Mahayana Buddhism, with its focus on the basic teachings of the Buddha and the first teachers. As deBary et al. (1960) note, however, it is often contemptuously referred to as the lesser Vehicle of Buddhism, in contrast to the Mahayana, or Greater Vehicle.
Mahayana Buddhism is much more fully developed than the Theravada, and actually seems to depart radically from the original teachings of the Buddha. According to its teachers, it represented the fulfillment of Buddhist doctrine, and included an emphasis on heavenly figures, including a god like Buddha, and a more developed metaphysical system. It was primarily a Mahayana form of Buddhism that was brought to China and adapted to Chinese understandings.
Each country, too, has modified the stories and the imagery in ways specific to that culture. Tibetan Buddhism, for example, has an intense focus on the unificat
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