What is Pho-wa?
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(Definition) Pho-wa means to transfer one's consciousness from a lower world to a higher world.
Do you know of the word "Pho-wa"? It is a Tibetan word and means transferring consciousness.
Its description appears in the last part of my book "Beyond Life and Death": After the Light Yoga comes the Yoga of Pho-wa.
In Tibet one must therefore master at least the yoga of Pho-wa before one dies, even if one may not be a dedicated practitioner at all. Because although one may have accumulated a variety of karma since birth and this accumulation determines one's next rebirth, the yoga of Pho-wa helps one get away with it.
Of course, using the technique of Pho-wa may not be the proper way of doing it. The proper way would be to climb the ladder of practice step by step from the Bardo Yoga, the Dream Yoga, the Yoga of Illusory Body, the Light Yoga, and reaching the state of being able to use the Yoga of Pho-wa.
At this stage, one can choose the world one likes, transfer one's consciousness and take a rebirth in it.
(October 9, 1988 at Mito Center) According to Theravada scriptures, when one is dying, one is attended by a monk, who performs Pho-wa, trying to lead one to Nirvana. The techniques of Pho-wa can be divided into three categories: one used in Tantra-Vajrayana vehicle, another in Mahayana vehicle, which is of general kind, known as the one to gradually transfer consciousness, and the one in Hinayana vehicle.
Of the three categories, as far as AUM Shinriko is concerned, the technique to form another body and to transfer one's own consciousness into it, such as seen in the "Guru Yoga Maitreya" meditation system, belongs to the Pho-wa of Tantra-Vajrayana vehicle.
The Mahayana's Pho-wa is the technique of transferring one's consciousness from a lower world to a higher world, by iterating memory fixation, first, of sufferings of this human world, and then of pleasures of the world one rank higher than the human world, and so. Descriptions on this Pho-wa of Mahayana vehicle can be seen in Theravada scriptures.
The last category of Pho-wa includes such a technique as follows.
First, let one experience the pains of accumulated karma. And have one completely emancipate from the pains, detach from the physical body, through the two kinds of meditation: the meditation of Three Treasuries and the meditation of Detachment from Attachment.
And, lastly, when one's consciousness starts detaching from one's own physical body, it moves into another dimension, usually into the realm of hungry ghosts.
However, the meditation of Detachment from Attachment helps one move into a higher realm one by one: from that of hungry ghosts to that of man-eating spirits; from that of man-eating spirits to that of the Great Holy Heaven; from that of the Great Holy Heaven to that of the Light and Sound Heaven. This is the Pho-wa of Hinayana vehicle.
(March 27, 1994 at Tokyo Center) |