"Mahayana" is a Sanskrit word composed of "maha" for "great" and "yana" for "vehicle." It's used to describe a diverse tradition of Buddhism that somehow (the h

"Mahayana" is a Sanskrit word composed of "maha" for "great" and "yana" for "vehicle." It's used to describe a diverse tradition of Buddhism that somehow (the history is not exactly clear) diverged from that monastic consensus which became the Theravada ("way of the elders") tradition... Mahayana sees itself as going beyond what they might call "individual" or "personal" liberation, in that it sets up a grand goal of liberating all beings. Practitioners hold this ambition in mind, and see the "Hinayana" (small vehicle; a pejorative term used in Mahayana rhetoric to denounce other interpretations of Buddhism) ambition as limited or as merely a first step towards the ultimate goal of universal liberation. How this relates to the Haskell prelude, I'm not so sure... but yeah, I suppose a "Mahayana prelude" is more grandly ambitious and therefore also more expansive and difficult to realize... (By the way, in religious studies, Rupert Gethin's book The Foundations of Buddhism has an introductory chapter about Mahayana, and an in depth review is Paul Williams's Mahayana Buddhism: the Doctrinal Foundations.)