[EmpokemyMok]

One of the major functions of most religions is to deal with the unbearable idea that we will one day cease to exist, by inventing lovely places where we can live after we depart this Earth. Theravada Buddhism, for example, does not dodge this idea by inventing an afterlife. In Theravada, when the Buddha died, he died forever. Nothing remained but his disintegrating corpse. In Mahayana, it seems, he is still sitting somewhere, able to intervene in human affairs. That makes me suspect that Mahayana is performing the abovementioned function, and thereby coddling its followers with a falsehood, rather than teaching them to deal with the awful truth. To me that means that this has been added and is not the word of the Buddha.