Phowa Retreat
with Lama Palden

July 29 - August 1
10 AM - 5 PM Daily

In person only at Wisdom River Meditation Center

Learn the Phowa meditation to transform death into an opportunity for spiritual realization.

Phowa is one of the six yogas or six doctrines. There are three systems of the six yogas: Naropa, Niguma and Sukhasiddhi. Lama Palden received them all from Kalu Rinpoche, who was a master of all of them.

The rare and unusual Phowa that Lama Palden will teach in the retreat comes down to us from the enlightened woman, Sukhasiddhi. She was a fully enlightened Kashmiri woman of the 11th century. It is a Mahamudra Phowa. From a Mahamudra point of view, there is nowhere to go and nothing changes when you die. But from a relative point of view, we die and our mind experiences different things. In Tibet, the Phowa practice is considered the friend of a yogini, or yogi, because it allows one to go to a pure realm after death, even if one is not fully realized. Through the practice, when you leave your body you go to an awakened realm where you can ripen spiritually much more quickly.

The key to Phowa is concentration, proper motivation, intention, and pure devotion. The proper motivation creates strong intention, and this intention creates strong devotion to truth, to reality as it is— the realization of the nature of mind and reality. The devotion needed for Phowa practice includes profound devotion to Sukhasiddhi, gratitude to the lineage beings for realizing and preserving the lineage so it can come to us, and profound appreciation for the transmission the blessings and teachings.