Directing Consciousness at the Moment of Death

Phowa, the transference of consciousness, is counted among the Six Yogas of Naropa and is the Vajrayana practice specifically concerned with directing consciousness at the moment of death toward a favourable destination, classically the pure realm of Amitabha, Sukhavati, rather than allowing it to wander through the intermediate bardo state toward an uncontrolled rebirth.

The practice exists in two related forms within the tradition: a completion stage yoga trained over years by serious practitioners as part of a broader meditative curriculum, and a rite that can also be performed by a qualified lama on behalf of someone who has just died or is dying, extending the practice's benefit to those who have not themselves trained in it directly, a distinction that gives phowa an unusually direct pastoral as well as personal contemplative application within Tibetan Buddhist communities. Success in phowa training is traditionally said to be marked by specific physical signs at the crown of the head, and lineages maintain structured ways of testing whether a practitioner has genuinely accomplished the practice, a verification process that itself belongs to the transmitted tradition rather than to open description.