Phowa

Phowa (Tibetan: འཕོ་བ་; Wylie: 'pho ba; also spelled Powa or Poa phonetically; Sanskrit: saṃkrānti) is a Vajrayāna Buddhist meditation practice. It may be described as "the practice of conscious dying", "transference of consciousness at the time of death", "mindstream transference", or “enlightenment without meditation” (Wylie: ma-sgom sangs-rgyas).

The method can be applied at the moment of death to, according to Vajrayāna Buddhist belief, transfer one's consciousness through the top of the head directly into a Buddha-field of one’s choice. By so doing, one bypasses some of the typical experiences that are said to occur after death. Example destinations are Sukhāvatī, Abhirati, Ghanavyūha, Aṭakāvatī, Mount Potala, the Copper-Colored Mountain (Wylie: Zangs-mdog dpal-ri), and Tuṣita; the most popular in Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan Buddhism is Sukhavati.Phowa is also performed by specialists (Wylie: ’pho-’debs bla-ma) on the behalf of the deceased, as a post-mortem ritual.

The mark of a successful phowa practice is a small drop of blood directly from the center of the vertex. To demonstrate a successful practice traditionally a Kusha-grass was pushed into the small opening created in the fontanel.

The main lineage of phowa is one of the Six yogas of Naropa, although other transmissions also exist. The chöd subsumes within its auspices aspects of phowa sadhana.

The Kagyu phowa lineage is from the Six yogas of Naropa. Nāropa received it from the Indian mahāsiddha Tilopa and later passed it to his Tibetan disciple Marpa.

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