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The following excerpt, which I found published on the TSK Association website, is originally from Steve Randall's well known and interesting essay, “Vehicle, Common Ground, and Vision.”
From “Vehicle, Common Ground, and Vision,” by Steve Randall, in LtoK, pp. 154-6:
A Vehicle Is Different from a Vision
Of course, the descriptions of the vision in the books, as precise they are, can only point to the vision. They cannot constitute the vision, just as numerous descriptions and analyses of a symphony do not add up to the sounds of the music.
Tarthang Tulku has made this same distinction:
The vision is the essence of unity and simplicity. But the system of ordinary knowledge, which the [TSK] book attempts to communicate with and open up, is very complicated and given to such a diversity of positions that, in order to speak to it and challenge it successfully, you have to try many different approaches and analyses. (p. xlix, DOT)
For me, this distinction is related to a distinction between the TSK vision and the TSK books. The “different approaches and analyses” are what I would consider the “vehicle” for the unified simplicity of the vision. Here the dictionary defines the word “vehicle” in part as “a medium through which something is transmitted, expressed, or accomplished.” For TSK purposes, we can define “vehicle” broadly as a system of writings, principles, actual use of techniques, actual practice of exercises, art, movements, presentations, workshops, environments, social groups, etc.-structures, spaces, activities, content, and pointings used to facilitate some kind of beneficial change in relation to an implicitly or explicitly identified guiding vision.
I want to call the text of the books written by Tarthang Tulku, plus the actual practice of exercises in the books, the “initial TSK vehicle.” This initial TSK vehicle is not the same as the TSK vision. As defined, the initial vehicle is a combination of ordinary objects and events, while the TSK vision is a profound 'seeing'.
Now, suppose that all human 'experiences' (using the word very broadly) or all possible 'focal settings' on time, space, and knowledge (to use a term frequently seen in the TSK books) can be represented by points within a circle, and that the distance of any one of these points from the center of the circle is a measure of the depth of the experience or breadth of the focal setting, with the deepest, highest, or most nearly enlightened focal settings nearest the center. This whole set of points will be called the “circle of settings.” In TSK terms, first-level experiences will be at the periphery, second-level settings will be midway between periphery and center, and third-level will be at or near the center. is near the center. A given vehicle, in facilitating “beneficial change,” will operate on a subset of the “circle of settings.” In doing so, it will lead to a range of other settings that, in general, are closer to the center of the circle.
Now, by focusing on the possibility of such “vehicles,” I hope to help open up the tendency to treat the original TSK books as 'sacred', infallible, or the final word. Seeing them as part of one vehicle, of and for the vision, may make it more likely that other, possibly more effective vehicles will be developed for different audiences, fields, disciplines, and purposes. Tarthang Tulku himself expresses considerable openness about different ways that TSK might be presented:
My hope is that in the future students of TSK will make use of the insights they gain to present the vision in new and more fruitful ways. In considering this prospect, I sense that others have much more to contribute to the TSK vision than I do. A dynamic of great potential is waiting to be activated. (p. xvi, LOK)
The Vehicle Reflects the Vision
Although a vehicle is not identical to a guiding vision, it will ideally be closely or precisely related to the vision, in somewhat the way that objects closely resemble their reflections in a mirror.
p. 166: Effectiveness
The property of effectiveness addresses how well a vehicle functions to facilitate transformation of a certain domain of human experience–to what extent it moves us toward the center of the circle of settings. The properties of consistency and comprehensiveness discussed above are interrelated and important, but the property of effectiveness seems primary.
Does the vehicle work, and if so, how well? Can its use produce undesirable side-effects? Vehicles must, first and foremost, be functional.
p. 169: Precision Is Related to Effectiveness
If we generalize from the foregoing examples, we can say that the precision of inquiry afforded by a vehicle is closely related to the vehicle's effectiveness. Vehicles are heuristic systems that facilitate learning and change in a more or less precise manner. As with automobiles, we care not just whether a vehicle will go somewhere, but how well it will transport us. We care how precisely tuned the vehicle is.
Note that precision is not the same as truth or accuracy. The attribute of 'true' or 'false' is irrelevant to the functioning of a vehicle. The benefit of a vehicle whose purpose is to facilitate change and learning, results from how well and how precisely it works, but not from whether it is 'true' in some sense. This inapplicability of the label 'truth' is confirmed by Tarthang
Tulku's description of how TSK developed:
“Whether the new pictures and thoughts that formed as the old ones lost their hold were 'accurate' did not seem of primary concern; what truly mattered was the openness that allowed such new content to appear.” (p. xlvii, LOK)
Though inapplicable to the intial TSK vehicle, the idea of truth does find its place within the vehicle. Concern with truth and falsity, or accuracy and inaccuracy (and dichotomous thinking in general) is primarily found near the periphery of the circle of settings, where what appears … is … judged in terms of oppositions such as good and bad, right and wrong. The judgments in turn find expression in words and labels, and from this foundation come doctrines, traditions, customs, styles, and ideologies. (p. 44-p. 45, LOK)
When we accept the shift from surface to substance, from appearance to realness, we look past the communiqué to accept the truth of the story being communicated. (p. 23, DTS) In contrast, higher knowing “does not depend on taking one position or rejecting another” (p. xli, LOK),
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