EN - How to motivate oneself: The first vehicle

1.     The path

The first vehicle is about working with oneself and making friends with oneself. Personally I find self-hatred one of the biggest obstacles I have encountered in my own life. But one cannot love anyone else properly if one has not made friends with oneself. So that is not really a selfish thing.

Puritanism is a widespread attitude in the western world. It goes with the promise of heaven after a lot of hard work on this earth. But often with the feeling of basic sin, one has to punish oneself while one is working, there is a masochistic attitude to it. Why not experience joy? In itself that is not something to worry about.

On the other hand working with oneself involves discipline. If one wishes to remove the illusion of self, one needs to practice meditation. It is really a basic solution. I get back to you about what you can do if you feel you really cannot meditate.

This website includes my guided meditation of the three vehicles.

2.     Some necessary theory

An exercise: Look at yourself, who are you? In the first vehicle there where thinkers who asked themselves the same question. The conclusion drawn was that the world exists out of atoms, similar to the modern scientific view of the world. Every entity can be divided into smaller entities. Until we reach the smallest particle, the indivisible particle. And our own self can also be divided into different qualities, particles until we reach the smallest particle. Therefore the conclusion was that there is no self, but those thinkers concluded that atoms do exist.

Then there is the teaching of dependent origination. In the simple example, when I hold up a piece of paper, the ‘up-ness’ of the paper is only related to the space underneath and the decreasing space above. In the same way all phenomenon can only exist relative to other phenomena. There can only be light if there is darkness, there can only life if there is death etcetera. Nothing can exist on its own.

3.     Realisation of the first vehicle

After listening to the teaching of atoms one can develop an intellectual understanding of this teaching. After practicing meditation one can actually experience this truth of selflessness too.Nieuwe alinea