on precise wording and certain nuance. "Flow of consciousness" is something Madhyamika school vehemently rejects along with ~everything~, for example, but then I don't really know the words to express this idea in fully Madhyamika-friendly terms. They are kind of annoying about everything like this, their whole thing is disproving and never stating.
Hope this was interesting somewhat!
