Empowerment Series

Practices › Empowerment

English (6) | བོད་ཡིག (6)


Padmasambhava Bestows Empowerment

Courtesy of Himalayan Art Resources

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Various writings on the subject of empowerment or initiation (abhiṣeka; dbang bskur), including rites for conferment (dbang chog):

Prayers

Jigme Lingpa wrote this prayer for a student who was accumulating prayers before the famous Jowo Rinpoche statue in the Jokhang temple in Lhasa. It is not only a prayer to Śākyamuni Buddha, but also a means to receive the four empowerments: vase, secret, wisdom-knowledge, and the supreme empowerment of great rays of light.

Rites

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche wrote this self-initiation (bdag 'jug) for the Vidyādhara Assembly (Rigdzin Düpa) when he presided over a group practice (tshogs sgrub) in Bhutan and the need for such a text became clear. The practice of self-initiation, he says, "restores the power of the four empowerments, heals impairments and breakages of enlightened body, speech and mind, and offers a training in maturing through self-entry to the maṇḍala."

Jamgön Kongtrul compiled this empowerment text for Yumka Dechen Gyalmo on the basis of the original treasure revelation, Blessing and Empowerment for the Female Practice. The result is "clear yet concise," as Kongtrul himself put it, and less elaborate than the later arrangement by Dodrupchen Jigme Tenpe Nyima (1865–1926).

This source text of the Yumka Dechen Gyalmo empowerment, part of the original treasure revelation of Longchen Nyingtik, served as the basis for later, more elaborate manuals composed by Jamgön Kongtrul and the Third Dodrupchen, Jigme Tenpe Nyima.

This self-initiation (bdag 'jug) for the practice of Yumka Dechen Gyalmo was composed by Jigme Lingpa himself. Receiving empowerments in this way, he explains, is a means of purifying impairments and breakages of samaya and receiving inspiration and blessings, and should therefore be practised regularly and repeatedly.

This root empowerment text, revealed as a mind treasure by Jigme Lingpa for the Vidyādhara Assembly (Rigdzin Düpa), contains the inner enabling empowerments (nang nus pa 'jug pa'i dbang).

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