How to motivate oneself: The second vehicle
1. The path
It is definitely necessary to understand the teaching of the first vehicle if we want to move forward and practice the second vehicle. The first vehicle is an act of cleaning up. We discipline ourselves and make friends with ourselves. Now it is time to think about others. The second vehicle is a quicker way towards liberation. The meditation practice is included in my video on this website.
We put ourselves before others. Since we now got some understanding of our selflessness we can discover that we really can extend more. Let’s not blame others if the world gives us a bad deal. If we are going to do anything good we can only begin with ourselves. We wish to let every living being in this world go before us to liberation before we are liberated ourselves. Apart form the mediation. In daily life we practice the virtues of generosity, ethics, patience, diligence, meditative wakefulness and insight.
2. On the realization of second vehicle
After we have got glimpses of that selflessness during first vehicle meditation we can also study the theory of the second vehicle as study and meditation go hand in hand. There is a point in our mind potential that we start to experience emptiness of self and other directly on a continuous basis. This is a major breakthrough, yet on the other hand it is not, since experience has been empty of self and other in the first place. But still it is a remarkable discovery that one makes, that goes along with the experience of a lot of joy. In the buddhist tradition this stage is called the first bhumi, we are now really on the second vehicle path and we practice the virtue of generosity in the first place, along with all the other virtues. We realize that we can extend much further to others, we are much richer than we thought. Of course richness here, is not just money.
3. Some necessary theory
After understood that we don’t have a self and the interdependence of phenomena, we will go deeper in the second vehicle. In the first vehicle we do accept the existence of atoms. Progress on the meditative path and theory go hand in hand. Apart from the absence of self we are now ready to discover the selflessness of phenomena outside ourselves. We might find that our cozy familiar world, for instance our own apartment may not be such a solid world as it seems. There are tables and chairs, etcetera. Pretty much we agree on what everything is, but if we look deeper into it we might discover something else. Every name that we put on to things is a little too much. It is like the psychological ink blot test, we see all sort of things in the ink blot, but some other people see other things.
On the other hand saying that there is nothing there and everything is empty anyway is also a bridge too far. ‘Empty’ is also a thing. And we did just agree upon that there is no-thing.
In a further level of second of second vehicle theory we might include that the no-thing and no no-thing theory is also a trip. So there must be something. We can conclude that there is such a thing as the mind. And the mind is without limitations, it can be aware and it also has brightness to it, that is a sort of energy. So than we can conclude that all phenomena are manifestations of that mind only.