That's the traditional Vajrayana teaching. It claims Buddhism has three "vehicles" – "Hinaya" (a pejorative term for Theravada and its extinct cousins) being th

That's the traditional Vajrayana teaching. It claims Buddhism has three "vehicles" – "Hinaya" (a pejorative term for Theravada and its extinct cousins) being the lowest, Mahayana being the middle, Vajrayana being a highest. While obviously other Buddhists reject this, many Vajrayana still believe and teach it. Rather different from Christianity. I've never heard a Catholic claim "Protestantism is the lowest level of Christianity, Orthodoxy is in the middle, Catholicism is the highest". That might not be a bad statement of how some Catholics think, but I'd be rather surprised if any Catholic would ever actually put it that way.