The Essential Journey of Life and Death

Buddha Shakyamuni taught the Dharma in order to wake up all sentient beings and dispel the hindrances that have bothered us for such a long time. These negativities will not just go away or be cleared up by anything except teachings on love, compassion, and wisdom. Why can't the Buddha just wash away our difficulties? We create the dense stains of our own negative emotions-therefore, only we can remove them. The Buddha has shown us skillful techniques and methods that will completely uproot the cause of our troubles, but we ourselves must apply these methods with joyful effort for them to work. The practices of Dream Yoga and Phowa are designed to release and liberate duality conceptions into wisdom awareness. When we're not hindered by duality, we see that everything is a dream because everything is constantly changing. Almost half our lives is spent sleeping, but with Dream Yoga we can use this time to truly benefit ourselves and others by redirecting and transforming our neutral dreams into positive, virtuous states of Dharma practice. Similarly, the practice of Phowa is so profound, direct, and swift that if we apply this technique at the time of death, we can achieve buddhahood, even if we haven't had the time or ability to meditate very much during our lifetime. Without any other meditation, this practice leads directly to realization. 86 Photos and Illustrations; Glossary; Includes entire practice text of "Longchen Nyingtik Phowa: Buddhahood Without Meditation" by arranged by Patrul Rinpoche