Pantheism, Buddhist doctrines

Some 600 years after Buddha, a new and more speculative school of Buddhism arose to challenge the 18 or 20 schools of Buddhism then in existence. One of the early representatives of this new school, which came to be known as Mahayana (Sanskrit “Greater Vehicle”) Buddhism, was Asvaghosa. Like Sankara (whom he antedated by 700 years), Asvaghosa not only distinguished between the pure Absolute