Brief Daily Phowa Practice
By Tulku Karzang
With translation assistance from Eric Forgeng
October 28, 2002
This teaching refers to parts of the text, Buddhahood Without Meditation: The Swift Path of Phowa, the Transference of Consciousness by Terton Longsal Nyingpo. The teaching took place as a question and answer session. What follows has been heavily edited. Photocopies of the brief practice described here are available at Kathok Centre.
Here is a practice that you can do at home, I’ll show you a very, very easy one. It can become your daily practice, and then you can save lots of work.
First do Refuge on page 2, then do the Four Immeasurables on pages 2 and 3. Then on page 5, recite the homage and name of Buddha Amitabha 7 times or 3 times with your pure, 100% faith, that is very important.
Then you just start doing the actual practice for Phowa on page 7. If you have more time you can include repeating the names of all the past Buddhas and Bodhisattvas on pages 3-6, which will give you lots of benefit. You can always make the practice shorter or longer. That’s for you to choose – if you know how, I mean. Otherwise, if you cut this part (head), then it’s (shrugs)… You can cut this part (foot), this one (hand), but not this one (head), not this one, this part.
So on page 7 you start with HRI DAG NYID AH THAY … and include all the visualizations for Phowa in this part. The visualizations are very important. This section continues to page 8, down to NANG WA THAYE THUG DANG NYI SU MED. You repeat this whole section 3 times, and then repeat the last line (NANG WA THAYE…) 2 more times.
After that, do "Phoy, Phoy, Phoy" (written Phet, Phet, Phet). Don’t do these without visualization. (Indecipherable) may be Phowa. We mean, if you do these without visualization, then it’s something like at night time, when it’s very dark, you are just shooting an arrow, but where it’s gone, you don’t know. Nowhere.
Then skip over to page 33.
From, "The body Amitabha…" just read through that section: CHI WO ÖD PAG MED PA’I KU, ÖD DU ZHU NAY RANG LA THIM, KYEN DE KED CHIG DRAN DZOG SU, RANG YANG TSEPAGME DU GYUR. Then there is the long mantra for Buddha Amitayus (OM NAMO BHAGAWATE…). If that is a little bit difficult, you can do the short mantra on the next page: OM GURU AHYOUR SIDDHI HUMG HRI AH MA RA NI DZI WAN TI YE SO HA. Do it at least 7 times.
If you have no problem doing both, that’s nice – then you get lots of long, long, long life.
Then move directly to the Dedication. I’ll show you a very good short one that includes everything. From the Dedication of Merit on page 34, GANG DU KYE PA’I KYE WA THAM SHAD DU…, continue through page 35 on to the second line on page 36, THAM CHED JAM CHIG SANGYE THOB PAR SHOG.
That’s good. That’s everything.