The Four Aspects of Empowerment Rituals

The Function of Empowerment

Empowerment is to ripen or mature our buddha nature. Even though all beings possess the Buddha nature, without receiving empowerment it is not posspible to receive blessings and accomplishments through a particular practice, just as it will never be possible to get oil by pressing sand.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says:

When an empowerment is conferred on you, it is the nature of your mind—the Buddha nature—that provides a basis upon which the empowerment can ripen you. 

Through the empowerment, you are empowered into the essence of the buddhas of the five families. In particular, you are ‘ripened’ within that particular family through which it is your personal predisposition to attain Buddhahood. 

What Is Empowerment? 

Receiving a Vajrayana Empowerment is like planting a seed for enlightenment. A special and sacred rite, empowerment prepares our body, speech, and mind just as tilling the soil and adding nutrient-rich compost encourages the seed to sprout and grow. 

Even though we are Buddha nature, our self-doubts and confusion often keep us from connecting to it. So, empowerment is an important step toward our own enlightened mind. 

An empowerment will introduce those attending to a single meditational deity, creating an auspicious connection with the awakened energies that the deity represents. 

After empowerment and instruction, a meditator is able to practice the meditation associated with that deity. This is a process in which the meditator relaxes their usual focus on themselves and practices being much more than one usually imagines oneself to be—a great awakened being with the skill to affect the world and its beings in a positive way. 

There are usually four aspects to an empowerment ritual: 

(1) The vase empowerment prepares the body and removes impurities and hindrances that limit our view of ourselves;

(2) The speech or secret empowerment purifies our speech and supports correct practice;

(3) The wisdom empowerment refines our thinking and cleanses the mind of impediments and illusions.

(4) The word mahamudra empowerment distills our practice to focus on the very essence of the mind. 

The Goddess of Healing - Parnasavari

The Refuge Vow is the first step on the Buddhist path. It is a statement of confidence in the path’s founder, the Buddha, and in our own qualities of goodness and potential to awaken just as he did. 

In the Refuge Vow, we also acknowledge our reliance on the teachings of the Buddha, and we commit to learning and embodying them. Finally, in the Vow, we entrust ourselves to the community of teachers and fellow practitioners who are our companions on the Buddhist path.

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Footnote:

Vajrayana offers countless skillful and powerful methods that, when practiced correctly, can significantly accelerate the processes of accumulation and purification. It is crucial to have pure motivation and understand that Vajrayana practice is not intended to increase one's ego, power, or self-interest.

Thank you for reading. May you find peace and great bliss. Your support helps spread the Buddha’s precious teachings and turn the Dharma wheel in the world.

Aspiration for Bodhichitta:

May the precious Bodhichitta, which has not yet arisen, arise and not diminish, but rather increase further and further.

Dedication of Merit:

By this merit, may we swiftly attain omniscience. Having overcome the enemies of wrongdoing, may we liberate all beings from the ocean of existence, with its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death.

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