In the book, Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth by Tulku Thondup, the full title of this section is “The Meditation and Prayers of Phowa: Transference of Consciousness to the Blissful Pure Land”.
Phowa is a contemplative meditation with devotional prayers that transfers the consciousness of the deceased and unites it with the enlightened mind of the Buddha of Infinite Light. Through such meditation, a person may take rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land.
It is very powerful and beneficial to practice phowa at any time, and especially to perform it for a person who is in the passage of dying or in the bardo.
At the time of death, when your consciousness departs from your body, you will become unconscious. When you regain your consciousness, you will be out of your body and wandering in the bardo, solely in accordance with your mental habits, without knowing where you will end up.
At that time, if you could meditate on phowa, it might lead you to the Blissful Pure Land, there to take joyful rebirth with little or no need to wander in the bardo.
You should therefore train in phowa when you are alive and healthy, so that your mind will be prepared while you are conscious and you will be ready when the actual time of transferring consciousness comes.
Then, closer to death, you should focus more on the practice of phowa, either by yourself or by others practicing it for you.
When your consciousness departs from your body, directing it to the familiar pure land will be ideal.
If you are dying, this training will not shorten your life, for the merits of meditation and the blessings of the buddha only lengthen your life and strengthen your peace and joy.
Most important, this training will always help you to build your trust in the buddha and the buddha pure land and to prepare for a better death and rebirth, which can come to young or old, at any time.
If you are performing phowa for yourself, with the force of devotional energy to the Buddha of Infinite Light, shoot your mind into the heart of the buddha and merge together as one.
Instantly, trusting that your mind and the wisdom-mind of the buddha have become one, totally relax in the state of awareness with no thoughts.
Depending on your own meditative experience, that awareness could be (1) the enlightened nature of the mind of Dzogchen, (2) the union of great bliss and emptiness of tantra, or (3) the freedom from concepts of the Madhyamaka path.
The awakening of such realization could help you to attain buddhahood or take rebirth in the pure land.
Phowa performed by others for a person who is still alive is very beneficial for their establishing a real connection with the pure land.
It could also be performed even weeks after a person’s death, for the consciousness might very well be floating about directionless and without a body, and could be redirected to the pure land.
At least it would create merits for the deceased even if they have taken rebirth.
According to some texts, if a helper is performing phowa for a dying person, there is one thing that the performer should be especially mindful about.
If the dying person is young and hoping to survive, wait to perform phowa until their pulse has stopped. Many think that phowa is only for the dying or dead, so it might scare them or they might resent it.
If the dying person is old and seriously ill, and if they are open to such a ceremony, then you could perform it even if the pulse has not yet stopped; they are usually open to and appreciative of such rites.
However, you should practice phowa at any time as a training and if the person is open to it, because it is good to perform it for anyone, including the young and healthy.
To perform phowa effectively for others, both Atisha and Milarepa agree that the performer must have attained the “path of insight” (Skt. darshanamarga), which is the realisation of the ultimate truth, the third of the “five paths” — (1) accumulation of merits, (2) joining, (3) realisation, (4) meditation, and (5) beyond training, which is buddhahood. Such attainment might be out of the question for most of us.
Generally, however, meditators are thought to be qualified to perform it if they (1) have devotion to the Buddha of Infinite Light, (2) have compassion for the dying person, and (3) are well trained in this meditation in advance.
Source: Based on Thondup, Tulku. Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth: A Tibetan Buddhist Guidebook. Edited by Harold Talbott. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2005.
Note:
The following extract gives a little further background to phowa, the transference of consciousness.
The Painful Bardo of Dying
It is perfectly possible, from one day to the next, to discover that we are suffering from a fatal illness. When all the ceremonies and prayers for long life have proved ineffective, and the approach of death is certain, it will finally dawn on us that nothing we have done in our lives has been of any use. We must leave it all behind. Even if we have a stack of wealth as high as Mount Meru, we cannot take it with us. We cannot take so much as a needle and thread! It is time for us to go; even this body that we love so much will have to be abandoned. What can we take with us? Only our positive and negative karma. The actions that we have stored up will be our only companions.
However, suppose we have put the instructions into practice and trained in the transference of consciousness. If we have gained proficiency in this, and if we can die without a trace of regret, we will certainly have done ourselves a very great favor. A person who says, “I shall go to such and such a buddhafield,” and does in fact do so, is a perfect practitioner.
Let’s face it: we practice the Dharma because we need it at the moment of our death. This is why the teachings stress the importance of understanding what happens when we die.
It is said that even for an ordinary person, the moment of death is crucial. It is a moment when we should pray to the Lama and the Three Jewels.
We should cut through the strings that bind us to our possessions—our house and everything else. For this is what pulls us into samsara.
We should also make offerings of our wealth to the Three Jewels, praying that we will not have to go through a painful and difficult death and suffer in the lower realms afterward.
If we have successfully trained in the transference of consciousness, and if we are able to apply this technique when the moment of death arrives and thus transfer our consciousness successfully—this is surely the best situation of all.
But if we can’t do this, the transference of consciousness can be done for us by a lama or one of our vajra brothers or sisters who happens to be with us and knows how to do it. The consciousness should be transferred to the buddhafield as soon as respiration stops.
In any case, it is important to plan for this and get ourselves up to scratch, so that when the crucial moment comes, there is no need to be afraid. Needless to say, the preparation has to be done now, during the bardo of the present life.
Source: Dudjom Rinpoche. Counsels from My Heart. Translated by the Padmakara Translation Group. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 2001.
Phowa is a contemplative meditation with devotional prayers that transfers the consciousness of the deceased and unites it with the enlightened mind of the Buddha of Infinite Light. Through such meditation, a person may take rebirth in the Blissful Pure Land.
It is very powerful and beneficial to practice phowa at any time, and especially to perform it for a person who is in the passage of dying or in the bardo.
At the time of death, when your consciousness departs from your body, you will become unconscious. When you regain your consciousness, you will be out of your body and wandering in the bardo, solely in accordance with your mental habits, without knowing where you will end up.
At that time, if you could meditate on phowa, it might lead you to the Blissful Pure Land, there to take joyful rebirth with little or no need to wander in the bardo.
You should therefore train in phowa when you are alive and healthy, so that your mind will be prepared while you are conscious and you will be ready when the actual time of transferring consciousness comes.
(Tulku Thondup, Peaceful Death, Joyful Rebirth)