[From a Question & Answer period by Lama Tashi Topgyal while in Battle Creek, MI in 2013. Translated by Lama Yeshe Gyamtso. Edited by Matt Willis.]
It’s much easier to be reborn in Sukhavati than in any other pure realm. This is because of Buddha Amitabha’s special aspiration that it be so.
The fundamental cause of rebirth in Sukhavati is to have unchanging and irreversible faith in the Buddha Amitabha. The particular causes that are needed are four. They’re called the four causes for rebirth in Sukhavati. The first is to keep that realm in mind, to have a mental image of the realm. The second is to generate bodhichitta. The third is to gather the accumulation of merit, as much as possible. And the fourth is to dedicate all virtue to awakening and to rebirth in Sukhavati. It’s said that if you pray to the Buddha Amitabha — without doubt — that you will be reborn there. And [if] you accumulate these four causes of rebirth, your rebirth in Sukhavati is a certainty. This has been taught by many masters, most notably by Karma Chagme who himself at the end of his life passed immediately to Sukhavati along, it is said, with his cattle. What is recommend for those who seek rebirth in Sukhavati is to assiduously accumulate the four causes of such rebirth and to recite the long aspiration to rebirth in Sukhavati by Karma Chagme everyday without fail.
[…]
People think that if they take rebirth in Sukhavati they are somehow abandoning the bodhisattva vow to continue to take rebirth in benefiting beings. That is absolutely, utterly, one-hundred percent hogwash. If you’re reborn again as a human being, you’re not going to become a first-level bodhisattva in ten minutes — you’re not. But if you take rebirth in Sukhavati, the moment you’re born there, you become a first-level bodhisattva. The moment you become a first-level bodhisattva, you start dispatching a hundred million emanations, moment after moment, each of which will benefit beings. Do you think that you could do that much good by being reborn as a human being yourself? If you want to help others, the best way you can do it is by being reborn in Sukhavati.
