the Buddha was not a Buddhist. On the contrary, according to the Pali Canon, he requested that his image not be depicted, he worried that he might be worshiped as a god, he allowed people to continue to practice their existing religious rites, and he remained agnostic on such fundamental questions about the creation of the world and what happens

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Christianity does not have yanas. It does have sects: Catholic, Baptist, Mennonite. So when Westerners first started trying to understand Buddhism, they assumed Buddhist yanas were sects. Mostly this confusion has persisted, and even many scholars still get this wrong.

The different yanas contradict each other profoundly. They are not superficially and arbitrarily different. Their fundamental principles are different. They have different concepts of truth, and especially of ultimate truth. For Mahayana, emptiness is the ultimate truth and ultimate goal. It is a shock to be told that in Vajrayana, emptiness is... See more

The relationship between yanas and sects is easy to understand by analogy with the automobile business. A yana is category of vehicle, like SUVs. A sect (or Buddhist “school”) is a brand, like Ford.