Doctrinal Development
The Dharmaguptaka doctrine appears to have been characterized by an understanding of the Buddha as separate from Sangha so that his teaching is superior to the one given by arhats. They also emphasise the merit of devotion to stupas, which often had pictorial representation of the stories Buddha's previous life as a bodhisattva, as portrayed in the Jatakas. Consequently, they regarded the path of a bodhisattva (bodhisattvayāna) and the path of a śrāvaka (śrāvakayāna) to be separate.
The Dharmaguptaka rejected the authority of the Sarvāstivāda pratimokṣa rules on the grounds that the original teachings of the Buddha had been lost.
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“To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)