Part 2 - Why mantrayana is higher than the vehicles of characteristics

Why should we enter? It is higher than the causal vehicles, as is taught:

Because there are many means and also no difficulties.
Though the meaning is one with that of the other yanas,
There is no confusion about the means of entering.
Mastered by those who are of the sharpest faculties
Kriya, charya, and yoga, and anuttara are taught,

Though the Buddha taught inconceivably many vehicles in accord with the minds of sentient beings, they are all included within three.^[1] The Mahayana is taught to have two aspects of cause and fruition.

The causal vehicles are taught to be the gates of first entering. Their fruition is taught to be the vajrayana. The Net of Miracles of Mañjushri (‘jam dpal sgyu ‘phrul dra ba)i says:

By the way of the means of the various vehicles,
They have divisions so that they can benefit beings,
As for the definite outcome of the three vehicles,
It exists as the single vehicle of fruition.

These vehicles are also ascertained as two. Since individuals in the Mahayana also have two families, it is taught that their skillful means or paths are two. Individuals who have little craving for desirable qualities or who have renounced these desirable qualities, and wish for liberation, are taught the bodhisattva vehicle. For those unable to abandon desirable qualities, their skillful means are the stages of secret mantra.

These two families train in their two paths until the path of seeing arises. The time when this arises is called “the path of seeing of the wisdom of nonthought” among the levels of the bodhisattvas. This same wisdom of complete non-thought is designated “the supreme siddhi of mahamudra” by mantrayana. That manifests. The time until this arises, using the individual methods of training of these paths, is respectively long and short.

In the vehicle of characteristics, at the time actions such as aggression are abandoned, by kindness alone without other kinds of skillful means, and with great agonies of asceticism, In establishing that one goal they are without many means.

Though they and mantra have the single goal of establishing the fruition, those of the bodhisattva vehicle are ignorant about profound means for doing so. Since this vehicle arises as a means for those whose sharpness of sense has been blunted, though this and that practices may be done, they are all practiced by dualistic abandoning and antidotes. Since the aspect to be abandoned is not brought to the path, half of what there is never becomes part of the path at all. Therefore, this is a narrow path and a lesser cause of enlightenment.

The tantras reject those methods. When such actions as aggression are produced, there are many means for dealing with them. Here too there may be kindness, or in the developing stage aggression may be seen as illusion-like, or in the completion stage as the wisdom of non-thought, or by working

with that very aggression, it becomes the mirror-like wisdom, and so forth. Asceticism of body, speech, and mind plays a minor part. When the single goal is established, since this and that means beyond the scope of thought are possessed, it is established with certainty. Having been produced for those of sharpest powers, kriya, upa, yoga, and the great yoga of anuttara-tantra are taught. The Lamp of the Three Methods (tshul gsum kyi sgron ma) says:

Not unintelligent about the single goal, Having many means and also not ascetic,
Having been produced for those of the sharpest powers,
Therefore the mantra vehicles are especially noble.