There are prayers and meditation trainings on the four causes of taking rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land. These trainings will pave the way for you to take rebirth in the pure land. They will also equip you to perform the death rituals for others. These are from the common, or sutric, teachings of Buddhism (those based on the sutras, the words of the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni).
According to the Buddhist sources, numerous eons ago the Buddha of Infinite Light became a devotee of the bodhisattva path. His name was Dharmakara. Before a buddha named Lokeshvara, he started his spiritual journey by taking the bodhisattva vow. He vowed to lead all who hear, remember and pray in his name with faith and devotion to his future pure land when he became a buddha:
All beings who hear my name
Will come to my pure land.
If you have faith, trust in the buddha’s vow, wisdom, and compassion, you are open to the effects of the power of the vow.
Because of the power of the interdependent causation of the buddha’s vow, if you pray in his name, joyous rebirth in his pure land—within you and outside you—will be assured.
Master Shinran, the twelfth-century founder of the Jodo Shinshu, or True Pure Land School of Japan, said: “At the very moment when we are moved to utter the Nembutsu [mantra of the Buddha of Infinite Light] by a firm faith that our rebirth in the Pure Land is attained solely by virtue of the unfathomable working of Amida’s [Amitabha’s] Original Vow, we are enabled to share in its benefits that embrace all and forsake none.”
If with total trust your mind is fully focused on the Buddha of Infinite Light, who is the body of compassion and wisdom, and on the power of his name-prayer, your whole life will become peaceful, pure and awakened. You will become a source of the same qualities for all around you.
Negative concepts and afflicting emotions will have no place to harbor in you. Then you will have no need of any other means to attain liberation. Such a mind naturally embodies the qualities of all the six perfections: generosity, morality, patience, diligence, contemplation and wisdom.
If you enjoy trust in the buddha, you must apply it as the means of improving your death and rebirth through meditations such as the phowa.
You must prepare long before your own death and also before performing death rituals for a dying person.
If you have no meditative experience in advance, you may not be able to receive or offer much help through prayers or meditations.
If you have no meditative connection with the Buddha of Infinite Light and his Blissful Pure Land, how can you take rebirth in the pure land or lead any other dying person there?
A dying person who has trained in this meditation in advance can meditate and pray alone and may not need to rely on others’ support.
Or, if an experienced dying person and a well-trained helper join together in the meditations and prayers, birth in the Pure Land could easily be assured.
So, it is essential to train in advance in the four causes, for success depends on your mental experience.
You could train in the four causes as your daily meditation and prayers for months and years. You could keep repeating the name-prayers and mantras hundreds of thousands or millions of times.
If you have trained in the four causes, you will take rebirth in the pure land even if you have committed misdeeds, with the exception of two serious misdeeds.
One is the act of renouncing the Dharma. If you have renounced the Dharma, it will be impossible to have devotion to the Buddha of Infinite Light, for the root cause of rebirth in the pure land is trust in the Dharma.
The second misdeed is the commission of any of the five immeasurable offenses: killing one’s mother, killing one’s father, killing a sage (Skt. arhat), causing schism in the spiritual community, and assaulting a buddha with malicious intention.
The main focus of the four causes is the prayers and meditation on the Buddha of Infinite Light and his Blissful Pure Land.
The buddha is the embodiment of all the enlightened ones and the manifestation of the universal truth.
The Blissful Pure Land is the appearance of the wisdom-light and wisdom-energies of the buddha as the pure land.
Even if you are not a devotee of the Buddha of Infinite Light, or even a Buddhist, practicing the four causes will generate enormous merit. Your mindstream and all your expressions in words and deeds will become peaceful and joyful, ensuring happy rebirths.
Visualize the entire atmosphere before you now as the Blissful Pure Land: supremely bright and beautiful, prosperous and benevolent, joyful and peaceful, made of wisdom-light and wisdom-energies.
In the center of it, visualize the majestic presence of the fully enlightened Buddha of Infinite Light, like a giant mountain of light. Infinite wisdom-lights are emanating from his body, illuminating infinite universes and pure lands with great peace and joy. He is thinking of you and looking at you and at each being with omniscient wisdom, boundless power, and unconditional compassion, like that of a mother for her only child.
You can pray and meditate on the four causes for yourself, or someone else can do it for you, for your own rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land.
You can do it for another person, whether they are dying or alive.
Or you and others can perform it together for yourselves or for others.
The liturgy described in Tulku Thondup’s book, Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth, is phrased as if you are practicing for yourself and for the sake of all mother-beings.
With great trust, devotion, openness, and joy, concentrate on the buddha and meditate on the four causes. This liturgy has four aspects:
(1) the preliminary practice,
(2) the main practice on the four causes of taking rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land,
(3) the mantra and name-prayers, and
(4) the concluding practice.
If you imagine that a buddha is before you, listening to and blessing your aspiration prayers, the results of your prayers will be even more powerful and effective.
In order to accomplish the prayers of aspiration, it is crucial to rely on a source of power. So it is very important to rely on a deity such as the Buddha of Infinite Light, the Buddha of Compassion, or Guru Padmasambhava.
These sources of power must be someone for whom you have devotion and with whom you are already connected by prayers and meditation.
You must see the source of power as the embodiment of all the Precious Ones. Pray to him or her for the accomplishment of all your aspirations.
Teaching the four causes of taking rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land, Shakyamuni Buddha says:
“O Anand, there are people who
[1] think of the details of the Buddha [of Infinite Light and his pure land] again and again.
[2] They create many immeasurable merits.
[3] They develop the mind of enlightenment.
[4] And they dedicate the merits and make aspirations to take rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land.
When they are about to die, before them the fully enlightened one, the Buddha of Infinite Light—thus gone, pacifier of the foes—will appear with a retinue of numerous ascetics, looking at them. Having seen the Buddha of Infinite Light, they will die with the mind of great clarity. Thereby they will take rebirth in the universe of the Blissful Pure Land.”
Or, as the same sutra teaches, you can also train yourself in the “three causes” (the first, second, and fourth cause, without the development of bodhichitta), and still take rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land.
Think about the qualities of the pure land again and again, make as many merits as you can, and then dedicate the merits and make aspirations, saying, “May I take rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land.”
Explaining the benefits of remembering and repeating the name of the Buddha of Infinite Light, Shakyamuni Buddha says:
“O Shariputra, if any son or daughter of good family, having heard the name of the Buddha of Infinite Life [Infinite Light], keeps his name in his or her mind undisturbed for one night, two nights, three nights, four nights, five nights, six nights, or seven nights—then when that son or daughter of good family dies, he or she will do so without upheaval. The Buddha of Infinite Light, accompanied by an assemblage of disciples and hosts of bodhisattvas, will appear in front of him or her. He or she will take rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land of the blessed one, thus gone, the Buddha of Infinite Light.”
Source: Adapted from Tulku Thondup. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Edited by Harold Talbott. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2005.
Teaching the four causes of taking rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land, Shakyamuni Buddha says:
“O Anand, there are people who
[1] think of the details of the Buddha [of Infinite Light and his pure land] again and again.
[2] They create many immeasurable merits.
[3] They develop the mind of enlightenment.
[4] And they dedicate the merits and make aspirations to take rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land.
When they are about to die, before them the fully enlightened one, the Buddha of Infinite Light—thus gone, pacifier of the foes—will appear with a retinue of numerous ascetics, looking at them. Having seen the Buddha of Infinite Light, they will die with the mind of great clarity. Thereby they will take rebirth in the universe of the Blissful Pure Land.”
(Tulku Thondup, Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth)