What is the cause of liberation? It is bodhicitta, or the altruistic mind. If you give rise to bodhicitta, you do not think of yourself and thus, self-grasping diminishes. What we need to become free from, what we need to become liberated from is actually the grasping at a self. Self-grasping is the very cause of suffering. The altruistic mind is the cause of happiness.
What is most important is the foundation of faith, bodhicitta-- the altruistic mind. If you have the altruistic mind, the power of your Buddha-nature will naturally unfold; it is like an ice-block melting into water and the water can then be used naturally. If you do not possess the altruistic mind as a foundation, all the other practices, mantra recitation and so forth will not be so powerful. In The Ocean of Samadhi, a text, it is said, “If you do not have bodhicitta, if you lack bodhicitta, you will not attain Enlightenment.” It is just like a body without its life-force; someone without life cannot perform any function. The life-force of all practices is bodhicitta and if you only have bodhicitta, everything based on that will become very, very vast and very beneficial. Any virtuous activity will become very extensive. Therefore bodhicitta, the altruistic mind is the very root or foundation of all practices
It is the mind of a Bodhisattva, only caring about others is bodhichitta. This mind is the essence of all deities. If you practice any deity with this mind, you will be very close to the deity and receive blessings. What we call blessings is actually nothing but love. The mind that is free of selfishness and only cares about others is a bodhisattvas mind, such limitless love is relative bodhichitta. A Buddha has not only perfected relative bodhichitta but also ultimate bodhichitta, i.e. a Buddha mind has fully realized that all duality is delusion and that in fact there are no self and others. There are different levels of bodhisattvas, there are ten stages or bhumis a bodhisattva progresses through on the path. The enlightened mind is beyond all paths, there is no more training, it is complete awakening.
The love of the Buddhas is ever unceasing, always there and pervasive; whether we access it or not depends on the power of our own trust. When we supplicate to and think about the Buddhas and deities, they are actually there, like the Buddha Shakyamuni is actually here when we think about the Buddha. From a conventional perspective, this is due to the great love the Buddhas have for all beings. From the ultimate perspective, they are always there because they are already connected primordially to our own Buddha-nature. They are continuously connected to our own mind-stream.
If you cultivate faith in the Buddha Amitābha single-pointedly, the Buddha will hear us and feel us. It is just as if the Buddhas and deities are the mother and we are their child. When the child is suffering—for example, when the child is sick, the mother experiences an overwhelming, unbearable feeling and will go to help the child very quickly. The mind is just like light or electricity, so when sentient beings give rise to faith, in just an instant, very quickly, the Buddhas will feel this and will come and help beings with love.
We must also understand the mantra to be an offering. When we have faith in the deities that abide in the pure lands and recite the mantra, each of these mantras becomes an offering to the deities there. At the same time, it purifies the obscurations of sentient beings in the impure fields, in particular, the sentient beings living in the three lower realms. The mantra then becomes the protector of sentient beings; it protects those without protection. The mantra is an offering and also purifies obscurations.
The mantra is also a blessing. When we recite the mantra, we purify negative karmas and negative imprints from the mind-stream through the power of the wisdom deity. This is a quality of the wisdom deity. When we talk about the blessings of the wisdom deities, the blessing is nothing other than love and compassion. If we recite the mantra of the wisdom deity, we will destroy the negative imprints and karmas that we have accumulated since beginning-less time and come closer and closer to approaching Enlightenment.
With regard to the benefits of mantra recitation and the mantra itself, the Buddha himself had also said in the Liberation by Seeing mantra for example, that by only seeing a certain mantra, one will purify obscurations accumulated in three-hundred million aeons.
There are three types of uninterrupted-ness when we recite the mantra. There are uninterrupted offerings to the Buddhas; uninterrupted purification of obscurations of sentient beings, and uninterrupted attainment of siddhis or attainments. The siddhi is basically the increase of love and compassion; if love and compassion increase, wisdom increases and one attains Enlightenment. Due to compassion, one temporarily experiences the seven qualities of the higher realms*, the happiness of the higher realms and many other benefits that come from mantra recitation.
Any virtue you practice, even if it is just a single Mani mantra, you should think that it is for the sake of all mother sentient beings. If you have this intention, the virtue will become very vast and very powerful and it will have two benefits: the temporary benefit of birth in the higher realms and the ultimate benefit of attaining Enlightenment.
Even though you have received many empowerments, if you understand the nature of the deity, you understand that it is sufficient to only practice a single deity. By practicing a single deity genuinely, you are accomplishing the essence of all deities. In fact, it is better to focus on the practice of just one deity, because then it will be easier to habituate to the deity to the point where you will not forget about the deity. To accomplish the deity means to never forget about the deity, it means that the deity always remains in your mind, it never separates from you. As it is always in your mind, you become the deity. If you never separate from the deity, you will also remember the deity in the Bardo after death, upon which you will attain enlightenment into the samboghakaya form of the deity. Sometimes people worry about receiving too many empowerments because they think that they cannot keep all the samayas. Actually if you practice the root samaya of love, compassion and mindfulness, you are keeping all samayas of all deities, even if you only recite the mantra of one deity. In order to understand this you must understand the essence of the deity. If you think that the deities are all separate, there will be a conflict. Actually the power of one wisdom deity is contained within all deities. Various deities appear in order to suit the various thoughts and inclinations of sentient beings, but actually their nature is one and the same. The nature of all deities is bodhichitta. Therefore, if you practice bodhichitta and mindfulness, and only recite the mantra of one deity, you are keeping all your samayas. If you do not practice bodhichitta and mindfulness, no matter how many different mantras you recite, you are not keeping your samayas. That is because bodhichitta is the very life-energy of the deity. Without bodhichitta the deity is like a dead body. However, it is necessary to practice at least one deity on a daily basis. In the various empowerment texts it is mentioned in the section of repeating the samaya that one must recite the mantra of that deity, but this must be mentioned in each sadhana because in old days the masters would only receive this one empowerment and then practice this for the rest of their lives. For this reason it must be mentioned in each empowerment text. But for us, since we receive so many empowerments nowadays, it is crucial to understand the meaning and essence of the empowerment: It is said: "In the expanse of primordial wisdom, all the Buddhas are one."
~ Garchen Rinpoche
