theg pa chen po - Mahayana

The second part of the vehicles is theg pa chen po, or Mahayana as it is known in Sanskrit. HH Dalai Lama's translation of this is the Universal Vehicle, and I actually like this translation, more about it later.

theg pa means vehicle, yana in Sanskrit. chen po means great, or maha in Sanskrit. So now you should recognize more Sanskrit words with maha in them, such as mahasiddha, mahasukha and so on...

Sometimes this term is also shortened to theg chen.

Those who are in this vehicle have as their motivation the universal responsibility to get everyone enlightened. This means that they have to do extraordinary practices and try to not just remove all their mental afflictions, but also generate all the possible qualities in order to help any sentient beings. That implies full knowledge of all beings and phenomena, including transcending time. You need to know how someone got to a point in order to help them to progress.