empowerment at kagyu sukha chöling

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 that one usually imagine 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; and (4) the word or mahamudra empowerment distills our practice to focus on the very essence of mind.

The empowerment ceremony sometimes includes sacred objects that symbolize different aspects of the empowerment, and we pass before the Rinpoche and the Lamas to experience the presence of these sacred objects. For example, the bumpa, a vase with a peacock feather, signifies the vase empowerment of the body. Also, there will be other symbols and images that relate the empowerment to our chakras, or energy gateways, at the head, throat and heart centers.

It is best to have taken the Refuge Vow before attending an empowerment. For those who have not done so, the opportunity to take refuge will be offered early in the empowerment ceremony.

The Refuge Vow

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. The Refuge Vow is offered on an annual basis at KSC.