Namaste Bluewater,
thank you for the post and welcome to the forum.
Hello, I hope some of you can help me. I'm researching various kinds of Buddhism and trying to distinguish some specifics among these five:
- Theravada
- Tibetan
- Vajrayana
- Zen
- Nichiren
this list is somewhat problematic as you have two Vehicles listed, two schools listed and a culture
The link to the Buddha Net is quite excellent, here's one to a listing of the various Mahayana and Theravedan countries:
The Buddhist World: Monastics, Pilgrimage, Holy Site, Theravada, Mahayana Countries
Buddha Dharma has several different classification systems depending on which aspects we are speaking of. broadly speaking, Buddhism is divided into Vehicles. these Vehicles are called Hinyana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. modern times only has one school of Hinyana practice, Theraveda and, as such, the entire Vehicle is often called after this one school.
within the auspices of the Mahayana, we find schools like Zen and Nichiren. Zen and Nichiren are somewhat similar in that they were reform efforts in Japan to the existing Ch'an Buddhism which had been brought from China. in practice, however, they have little in common.
Tibetan Buddhism falls under the auspices of the Vajrayana Vehicle and Vajrayana has several schools such as Nyingma or Shingon in Japan. the Vajrayana is found primarily in Tibet, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan, Korea and Japan.
here's a link to a post that i've done on Buddhist philosophical schools:
http://www.comparative-religion.com/forum/buddhist-philosophy-719.html
I'll excerpt a bit here:
Buddhist philosophical views are classified, at least by Tibetan Buddhists in general, into four main categories: Vaibhasika, Sautrantika, Yogachara, and Madhyamika.
1.
Vaibhasika has been called "direct realism." It is similar to the first few of the Indian views that see the World of Experience as composed of various physical elements that interact with the components of beings.
2.
Sautrantika considers that awareness is merely representational. These first two schools consider that there are two kinds of interactors: Physical aspects, ie. skandhas of which one, rupa comprises the traditional elements, and the Mental aspects including consciousness (vijnana), sensation (vedana) which contributes to pain/pleasure, cognition (sanjna) and the impressions derived from experience (samskara.). The 12 Links of Causality go into this in more detail.
3.
Chittamatra/Yogachara sometimes referred to as the Knowledge Way or Vijnanavada. It has also been called Subjective Realism, acknowledging that individual factors including karma contribute to an experience of reality that must be different for every being. It mentions the idea of "Buddha nature." Vasubandha and Asanga finally adopted this position.
4.
Madhyamika basically holds that there is no ultimate reality in the sense that something exists apart from the experiencer, but that this does not mean that there is nothing at all. It turns around the definition of Shunyata and therefore has been called Sunyatavada. Nagarjuna and Aryadeva are the main proponents. Chandrakirti expounds upon Nagarjuna.
I would encourage you to look through the history of the posts as it would appear that most of your queries have been asked at one point or another. I'm not putting you off, of course, just trying to help you gleen the information that you seek.
metta,
~v
