For something to happen, we need the right conditions. What do I mean by conditions?
To attend college, I need the right conditions: study, good grades, and money to pay the tuition. To advance in my career, I need the right conditions: hard work that places me above the average, a supervisor who values my efforts, and an ability to get along well with my fellow employees. To be reborn in the Pure Land, I need the right conditions: faith, vows, and practice.
How do we create the right conditions?
We work hard planting the right seeds.
We figure out what is the cause that will bring about the wished for condition. And then we do the hard work of planting those causes, just like we work hard at planting and then nurturing seeds if we wish to have a garden. Sure we can watch the birds dropping seeds and see seeds being blown onto our barren plot of ground, but just watching this happen won't make a garden.
We need to carefully choose and then attentively and diligently tend our seeds. We need to make sure they are safe from adverse conditions like not enough water or too much sunlight or the onslaught of hungry insects. We don't wait around for someone else to wander along and do all the planting, watering, and weeding for us because if someone else does all the work, it will become their garden. Wonderful for them, but it will leave us still without a garden.
The law of cause and effect assures us that if we plant the cause, we will have the result. There is no doubt about this. Be assured that it will happen. Exactly when, I do not know. But I do know that without planting the cause, we will not have the conditions we wish for. Also, the more causes we plant, the better our chances for quickly getting the wished-for conditions.