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Phowa is pretty advanced. It's one of the six yogas of Naropa, which includes the famous tummo technique--a Kundalini-esque practice of "inner heat" with which a lama can dry out sopping wet blankets laid on his body in the middle of a snowstorm (not that that's the point of it, but it's pretty friggin cool).
The basic idea with phowa is that a practitioner who has begun the final dying process forcibly ejects his spirit out through the crown of his head, skips a whole lot of the bardo nastiness that exists between lives, and enters more or less directly into
a) a favorable rebirth as a human or heavenly being
b) a Buddha realm, sometimes called a "Pure Land," where all conditions are favorable towards reaching enlightenment
c) (for the ace, A-list practitioners) complete enlightenment and the end of cyclic existence
The freaky thing about phowa is that when they say, "out through the crown of his head," they mean it. Supposedly, the practice actually causes a hole to appear in the top of the head; lamas teaching phowa test the progress of their students by inserting flower stems into their heads and seeing if they stay. This sounds completely unbelievable, but for what it's worth, my teacher says she attended a phowa retreat and that tons of people there (normal, everyday Buddhists, not just lamas) got the little holes. Can't explain it and don't know what kind of hole: goes away or sticks around, how deep, whatever. Also, my teacher mentioned that once you learn phowa to your guru's satisfaction, you do NOT practice it again, as there's risk you'll actually pull it off and die right there. Pretty nuts. |
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