Q: Rinpoche, can you teach us how to practice Phowa?
A: Well, I cannot teach you because this is a public teaching, but I can definitely tell you how to reach to the Phowa practice. I cannot tell you the Phowa practice itself, but I can tell you what are the requirements to reach to the Phowa practice, and what is the purpose of practicing Phowa.
In order to liberate ourself from the state of bardo, the bardo is the state where we are, before entering to the new form of life and then the old form of life, and then there is a bardo in between. But everything we are experiencing is also bardo. When we are sleeping we can also experience as a bardo. So bardo is not something you wait after your death, because everything that we are experiencing before going to sleep, there are very subtle stages that we can witness, if you are good practitioner. That the similar stages that we can experience it, in the time of death as well. …
So in order to liberate ourself from the state of the bardo, we need to have a sense of clarity. Without a sense of clarity, or recognition to the nature of the mind, the meaning of the Phowa is almost useless by ourself, as an individual.
In order to have a quality of the Phowa, you must have a recognition to the state of the consciousness, and to the nature of the mind itself. With absolutely no attachment whatsoever.
In order to reach to that, you need to practice illusion. When I say illusion, it doesn’t mean magic, it is a Shangpa practice, you need to practice illusion. In order to practice illusion, you need to practice a deity. You need to practice deity, and then you need to untie all the negativities and knots that block the channels of your body. I’m not talking about anything sexual. Many people when they talk about the yoga and yogi, all these things, and everybody has an imagination about so many wild things. So we are not talking about that, it doesn’t have anything to do with teachings either. So you need to do a yoga practice.
And then in order to reach the yoga practice, you need to have a clear clarity in your mind and a calmness quality. In order to reach the calmness quality of that mind, you need to develop with a deity practice. In order to reach the strong impact with the deity practice, you need to do a retreat.
Kalu Rinpoche
FB Livestream – 15 November 2020
To be continued…
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