Phowa: Transference of Consciousness at Death

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 21 October 2026

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Phowa (Tibetan ‘pho ba, “transference”; also spelled powa) is a Vajrayāna practice for the moment of death: directing consciousness toward liberation or, in the texts described here, usually toward rebirth in Amitābha’s pure land, Sukhāvatī. A trained practitioner may do it for themselves, or a qualified lama may do it for someone who is dying or has just died. Kagyu and Nyingma lineages teach it, the Gelug received it with Nāropa’s six yogas, and in each it is handed on from teacher to student.

This page describes phowa and where the schools differ; it does not teach the technique. Phowa is spiritual care offered alongside medical and hospice care, never in place of it. For the practical side of being with someone at the end, see caring for the dying.

What phowa is, and what the texts say it is for

The Longchen Nyingtik translation project defines phowa as “the transference or ejection of consciousness at the moment of death”, a practice “which may be performed for oneself or on behalf of another.” It belongs to the tantric side of Tibetan Buddhism, the Vajrayāna, and like most tantra it is passed on within a lineage.

Phowa is not one technique. The seventeenth-century master Karma Chakme, in a commentary on the Namchö treasure cycle, lists six kinds: dharmakāya, sambhogakāya and nirmāṇakāya transference, ordinary transference, forceful transference, and transference into another body. The highest form, he writes, belongs to those who have mastered Mahāmudrā or the Great Perfection, and it is “free from the concepts of something to be transferred or one who transfers” (trans. Samye Translations and Adam Pearcey).

What is it for? Karma Chakme quotes Padmasambhava saying the instruction was revealed “for the sake of lazy yogis”: people who received profound teachings but never found time to train, or who have not yet gained confidence in them. For them, he says, it is a way of attaining buddhahood at death “without the need for further training.” The Longchen Nyingtik version, revealed by Jigme Lingpa, carries a title in the same spirit: Transference: Enlightenment Without Meditation. The organisation of the Drikung Kagyu lama Ayang Rinpoche reports him calling phowa “like an insurance policy”: someone who has realised Mahāmudrā has no problem at death, but for someone whose practice is incomplete it is very useful.

Where phowa comes from: lineage and history

The schools tell different stories about where phowa comes from, and they are best kept apart.

The Kagyu account: Tilopa, Nāropa and Marpa

The Drikung Kagyu order’s own account traces transference to the Indian master Tilopa, who received four special transmissions. The first, from Nāgārjuna, included the Guhyasamāja tantra and a second tantra the order calls Denshi, and it “also incorporates” the practices of illusory body and transference. Tilopa passed these to Nāropa, and they were “systematized as the Six Yogas of Naropa.” Nāropa gave them to Marpa the Translator, the teacher of Milarepa. The order’s site itself notes “some discrepancy in historical sources” about which masters stand behind each transmission. Even Nāropa’s dates differ: drikung.org gives 1016–1100, while a University of Virginia Library exhibit gives c. 956–1040.

A scholarly exhibit’s account

That exhibit, curated in 1997–98 by Bryan J. Cuevas, then a doctoral candidate in religious studies at the University of Virginia, describes Tilopa gathering yoga practices “from the spiritual masters of several individual lineages of Tantric teaching.” His Esoteric Instructions on the Six Yogas of Naropa is preserved in the Tengyur. Of the six yogas, inner heat, clear light, illusory body, dream, the intermediate state and transference, only three bear directly on dying: clear light, the intermediate state and transference. The exhibit also notes two other branches. The Gelug school adopted the six yogas, and Tsongkhapa’s A Book of Three Inspirations gives transference a detailed presentation. The Shangpa Kagyu keep a parallel set, the Six Doctrines of Niguma, “essentially the same as those of Naropa, differing only in points of emphasis.” (For how these schools relate, see the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism.)

Nyingma treasure lineages

Nāropa is not the only source. In the Nyingma school, phowa also arrives as terma, revealed treasure. The Longchen Nyingtik phowa was revealed by Jigme Lingpa (1730–1798). Its lineage prayer, which Lotsawa House attributes to Patrul Rinpoche, does not pass through Nāropa at all. It begins with “the dharmakāya Amitābha”, then Vajrasattva and Garab Dorje, and runs through Padmasambhava and Yeshe Tsogyal to Longchenpa and Jigme Lingpa, and on to nineteenth-century masters including Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and Mipham (trans. Han Kop). Karma Chakme’s Namchö phowa has its own origin story. By Karma Chakme’s account, the thirteen-year-old Mingyur Dorje received it in 1657 in a vision of Amitābha.

The practice also reaches beyond these two schools. Lotsawa House credits the Sakya master Dezhung Tulku Ajam (1885–1952) with a short, untitled prayer of transference, signed Kunga Gyaltsen and preserved in Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö’s collected writings. Karma Chakme himself said there were “many traditions” of transference across both the old and new schools.

Phowa and Sukhāvatī

In most of these texts the destination is Sukhāvatī, the pure land of Amitābha. Karma Chakme’s commentary is titled for “the Land of Great Bliss”, and the Longchen Nyingtik project notes that some masters say it is good to have received its Amitābha empowerment.

That does not make phowa part of a Tibetan “Pure Land school”. The historian Georgios Halkias, in Luminous Bliss, his history of Tibetan Pure Land literature, states that nothing in his material suggests “a sectarian, self-conscious movement of Pure Land Buddhism in Tibet”. His reviewer Charles Jones adds that the aspiration to rebirth in Sukhāvatī “was widespread throughout the history of Tibetan Buddhism”, and then asks whether “Pure Land” is a category scholars have carried over from East Asia. The safe description is a Tibetan aspiration to Sukhāvatī, not a Tibetan Pure Land Buddhism.

Phowa at a death: the rite for the deceased

Ayang Rinpoche’s Amitabha Foundation states that “Tibetans consider it extremely important to perform Phowa for the dying and recently deceased.”

Jigme Lingpa’s short guide, Transferring the Consciousness of the Deceased, is meant to be spoken aloud to the dead person. It begins with their name and tells them plainly that they have died. It reminds them that nothing they are attached to, family, home or possessions, can go with them. It urges them to trust Amitābha and go to his buddhafield. It calls transference the instruction “applied at the juncture between one lifetime and the next” (trans. Gyurme Avertin, Adam Pearcey and Han Kop). It notes that those “completely unfamiliar with spiritual practice” are hard to guide through its more elaborate stages, and in any case relies on the names of the buddhas and on the mantras, dhāraṇīs and special aspirations of the buddhas. A tantra it quotes near its close, one of the Great Perfection tantras, also speaks of a dying person who is still breathing, so the texts are not uniform on timing; the rule below is Karma Chakme’s. Karma Chakme sets out when the rite may happen. The transference for another person begins only when it is certain they have died. If the officiant arrives while the person is still breathing, he is not to attempt the transference; part of what the text has him do instead is spend a long time “simply reciting the names of the buddhas and prayers of aspiration.” On how long the window lasts, he gives two views. It is “well known”, he says, that consciousness stays in the body up to three nights and a day; citing the Book of Kadam, he allows up to the seventh day.

Dezhung Tulku Ajam’s prayer is a supporting aspiration, to be used “regardless of whether or not someone can be found to perform the actual transference for the deceased.”

Phowa is not the reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which guides the dead through the intermediate states over the following weeks, though Karma Chakme does quote the same root verse on the bardo of dying. For what families do through the forty-nine days, see Buddhist funerals.

Karma Chakme’s warning: never before the time of death

Karma Chakme’s commentary is emphatic that the practice must never hasten death. He calls “forceful transference” wrong. Performing transference before the actual time of death is wrong, he writes, “even in the case of punishment by the state, chronic illness or severe pain.” Done at the wrong time, it is “of no benefit” and “will actually lead to the lower realms.” The reason he gives is that the body is held to house deities, so a premature transference counts as killing them. He supports this with a tantra:

He also cites “an authentic scripture” on transference: “As long as you are alive, practise Dharma.” And he quotes Padmasambhava: even when every sign of death is present, the rites for averting death must come first, and transferring without them incurs “the transgression of killing the deities and the transgression of suicide.” In Karma Chakme’s terms, a human life is the time for practice, and phowa has no place until the lifespan, in his phrase, “has definitively run its course.”

A contemporary teacher makes a related point about deaths brought about by others. Writing in Tricycle in 2002 about the euthanasia of pets, Trish Deitch Rohrer reported the Seventh Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s view that euthanasia is inappropriate if a powa ceremony is performed: “Powa is meant to help people die a natural death.” That is one teacher’s view, and the same article reports another teacher who acted differently.

If you are reading this in pain, or with thoughts of not wanting to go on, please don’t stay alone with them. Contact a doctor, a palliative-care team or a crisis line in your country today.

Who may receive it, and from whom

The texts themselves are restricted. The Longchen Nyingtik project prefaces its phowa translations with a reminder that “according to Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition there are restrictions and commitments concerning tantra”, and it asks readers who are unsure whether to read them to consult their lineage. Beyond that, lineages and teachers differ:

• Longchen Nyingtik (Nyingma). The practice “needs to be done in conjunction with” the guru-yoga section of the preliminary practices, the ngöndro. Some masters also advise the Amitābha empowerment. Patrul Rinpoche’s The Words of My Perfect Teacher gives transference a part of its own, Part Three, “The Swift Path of Transference.” On who may perform it for others, the project reports that the teachings reserve it for someone who has reached the “path of seeing”, an advanced stage of the path. It then quotes Patrul Rinpoche qualifying that: anyone who knows the right moment and has “a little experience of the instructions” can do it for the dead.
• Ayang Rinpoche’s foundation (Drikung Kagyu). It notes that phowa, as one of the six yogas of Nāropa, “is rarely taught before the practitioner has completed the foundation practices (Ngondro)”, which it presents as Ayang Rinpoche’s own concern when the Karmapa asked him to teach phowa in the West. Attempted without “an initiation from a lineage holder”, it says, the practitioner “will be faced with dangers.” It also says some signs of accomplishment are “physical and visible”; because they belong to the practice itself, this page does not describe them.
• One teacher’s exception. Tricycle reported that although phowa is “traditionally considered an advanced teaching” for those who have completed ngöndro, Ayang Rinpoche offered it to anyone who wished to die a better death and to help others through the dying process. His foundation adds that “the Phowa itself requires commitment.”

In each of these accounts the practice is received from a lama who holds the lineage, not from a book. That matches the wider rule for Tibetan tantric practice described in visualization meditation.

Where communities have gathered for phowa

The Drikung Kagyu order has its own great public phowa, the Phowa Chenmo, the “Great Drikung Phowa”, a festival traditionally held every twelve years. The order’s site records that certain gold thangkas at Yangrigar were brought out “only every twelve years during the Drikung Phowa Chenmo”. It also records that the present Drikung Kyabgön Chetsang gave his first public teaching, aged eleven, at the 1956 ceremonies. Matthew Kapstein’s study of the festival at Terdrom, as summarised by Cathy Cantwell in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics, describes it being revived in 1992 “for the first time since 1956”. The Phowa transmission at its close drew “large numbers of local lay people and visitors”: “a quiet attentive audience, some of whom softly wept.” Cantwell also notes an awareness that the lamas presiding in 1992 could not fully replace the two Drikung hierarchs, both then in India. These sources do not say whether the festival has been held since.

Outside Tibet, phowa was taught for decades by Ayang Rinpoche, whom Tricycle described as “widely considered to be the foremost phowa master of his generation.” He was a Drikung Kagyu lama who held both Drikung and Nyingma phowa lineages. For many years he led an annual ten-day phowa retreat, open to anyone, in a tent in Bodh Gaya. He died in Bylakuppe, India, on 4 December 2024, aged 83.

How phowa differs from Pure Land practice at death

East Asian Pure Land also looks to Amitābha at death, but the nembutsu is not phowa, and Pure Land does not speak with one voice. Writing on Japanese Pure Land in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Dennis Hirota describes many of Hōnen’s followers adopting an older view, rooted in the Contemplation Sutra, that “gave decisive weight to the nembutsu uttered at the moment of death.” Shinran and Shōkū, by contrast, held that a person’s “attainment of birth in the Pure Land is completely settled in the immediate present”, though the birth itself still comes at death. Phowa differs from both. It is a tantric practice received from a teacher and applied at the point of death, or by a qualified lama after it. (This comparison covers Japan only; Chinese Pure Land deathbed practice is a subject of its own.)

For the wider landscape of practice, see Buddhist meditation. Its sibling pages are lojong, the Tibetan mind training, and the bodhisattva vows. On death itself, see Buddhism and death, what happens after death in Buddhism, and the teaching of rebirth. If you have come here after a death, Buddhism and grief is written for that.