Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Walking through saṃsāra’s six realms as psychological patterns we cycle through in a single day — not just possible future rebirths — gives this 47-minute survey of Buddhism’s three vehicles its distinctive texture. Ven Jampa Gendun maps each realm to recognisable states: the god realm as a lottery-winner’s euphoria before it collapses; the demigod’s relentless jealous comparison with others; the hungry ghost who photographs a sunset rather than simply enjoying it; the animal realm’s pig-like sincerity charging straight ahead over everyone in the way. Against this backdrop, Gendun presents the three vehicles — Hīnayāna, Mahāyāna, and Tantra — not as rival schools but as stages in one practitioner’s development, with motivation (why we act, not what we do) as the decisive factor, and nirvana through ethics, concentration, and wisdom as the lesser vehicle’s goal. Accessible to newcomers.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 3V 1988 02 09.mp3
UUID: 7f748928-67dd-49ec-8441-b6fcbe314b42
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The three vehicles (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1988-02-09
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 47.0 minutes
Words: ~5,953
As best as I can communicate the relevancy to of it to your everyday life. We have to somehow develop some rapport, some understanding. Otherwise, we’re going to go away with a little bit of more information. We all have enough information. We become repositories of information, but it doesn’t in any way affect our lives.
It doesn’t develop into knowledge, and from knowledge into wisdom. I’m not quite interested in giving a lecture, but maybe sharing. As we go along, if you have some questions, if there are points you don’t understand, please ask them. If there are more major types of questions, doubts, we can cover those at the end. His Holiness once said, when he was addressing an audience, it’s like This is when he was I think his first trip to Europe, about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama.
He said, It’s like coming home. You know, it’s like coming back to old friends. Yet, he had never seen this particular audience. So it’s you have to begin to understand what did he mean by that? Like it’s coming back to old friends.
And he went on to explain, you know, we don’t have to know the superficial characteristics of each other to understand that we all want happiness and nobody wants to suffer. We’re all very much equal. And if we go beneath the superficial appearances, which we usually dwell upon, then we’re very much the same. And we have sort of a immediate rapport with one another. Immediate feeling of fellowship that we’re all in this together in some way.
A feeling of relatedness. So we’re very much related to one another. And we all have something to share with one another. And this is what the Dharma is all about. Helping us to grow.
From, desire to openness, hatred to love, and from ignorance to wisdom. When we study Buddhism, we’re studying ourselves. And when we practice Buddhism, we’re applying in our everyday life what we have learned about ourselves and about others, how to relate with others. Basically, we’re to put together a life of happiness. And the more skillful we can do this, the happier we’re going to be.
So we have to be open to the possibility of new ways of behaving, new ways of seeing the world and seeing ourselves. And in order to do this, there has to be some openness on my side and your side, in a sense of sharing. That I don’t have any particular information that I’m trying to impart to you and so I don’t have any expectations that I’m merely going to give a lecture which you’re going to accumulate knowledge. Perhaps but perhaps we can create some situation where there’s some communication. You know all these various paintings, statues, it’s this means of communication.
They’re all saying something. If we’re open to their message then it’s quite meaningful. If we’re not then they’re just idols. They’re rather meaningless. Just pictures like in a museum.
They might be nice to look at but they’re not They have no spiritual value. So I want from my side to try to explain the three vehicles which is somewhat of a task since it encompasses all of Buddhism from both the theoretic and practice side. So it’s going to have to be done very roughly. And in doing that, I’m going to use some terms which perhaps some of you haven’t heard for the first time. I’m going to try to simplify, but I I have many limits, many limitations.
So, you know, if some way I’m not presenting the material clearly, you don’t understand what I’m saying, please, we can try to clear it up. You can just ask a question. It’s rather informal. I’ll show you a birthday card I just got about two minutes ago. Tomorrow is my birthday.
It says some birthday advice. This is What’s his name? It’s the Viking? Anyway, he’s talking to his child and he’s giving him some fatherly advice. The secret of happiness is moderation, moderation, moderation.
But don’t overdo it, of course. That’s pretty good advice. That sounds like a Zen koan or something. Three vehicles. You know, it’s hard enough to try to understand three vehicles.
One vehicle. Now we have to try to understand three vehicles. So what do we mean by vehicle? Why are there three vehicles? So in general, when we think of vehicle, we generally mean, you know, we think about a ship, a boat, a car.
Something that transports. Something that carries a burden, a weight. So in Buddhism there are three classifications of vehicles. Three burden carriers. There’s three transports transports which take us along a path.
What is a path? A path is something which from which where we are now which is going to take us to our goal. It is the course of our action, our thinking of body, speech, and mind, which is going to take us perhaps from being an ordinary person to something of a special or super ordinary person. Anyway, if Buddha was a super ordinary person, I don’t know. Sometimes I think Buddha was the most ordinary person around and we’re all very much special.
So something which transports us from where we are now to our goal along a path. And there are three types of vehicles. Now the division is made up is done from many points of view. We usually talk about the lesser vehicle, the low vehicle. In Sanskrit this is usually termed the Hīnayāna.
Hīnayāna. Lesser vehicle. And then there’s the Mahāyāna. That’s Sanskrit. Maha meaning great and yana meaning vehicle.
The great vehicle. So there we have a division of Buddhism into two. Two vehicles. The lesser vehicle and the greater vehicle. We usually divide the greater vehicle into two again.
What is called the sūtra vehicle and the tantra vehicle. There are many other terms for tantra such as the mantra, vajrayana, vajra vehicle. These all are synonymous terms. So in this way we develop three the lesser vehicle and then the two vehicles which are divisions of the greater vehicle. That is the sūtra vehicle and the tantra vehicle.
And we’re going have to explain what each one of those means because we’re going to see that, in fact, these three vehicles aren’t heading toward three distinct goals. They’re simply the evolution of one mind in his spiritual pilgrimage through his development of mind. We’re going to evolve ourselves through the use of these three vehicles. So the use of these three vehicles is very much tied in with our motivation, our intention. Especially in the great vehicle, motivation is the key to spiritual practice.
It’s not so much what we do as it is why we do something. Someone could make great offerings to a temple. Someone could do hundreds of thousands of prostrations, fly through the air, whatever. Another person could simply offer a handful of dust with a great tremendous motivation and with pure thought and intention. And his positive energy that he created by this offering of a mere handful of dust would far outweigh this other offering made of prostrations, offerings to temples if it was done merely with indifferent mind, not what to speak of a negative mind.
So what we do, the benefit derived from our practice, is directly proportional to our motivation, why we’re doing it. And so in talking about the vehicles, we have to begin with a discussion of motivation. Why we’re doing what we’re doing. So we can talk again about three levels of motivation. I hope this isn’t becoming too confusing.
No? Good. Okay we’re going to begin our spiritual practice. We’re going to follow ourselves through our spiritual pilgrimage from where we are now, at least where I am at now, to our goal, whatever that may be. Now we’re pretty much bound up in materialism.
We see our problems, our difficulties, our suffering as being external to us. That is the solutions, the methods for eliminating our problems, our difficulties we see as outside of ourselves. If I can only manipulate reality, you know, if I can only get the right people in the right places and get the right job with the right amount of money with the right house with the right status, hold them there. Everything’s going to be okay. I’m going to be happy.
So we our whole motivation is to manipulate external reality as a means of eliminating our problems, our difficulties. We haven’t begun to see the necessity to develop a balance in our methods of approach to the elimination of our difficulties. That is, we have to begin to see that external problems need external methods or means to eliminate them. Difficulties require spiritual or psychological, if you like, methods or means to solve those, to eliminate those problems. We haven’t really begun to see that difference yet.
We are blaming all our problems on things outside of ourselves. This is a very gross, unimaginative, unawares attitude. But most of us are to some degree involved in this type of awareness, this attitude. But then we begin to see to our our just mere life experiences. If we’re in the least bit aware, it doesn’t seem to be working very well.
I’ve tried. Got the right degree. I married the right woman. I married the right husband. I got the right job.
I got the right I got two and a half cars with one and a quarter children, one and a half dogs, and whatever. You’ve got your preconception of what it takes to be happy in this world. And you look around, you’ve got it all. And you look around, and you realize your life is meaningless, hollow. You haven’t found the solution.
You haven’t found the happiness that you were seeking. So it can’t be merely only external factors in your life which are going to bring you happiness. We begin to see that it’s more and more of our attitude toward the external things around us. That sometimes just walking in the woods or just a smile, just feelings of peace or perhaps moments when you give openly to another, when you share your time, that these moments seem to be more rewarding, more meaningful. They actually bring you more happiness than all the material possessions that you’ve been gathering and acquiring.
So we begin to question. We begin to see that actually to a large extent our happiness is dependent upon our attitudes, how we view the world more than our possessions, our material possessions. So we begin to reorientate ourselves from purely external methods for finding happiness. We begin to see the necessity to develop internal, spiritual, psychological means of developing a correct attitude or more skillful attitudes by which we can relate with ourselves and others in our world in order to find the happiness that we want. So then we think, you know, well, I think I should start develop some method.
Start working on this. Can one actually change the mind? I think this question arises when when we finally become aware that it’s our attitudes more than anything else which is determining our happiness. Or do we say, this is the way I was born. You know, this is the way I am.
This is, you know, this I can’t change. Or do we question the very fact, comes out, can I somehow develop my mind, my attitude to become more skillful? Then perhaps if the facilities, if we’re fortunate enough, if we meet with a teacher or we are the, for example, growth courses, there are many types of growth courses, purely in the secular, know, dealing with psychological phenomena that we can become involved in. Encounter groups, you know, assertiveness training, ways to develop our attitudes to be more become more skillful. And again, there are the spiritual methods.
Once we begin to consciously try to develop our mind, seeing that it is our mind which is the basic factor of our happiness, the determining cause of our problems and a meaningful way of life, then we can say we’re actually beginning to practice the Dharma. That is some method, some internal method to find the happiness that we all want and eliminate the suffering that none of us want. So we’re beginning practice the spiritual path method of psychological development. We begin to see that merely being solely concerned with the present situation perhaps isn’t a satisfactory solution. Not only do we have to be here now, not only do we have to deal very much in the present and solve the present problems, but we have to be creating the causes, the skillful attitudes which are going to take into consideration future states.
Now we can talk about future states. Traditionally these future states spoken of in the sense of rebirth. That we actually die. We’ll be born somewhere else, another state. It doesn’t necessarily have to be as a human being.
There are six realms even within the particular realm that we exist in, which is called the desire realm. We can talk about this in another way which is perhaps more meaningful. We can talk about these realms, these six realms as different styles of samsaric occupations. Samsaric occupations. Compulsive reoccurring patterns.
We all have our programs. There are six very predominant programs that we all pass through even in the course of one day. We’re continually being reborn in these various realms even in the course of one day. Habitual patterns, ways of relating with our reality, the way we conceive of our reality. These are our emotional attitudes towards ourselves, others, and our environment.
We can create six rough categories and we can begin to see how we’re passing through these various states even in the course of one day, even in the course of one hour. Usually one of these ways of relating, one of these particular compulsive reoccurring patterns is going to predominate in our lives. It’s going to be our predominant character, who we think we are to a large degree. You know, we can pass through from the pride of the gods down to the the fear and the paranoia of a hell being. In the course of a few minutes, It’s as if we’re reborn in another realm.
So these six realms, you know, we start at the top. There’s the realm of the gods in the sense of celestial beings, not in the in the sense of a Christian god. So it’s a realm which is characterized by the extreme search for pleasure. It’s preoccupied with an attempt to secure bliss, pleasure, euphoria, all the seductive goals of all kinds. You know, whatever it is, it might be health, health fanatics, wealth, money, beauty, could be even virtue, all these very seductive goals.
But it’s always pleasure orientated. Our whole life, the whole life of a a god being is dedicated to securing pleasure. It’s securing in the sense that it’s a maintenance of ego. And ego is going to reoccur again and again in our discussion. It is the basis for all our actions.
It is what keeps the wheel turning in a sense this is why we’re cycling through these various realms continually without any control. It is due to the securing of ourselves in space and time. In time in the sense that we want, we believe that there’s some entity, some independent factor which we call I, self, me, which has come down from when we were a child. I was born in America, and then I was raised in Ohio, and then I went to school in California, and then I went to Europe, and then it seems that there’s always the same I that’s been coming down through this continual process. And then I came to Australia, and I came to Buddha House, and we’re trying to secure something in time.
And this represents the causal factor for bringing about this entire structure of what we call saṃsāra, or these compulsive recurring patterns. So we’re talking about one type of pattern we call it the god realm. It’s simply a pattern of mind. We can talk about examples of it. You just won the lottery.
Know, you just you just won a million dollars in the lottery, or you just fell in love. Completely blissful experience falling in love. The first moments of love, isn’t it? Or you you know, you were in a retreat, and while you were in a retreat, that’s a very isolated situation. You know, you have very few external factors interrupting your your mind, and it’s quite easy to delude yourself into thinking that you’ve become some sort of saint.
Just because you’re not being tested anyway. So, you you come out and you’ve got this halo around you, and you’re kind of walking about three inches off the At least you feel like that. So this is securing oneself, an attempt to secure oneself in some blissful state. This is the primary quality of this god realm, this god like quality, of this pattern. But then what happens?
So we’re working to maintain this occupation of being a god. It’s our job. But eventually there’s some disillusionment. Our world becomes a little shaky. You know, we come out and we think, you know, we’re very much of a saint, you know, we’re we’re blessing people as they go by.
And then somebody gives us a shove and and or somebody you know, if it’s a woman, perhaps you get accosted, or if you’re a man, somebody tries to rob you or whatever, and you react with not very saintly, and you realize when you come down, and you fall. Or you just won the the lottery, and you got all your relatives, people calling you up trying to borrow money. And you’re this all this euphoria begins to fall. You know, you you fall in love and, you know, they can’t you know, they say, no one is perfect. But maybe then, see That’s a.
I speak from a male point of view. Please forgive me. Oh, thank you. You see her the next morning when when no no makeup. Her hair.
Or maybe and then she sees him. How would she see him? Smelling breath. Smelling breath. And I know this perfect image that you had of your lover is just getting in a fog.
It’s kinda crumbling before you. It’s very disappointing, isn’t it? And this blissful state that you’re in starts to be shaken a little bit. Or you know we can simply be involved in some particular securing pattern here. Every Tuesday night, I watch the football game, and I’m not going out.
Don’t bother me. And so but somebody comes over. You know, your relatives visit you on the night that you wanted to watch the the big the championship football game, or every Thursday I go shopping, and something disrupts your schedule, something disrupts the security, the search for some pattern which is going to establish you, where you won’t have to be interrupted, you won’t have to deal with the world, that you’re insulated. The world keeps, you know, interrupting my happiness. I’m like, keeps breaking into my cocoon, this kind of attitude.
So you strike back with anger and with hatred, and you pass on to another realm. You fall from the god realm, in other words. So this is the highest realm of the six realms. Perhaps another type of pattern that we go through what is termed the antigods. The antigods, it’s a very happy realm, or as to say, it’s a celestial realm, which is predominantly characterized by bliss.
But the demigods have a pretty bad deal, actually. What happens is there’s a tree that has its roots in the antigod world, in their realm. And this tree grows up into the god realm, and all the fruit is in the god realm. So this this really infuriates demigods because here, the the roots of the tree are in their realm, but they don’t get any of the fruits. The fruits are all in the in the god realm, so they’re always fighting with the gods.
They’re always continually jealous. This is their primary quality. It’s a they have a sense of jealousy and paranoia. They’re always preoccupied with comparison. It’s this constant struggle to gain security and to achieve.
You achieve yourself for yourself, achieve in front of others, you use others as your standards, your standard of measurement, everybody becomes a fixed point of reference. You no longer see people. You see fixed points of reference, people to compare yourself with, to that you’re better than or that you have to outdo in some way. Everyone becomes your opponent, in other words, even yourself. You even have to begin competing with yourself.
There’s no risk. I don’t know. I think they usually call it the superego. It doesn’t mean when you’re comfortable and relaxed, you shouldn’t be comfortable and relaxed, you should be doing something else. This is constant battle, ongoing battle within yourself, competing even with yourself.
So everything becomes a potential threat to your well-being. So you need to begin to guard yourself. Guard yourself not only from others, but even yourself. You can’t trust anyone. Everyone becomes a threat.
You can’t even trust yourself. You cannot trust situations. You begin to refuse to learn from situations. And there’s a there’s an atmosphere of hostility in everything that you do. So this is the pattern that we could go through.
I think we can recognize a little bit of this in all of us. This is also a realm within our own existence and a realm within physical realm that we can be reborn into. So the next, there was the god realm, the demigods, and now we come to the human realm. And the major occupation in the human realm is desire. We’re very caught up in desire.
There’s an acute sense of separateness. Pleasure is out there. Pleasurable objects are all outside of ourselves, so we develop a sense of poverty, of insufficiency. Within myself, I don’t quite have what it takes to be happy. It’s all out there.
Therefore, we have to begin to appropriate. We develop desire. You know, anything which is necessary to bring you security, happiness, comfort you feel is out there, other people, status, possessions. You always have to draw them into you. You don’t feel that that these things are going to come to you naturally, but somehow you have to make effort to appropriate them and go out and drag them back into your territory.
There’s no confidence in oneself that they’re going to come to you. There’s a feeling of insufficiency, incompleteness. So everyone in the human realm has some standard of style about themselves. Those who so you criticize those who have a style different than yours. We stand in judgment on others, you know, simply because they have a different style.
And those who have the same style but do it better, we admire. We want to be like them. We want to achieve. And there’s a feeling of lacking. You know, these people are the same style as me, and they’re doing it better, so there’s a feeling of lack.
You know, I’m significant. I’m insignificant. They’re significant. There’s always this continual comparing. And in the human realm, the intellect is most active.
We’re always churning out ideas, plans, fantasies, hallucinations, dreams. The mind is always constantly searching for ways to improve, manipulate. So it’s primarily characterized by ambition. So this is the the human realm. And then there’s the realm beneath that, which is the animal realm.
Of course, we can this is actual physical realm. We can see that, but it’s also psychological state that we pass through in the sense that we can take rebirth in the course of a day in the animal realm. Basically, it’s the mentality of ignorance. It’s a stubbornness. It’s a pushing forward to a predetermined goal.
It’s very sweet. Animals, they never quite laugh. They just behave. When people tell jokes, it’s because they want to break maybe there’s some tension. They won’t allow aren’t able to bear with the tension in a situation.
They feel they have to break the tension, so they they make a joke. So animals have the characteristic this animal mentality of looking straight ahead, very sincerely, with great seriousness and earnestness, they just go straight ahead to the next situation and adjust everything as they go along. That doesn’t conform with their expectations. This animal mentality is associated with stupidity, preferring blindly to play the rules of the game. What we call reactive mind as opposed to a creative mind.
Creative mind, we determine our own values. We create our own values and principles. Reactive mind is solely in it slowly rises out of influences, the people, and the values around ourselves. There’s no feeling out of self worth, autonomous. Autonomously arriving at its own ideas, values.
And in this animality, this sincerity of plowing straight along, we don’t particularly care who we destroy in arriving at the goal we want. We just follow the rules. It’s an annoying quality. We always find a way to justify ourselves no matter what we’re doing to maintain our self respect. We can always find some way to rationalize that what we did was correct.
So you don’t see other people around you. You don’t see your environment. All you see is your goal, and you become like a very serious, sincere pig. So he just puts his head down and goes straight ahead like a tank, rolling over everything. It’s a very brutal mentality.
That’s the pig like mentality. Then there’s the next level down. It’s called the hungry ghost, or in Sanskrit called. So there’s the main preoccupation in hungry ghost realm is consumerism. Fundamentally, you feel poor.
There’s a sense of inadequacy. You’re continually using the things and the people around you to prop yourself up, your self image. But there’s never quite enough. On your right hand, there’s or painting of the six realms of existence. And the preta, the are variously represented, for example, sometimes they have a knot in their neck.
They have huge stomachs and very thin necks like a neck perhaps the size of a needle. Sometimes the mouth is like the eye of a needle. These huge stomachs perhaps blocks big, these stomachs. That’s the way they’re represented. So there’s always hunger.
There’s never satisfaction. There’s a constant struggle. And this struggle is very painful. It might be the struggle, this hunger for it could be friendship. It could be wealth, clothes, sex, virtue.
But it’s a feeling of insatiable desire which is never satisfying. So the people and things around you become consumer items. You know, you see a beautiful sunset, you want to consume the sunset. You go get your camera, you take a picture of it, you write a poem about it. Somehow, you can’t quite leave that sunset by itself.
You have to appropriate it. You have to bring it into your territory. There’s a hunger for new entertainment, Tibetan Buddhism, Tai Chi, you know, pottery making. That’s this mentality that keeps moving on to bigger and better things. Sun was never satisfied, so you move on.
There’s a constant need to keep moving on to something new, auspicious beginnings, continuous searching. So it’s very painful to be suspended in a state of desire. This is this hungry ghost mentality. And at the bottom of all this is the hell realm, the hell beings. So the hell realm is pervaded by aggression, paranoia, hatred.
So you build up an environment of hate, and you’re not even quite sure what you’re hating anymore. Your hate has become directionless. It doesn’t even have an object. There’s just a state of hatred. And then it becomes a recycling of hatred.
Know, they sometimes you’ve seen pictures of a crocodile or an alligator crocodile eating its tail. The thing about a crocodile eating its tail is as it eats its tail, it takes nourishment from having eaten the tail. And the more nourishment it gets from the tail, the tail begins to grow back. And it eats back and gets nourishment and the tail goes back. So there’s this recycling, the churning of this hatred over and over again in your mind.
And you’re not quite sure what it is your hatred that that set it off, but it just keeps spinning and churning over. You keep rolling it around in your mind. And the hate begins to build and build and build. And the more you the more you hate, the more that you see that needs to be hated. And the more you destroy it, the more you see that needs to be destroyed until your complete environment becomes an environment paranoia, of aggression, and you become your entire environment becomes fire, flames, and you become fire and flames.
And the hell realm is characterized by extreme mental and physical suffering. So these are six predominant categories that we could pass through in the course of a single day to some degree. Or we can actually die and take rebirth physically in one of these six realms. We’re following the progression of a practitioner. First, he was completely wrapped up in the material world, seeing his happiness, the solution to all his problems outside of himself, in his environment, in the people, in things, in status, whatever.
Then he began to develop an awareness that it was more of his attitude toward these things which determined his happiness. So he began to become aware of the necessity to approach the present moment with more positive states in mind. With this, we can go on from this. We can see the necessity to prepare ourselves for future states which are going to be quite dissimilar from the state we’re in now. We’re all sitting here very comfortably, all probably in the human realm.
Okay? But maybe maybe you walk out the door and something bad happens, something good happens. You say something bad happens. I don’t wanna always be negative. Anyway, in one moment of time, you could become you could be in the hell realm.
Tremendous hatred. Somebody said something. You’re stupid. And once you you fell from the human realm, and you were in the hell realm. You were burning with anger.
You were in pain. A person with who has anger in their mind is suffering. It’s a very painful type of suffering. So how can we begin to prepare for future states, both within this life and future lives? Once we begin to be concerned with not just the present moment but the future possibilities, then we are actually beginning to engage in the practices of the lesser vehicle.
We have actually entered the door of Dharma. So the doorway into the Dharma. What do I mean by Dharma? Dharma is anything which raises the level of our consciousness. As I said, from desire to openness, from attachment to generosity, from anger to love, anything which has this potential, we can call it Dharma.
Anyone who becomes concerned with future states, future possibilities of problems, is actually beginning to practice what we call Dharma. So then this practitioner, this theoretic practitioner, he begins to see the necessity to develop his mind, to develop his skillfulness in relating to the various states which could arise, whether in this life or in future lives. But then he looks, and somehow, all these various states you know, we went through these six realms, and we we can see that they’re not satisfactory. They’re not completely happy. Each one has some characteristic particular style of suffering, some dissatisfactory quality about it.
So this practitioner begins to wonder, perhaps I can go beyond all these various realms. Why keep moving through this dissatisfactory quality of states of mind? Why keep recycling over and over again through these various states of saṃsāra when I try to get out of the whole thing altogether? When this mind arises, this thought, you know, to go beyond the six realms altogether, and we have actually entered into the doorway of the lesser vehicle when we develop the determination to be free, which is usually referred to as renunciation, what we are renouncing is the cause of suffering, which is characterized by these six realms or these six states of mind. We finally get fed up with having to go through the ups and downs like a roller coaster, and we wanna get off of the suffering-go-round.
And we decide, you know, it’s time to practice. It’s time to develop my mind. We have actually begun entered into this lesser vehicle. We’ve actually entered in, opened the door, gotten in, and this vehicle is going to begin to take us along a path. So the lesser vehicle.
The vehicle has the idea of transportation, something which carries a burden. Why do we say lesser vehicle? The lesser vehicle is designed to carry a very light burden. That is the burden of one person, one individual. It can take one individual from its present ordinary state, a dissatisfactory state, to a state of transcendence of all the various dissatisfactory realms, of all the various dissatisfactory mental states that we fall into.
It is designed to take one practitioner to nirvana. nirvana means beyond sorrow. It means a state which is beyond any of these six realms, any of these six states that we usually are perpetually passing through in the course of even a one day. So this person, by way of motivation, we call him a being of middling motivation. So the person who wants begins to practice some sort of method, some internal method to solve his problems, develop his attitudes, more skillful attitudes, has a motivation of what we call initial level motivation.
He’s an initial level practitioner. And someone begins to understand that the nature of the mind, of the ordinary mind, of having to perpetually cycle through these compulsive reoccurring patterns, is dissatisfactory. And he wants to go beyond all these dissatisfactory states. He develops what is called the motivation of the middling level of capacity. He’s no longer satisfied to go to stay on the roller coaster.
So he has certain practices which he makes use of. His vehicle. And this vehicle is characterized by what are called the three higher trainings. Higher training in ethics or morality, higher training in concentration, and higher training in wisdom. Ultimately what we have to do to go beyond all these dissatisfactory compulsive reoccurring patterns that we’re stuck in, that we go through, we cycle through in this life today, is eliminate the cause, the root of our problems, which is ignorance.
What do we mean by ignorance? Ignorance is a is a misconception of the nature of the self, of the I, of the me, of the person. You know, you’re you’re talking to someone and they say something you don’t like, and you say, get away from me. I I I hit you. I there’s some I there, very powerful feeling feeling of I.
Actually, I’m poking it. Mhmm. It’s like somewhere maybe there. Very strong feeling of some concrete, solid, independently permanent independently existing permanent, singular, unchanging self, I, me, ego.