I have been intrigued by the Christian concept of “grace” and wondered if Buddhism has the same or similar concept. 
 
In the Bible the apostle Paul began an ended nearly every one of his letters with the word “grace.” But what is mean by “grace?” Christians define “grace” as unmerited favor. In other words it is some gift of kindness that we don’t deserve. In Christianity this unmerited favor or grace comes from God. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion, so of course we then have a problem with the Christian concept of “grace.” But I was exploring whether in Buddhism we also have “grace” but perhaps it simply comes in a different form. I believe we do. 
I can think of many examples of grace in Buddhism….. 
 
• The Universe is Grace. 
• The Buddha Nature is Grace. 
• We receive grace when doing trantric sadhana practies. 
• We received grace when the Buddha shared his precious teachings with the world. 
 
So, I believe we have many forms of “grace” in Buddhism. For example when we practice “tonglen” the exchanging of self with others, we are practicing a type of meditative invocation for the benefit of others. It involves a seeking of grace of all enlightened beings and our own willingness to be part of the cure for the suffering of the world. 
 
I also believe the transmission by both teaching and mental connection from the Lamas to the students is a form of grace. Especially the mental transmission (such as the pointing out instructions) are pure grace. 
 
When we do trantric sadhana practices we are generating grace ourselves. For example by doing Green Tara practice we generate “grace” through a sense of safety or feeling protected. In other words the sense of safety we feel is a type of grace from Green Tara, but in reality we are creating this ourselves. So as a result of feeling this way we may a little more careful when driving our car, or when climbing a ladder. This is grace. 
 
Similarly Vajrasattva is the bodhisattva of purification. When we do Vajrasattva practice we are receiving the “grace” of purifying body, speech and mind. But where does this purification come from? Tony McMahon in his book “Meeting the Buddhas” says, “It is very important to understand how this purification works. The purificatory practice is not of the same order as the unskillfulness which it purifies – after all if that were the case, since you are heaping up hindrances since beginningless time it would take endless eons to purify them. On the contrary Vajrasattva purification comes about through the realization that in your deepest nature you were never impure. Your true Vajraysattva nature is beyond time and space.”  
 
So, I believe this realization, that we are perfectly pure beings, is itself is a form of Vajrasattva’s grace.  
 
So you see, we have many examples of “grace” – the big difference in Buddhism is that it is not “unmerited” as in Christianity. As Pema Chodron is so fond of pointing out, us westerners often operate from a sense of poverty. We feel we are not deserving of this or that – and I believe this is especially true when it comes to grace. 
 
So the major difference in grace from the Christian perspective is that is unmerited,” however from the Buddhist sense, I believe grace is merited we do deserve it. 
 
So, I believe we do deserve these good things. They are part of our fundamental Buddha nature. It is simply a matter of realizing it. 
 
It is because of our Buddha nature – it is because our fundamental nature is already pure that we deserve all of these different kinds of grace. We deserve the grace from the kind and compassionate Lamas who transmit their precious teachings to us. We deserve the grace we receive by doing tonglen practice. And we deserve the grace we receive when doing tantric sadhana practice. 
 
How do we accept the fact that we do serve it? It is through spiritual practice and awakening to our own innate enlightened Buddha nature.