[katespepach]

The Mahayana ideal can be seen in the Bodhisattva vows:

All being, without number, I vow to liberate
Endless blind passions I vow to uproot
Dharma gates beyond measure I vow to penetrate
The way of the Buddha I vow to attain

Beings are numberless; I vow to awaken with them.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
Buddha's way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.

The Therevada vehicle tends to rely only on Shakyamuni and his teachings whereas the Mahayana way takes into account Bodhisattvas and other Buddhas and their teachings and help.

From Tibetan Buddhism:

"If we can attain nondual, nonconceptual awareness in meditation, we are engaged in profound political activity, . . .
While our nondualistic, nonconceptual meditation is purifying our own obscurations and afflictions and thereby transforming our personal experience of others, it is also becoming a spark of buddha activity in those others. As our meditation becomes effective, the attitude of others towards us begins to change, and they themselves begin to turn inward and to search with greater conscientiousness through the stuff of their own minds and lives for spiritual solutions to their own problems. And as the power of our meditation increases, this effect reaches ever-widening concentric circles of sentient beings with whom we have karmic interdependence, which in this day and age includes not only our immediate family and friends, working associates, and local communities, but also everyone with whom we are connected through all the media of our lives.

--from The Ninth Karmapa's Ocean of Definitive Meaning by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, edited, introduced and annotated by Lama Tashi Namgyal "


Or as the Zen master Sazuki Roshi said - "When I meditate my spouse also meditates"