ch would later became a central idea in Hindu and, still later, in Buddhist tradition. The mystical tradition in India took various forms and had numerous teachers. In his own time, Gautama Buddha studied under several teachers and eventually became a teacher himself, following the pattern of his own teachers. Buddha never regarded himself as the founder of a new tradition, but simply considered himself to be a teacher of reform with radical new insights in the tradition into which he was born.
Upanishadic mysticism was a protest against the elitism of the aristocratic classes, but it later fell into an elitism of the spiritual and intellectually competent. Buddhism did much the same as time passed. The Upanishadic approach to religion was universal, based on the universality of competency, but this was a selective universality, not universal for all kinds of people. Buddhism followed a similar pattern and in some schools taught a system of five species of people, among whom were certain types who could not become Buddhas. The aristocratic and individualistic tendency of early Buddhism can be seen in the following verses from the Dhammapada: "By one's self the evil is done, by one's self one suffers; by one's self evil is left undone; by one's self one is purified. The pure and the impure stand and fall by themselves; no one can purify another" ("Buddhism" http://www.aloha.net/~albloom/shinstudy/unit04.htm).
Traditional Buddhism is the major religion of India. it holds forth two goals related to salvation, either birth in heaven (svarga), or liberation (moksa). Both also include the concept of enlightenment (bodhi). There are four paths to salvation identified in the literature: 1) ascetic practices; 2) the pratimoksa, or monastic discipline; 3) the bodhisattva path; and 4) the Vajrayana, or "diamond vehicle" (Wayman 423).
Buddhism came into being under the leadership of Buddha in the sixth and seventh centuri...