In contrast to various Mahayana doctrinal innovations, some aspects of the Mahayana tradition, particularly in its earlier Indian forms, are distinctly conservative, especially with respect to monastic ethics. All monks obtain their ordination in one of the sectarian Vinaya lineages, and Mahayana Buddhism is organized as a thoroughly monastic movement. Therefore, it does not stand in opposition to the sects of monastic Buddhism but rather is a movement of a different logical order; the distinction between Mahayana and sectarian Buddhism is thus not a binary one. For example, though ordained according to the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya, all Chinese Buddhist monks are Mahayanists and undertake particularly Mahayanistic “bodhisattva vows.”

Many Mahayana schools emphasize the importance of the laity. This attention stems partly from an appreciation of the fact that real renunciation is not complete but depends for its success on a simultaneous engagement in and nonattachment to the world. In Japan this conception of renunciation eventually led in practice—and by the Meiji period (1868–1912) in law—to the marriage of priests and to the virtual extinction of traditional celibate monasticism. There are similar traditions of married clergy alongside celibate monasticism in the Nyingma order in Tibet.

Just as the non-Mahayana Abhidharma traditions systematize the unsystematic doctrines of the early sutras, Mahayana philosophical schools systematize those of the Mahayana scriptures. Doxolographies, classifications of philosophical systems, divide the Indian Mahayana philosophical schools into Madhyamika and Yogacara (also called Vijnanavada). The Madhyamika, founded by the Indian monk and philosopher Nagarjuna (150–c. 250 ce), is a systematization of the Prajnaparamita (“Perfection of Wisdom”) scriptures, which emphasize that the doctrine of wisdom (prajna) is the most important of the six perfections that the bodhisattva must master. The others are charity (dana), discipline (hila), flexibility (kanti), energy (virya), and meditative contemplation (dhyana). The Yogacara, founded by the Indian philosophers Asanga (flourished 5th century ce) and his brother Vasubandhu, is less directly based on any sutra and is better understood as a synthesis of the Madhyamika emptiness doctrine with Abhidharmic systematics or traditional dogmatics.

Modern scholars also recognize other philosophical traditions, including a Yogacara-Madhyamika fusion; a Tathagatagarbha (buddha nature) tradition, which emphasizes the inherent seed of awakening in all beings; and a school of Logic and Epistemology (pramana). Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism, a direct successor of these traditions, developed particular interests in Madhyamika and in Logic. In China, while the Madhyamika and Yogacara became influential as, respectively, the Sanlun and Faxiang schools, equally important were the indigenous traditions based directly on important Buddhist scriptures, the sutras—particularly the Lotus Sutra, Avatamsaka-sutra, Mahaparinirvana-sutra, Lankavatara-sutra, and Pure Land Sutra. These later traditions are the foundation of the Tiantai (Japanese: Tendai), Huayan (Japanese: Kegon), Chan (Japanese: Zen), and Pure Land (Japanese: Jōdo and Jōdo Shinshū) schools of East Asian Buddhism.