Exoteric Sutrayana and Esoteric Vajrayana

The above manner of speaking of the three vehicles as outer, inner and. secret is made from the perspective of how the three aspects of the teachings spread in India, and how all three are to be integrated into a personal practice.

There are several other classical ways in which the Buddha’s teachings are discussed as ‘vehicles.’

Nagarjuna’s retrieved Prajnaparamita sutras, for example, speak of two basic vehicles, these being the Small and Great, or Hinayana and Mahayana, wherein the former leads to liberation from cyclic existence and the latter to complete enlightenment.

The first of these two is in turn twofold: the Vehicle of Hearers (who mainly live in communities), and the Vehicle of Solitary Practitioners (who mainly live alone). Both of these paths lead to nirvana, or complete liberation from samsara. They differ only in the strength of their merit.

Probably historically these two represent the early monkhood—the Hearers being those who lived with Buddha and his community, and who recorded the teachings; the Solitary Practitioners were probably those monks who took a central contemplative technique, such as insight meditation, and cultivated it in solitude.

Later Indian buddhist writings (specifically, those appearing after the introduction of the buddhist tantras in the sixth century A.D.), and the tradition that was endorsed in Tibet, accepts the above twofold classification, as well as the subdivision of the Small Vehicle into the two styles of practice given above. In addition, they further sub-divide the Great Vehicle into two: the Bodhisattva Vehicle, or path wherein one trains according to the Enlightenment Hero ideal as outlined in the Prajnaparamita sutras retrieved by Nagarjuna; and the Secret Mantra Vehicle, the esoteric tantric path, wherein the ideal is that of the Indian mahasiddhas, who

transcended convention. Both of these are of the Great Vehicle, for both take as their basis the bodhisattva aspiration to highest enlightenment and as their goal the attainment of complete buddhahood (and not mere nirvana).

The Second Dalai Lama makes this observation in A Raft to Cross the Ocean of Indian Buddhist Thought:

The transmissions given by the Buddha were of two types: scriptural and realization. The former of these includes the collections (of the teachings of the Buddha) upon which both the Small and Great Vehicle traditions are founded.

As for these two vehicles, the former can be subdivided into the Vehicle of Hearers and the Vehicle of Solitary Practitioners. The latter can be subdivided into the exoteric Great Vehicle of the Bodhisattva Perfections, and the esoteric Diamond Vehicle, the tantric path of secret mantras. The former of these two aspects of the Great Vehicle is also called ‘the causal Great Vehicle,’ and the latter ‘the resultant Great Vehicle.’

Here we see the exoteric Bodhisattva Vehicle being referred to as ‘the causal vehicle’ and the esoteric Secret Mantra Vehicle as ‘the resultant vehicle.’ The idea is simply that in the former style of practice when one meditates on, for example, love, one views it as a force that acts as a cause of enlightenment; in the latter style, one meditates that one is driven by the full power of love this very moment, just as at the time of the resultant state of complete buddhahood. Thus one style of practice is closer in nature to the causes of enlightenment; the other is closer in nature to the resultant enlightenment itself.1

Another manner of classification is into the Sutrayana and Tantrayana. Sometimes these are also called ‘shared’ and ‘exclusive’ aspects of doctrine. In this context, ‘sutra’ refers to the scriptures that contain the exoteric teachings of the Buddha, and ‘tantra’ refers to the scriptures that contain his esoteric doctrines. All teachings of the Buddha can be subsumed into these two categories.

Here the Sutrayana includes all the teachings of the Small Vehicle, as well as the general Great Vehicle teachings (that is, everything excluding the tantric doctrines). The Tantrayana, which is synonymous with the terms Vajrayana and Mantrayana, contains those Great Vehicle teachings that deal with the tantric path to enlightenment. Hence the Kalachakra tantric tradition is placed within this last doctrinal category.

The essential relationship between the Sutrayana and the Tantrayana in both Indian and Tibetan buddhism is one of preliminary and actual practice, where the Sutrayana methods prepare the foundations for the actual training, which is the tantric methodology.

For this reason the former is sometimes called ‘the shared path’ and the latter ‘the exclusive path.’ The former is ‘shared’ in the sense of providing indispensable foundations to the latter. Being the very substance of the Sutrayana it is obviously present in that category of doctrine; and being the

foundations of the Tantrayana, it is also present there. Thus it is shared by both. The Tantrayana, at least in most cases, cannot be successfully practiced without the preliminary trainings in the Sutrayana methods. The Second Dalai Lama comments in The Tantric Yogas of Sister Niguma,

One should first accomplish the general preliminaries. This refers to those methods that are common to both the Sutrayana and Vajrayana. In The Prerequisites of Receiving Tantric Initiation, presented in this volume as Chapter Fifteen, the Seventh Dalai Lama comments,

…the Mahayana is comprised of two distinct vehicles: the Paramitayana, or Vehicle (which provides meditation) on the causes (of enlightenment), also called the Vehicle of Symbols; and the Guhyamantrayana, or Vajrayana, the Vehicle (which provides meditations) on the results (of enlightenment).

Yet practice of solely the former of these produces enlightenment only after three countless aeons of difficult austerities such as sacrificing limbs of one’s body and so forth. In short, it is a long and arduous journey. But if in our training we couple the Vajrayana with the Paramitayana then after a short comfortable effort we can go to the end of cultivating goodness and overcoming negativity, and can quickly and easily gain the state of allpervading Vajradhara within one lifetime.

The Vajrayana is a very quick path; but in order to embark upon it we must first train our mindstream through the disciplines of the common path, the Paramitayana, until a degree of stability has been gained. Only then should we enter into the path of secret mantras.

Quoting a passage from The Root Tantra of Glorious Chakrasamvara, the Seventh Dalai Lama points out,2 When the practices of the sutras (are strong), the horizon of the secret yogas is (in sight). That is to say, only when the Sutrayana practices have been firmly established as an inner spiritual basis should the Vajrayana teachings be given.3

What is it that constitutes the exoteric Sutrayana practices that act as the preliminaries?

In The Tantric Yogas of Sister Niguma the Second Dalai Lama describes the nature of ‘the shared path’ of the Sutrayana by quoting a passage from

The Vajra Verses,

Those whose minds are ripened by the four initiations,
Who possess confidence and enthusiasm in practice
And whose minds are prepared by the preliminary practices
Of meditation upon impermanence and death,
Detachment and the shortcomings of cyclic existence,
They gain buddhahood in as short a time
As six months, a year, or at least in this lifetime
By means of this supreme tantric path.

He then proceeds to unpack the verse by setting it in the context of the threefold development of spiritual perspective presented by Atisha in A Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment and propagated throughout Tibet and Central Asia in the form of the Lam Rim4 tradition:

As stated above [in The Vajra Verses], the preliminary trainings to be accomplished before entering into this profound (tantric) path are those subsumed under the threefold category of methods for engendering the three scopes of spiritual motivation: (i) the initial scope, which includes trainings such as meditation upon the certainty of death and the uncertainty

of the time of death; (ii) the intermediate scope, which involves trainings such as meditation upon the frustrating and painful nature of cyclic existence, methods that generate a sense of detachment from and disillusionment with samsaric indulgence, and give birth to the wish for

liberation from samsara; and (iii) the highest scope of motivation, which, based on the above two preliminaries, aspires to highest enlightenment as a means of benefiting all sentient beings and, in order to accomplish this, enters into the altruistic bodhisattva ways, such as the six perfections. To enter the Vajrayana one must firstly accomplish these common (Hinayana and general Mahayana) trainings.