Choeje Ayang Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama widely considered to be the foremost phowa master of his generation, died on December 4, 2024, in Bylakuppe, India, a Tibetan settlement in the Mysore region of Karnataka state. He was 83 years old. 

Phowa, or “transfer of consciousness,” is a powerful method of preparing with confidence for one’s own death and that of others. It helps the practitioner overcome their fear of dying and attain enlightenment or a better rebirth at the moment of death or in the afterdeath state known as the bardo. A Drikung Kagyu, Ayang Rinpoche was a lineage holder of both Drikung phowa and Nyingma phowa. 

“There is one phowa master declared in every generation, and he was the master for his generation,” notes Rande Brown, a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst who was one of Ayang Rinpoche’s chief disciples for fifteen years. “He gave phowa transmission to lineage holders in all four (Tibetan) Buddhist traditions.” However, his annual ten-day phowa retreat, held in a tent in Bodhgaya, India, was open to anyone, Buddhist or not; in attendance were Tibetan monastics and Tibetan laypeople from far and wide, some having traveled for days by foot, as well as Westerners. Although traditionally considered an advanced teaching for students who have at least completed ngondro (preliminary practices), Ayang Rinpoche offered phowa to all who wished to die a better death and help others through the dying process. 

“Everybody has to die, and at that moment [we wonder] where to go, what to do, what to think,” he pointed out in a 1997 documentary posted on YouTube. “For these reasons, phowa, particularly at the death moment, is very important. Those people who receive these teachings have no reason to fear death. They already know, at the death moment, what to do, where to go. It is already arranged.” Further, phowa is “one of the great methods, a direct way, for achieving enlightenment,” he explained. “Many people are praying to attain the Pure Buddha Land [realization]. But what is the method? That is the phowa practice.”

Choeje Ayang Rinpoche—Choeje an honorific meaning “Lord of the Dharma”—was born in 1942 to a nomadic family in Kham, in eastern Tibet. There were auspicious signs at his birth: His mother had a dream in which a Buddha-like figure held a golden vajra that merged into the crown of her head, and a second dream in which a bright light appeared in the night and dissolved into her body, filling the earth and sky with red light.

Ayang Rinpoche was recognized as a tulku (reincarnated master) when he was very young. A delegation of senior lamas that included the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, and Yongdzin Jabra Rinpoche identified him as the wisdom emanation and seventh incarnation of the terton (treasure revealer) Rigzin Chogyal Dorje, founder of the Ayang Monastery in Kham. Though Ayang Rinpoche was a Dripung Kagyu, he considered the 16th Karmapa, a Karma Kagyu, his root teacher, and he received many teachings and initiations in the Nyingma and other Tibetan Buddhist traditions. 

Ayang Rinpoche received his early training at Drikung Thil Changchu, the main Drikung Kagyu monastery, in central Tibet. From 1951 to 1955, he studied at Drikung Nyima Changra Philosophical College, receiving Nyingthig (Dzogchen) teachings and initiations, as well as his first phowa teachings, in the Nyingma tradition. He later received Drikung phowa instruction from Chungsang Rinpoche and Kyabgon Chetsang Rinpoche, the 36th and 37th heads of the Drikung lineage. He received teachings on Mahamudra and the Six Yogas of Naropa at his home monastery, Ayang Monastery, a branch of Drikung Thil Changchu. 

After ordination in 1955, Ayang Rinpoche went on a pilgrimage to the sacred sites associated with Guru Rinpoche, or Padmasambhava, the legendary master said to have brought Buddhism to Tibet. After doing a retreat in Phulung in southern Tibet, where Padmasambhava had practiced phowa, Ayang Rinpoche performed an offering puja. It was attended by many Nagas, an ethnic people descended from tribes in China, Tibet, and Burma (Myanmar), and he later said he took their presence as a sign that he would one day teach phowa in foreign lands. 

In 1959, Ayang Rinpoche was among the first Drikung lamas to leave Tibet after the Chinese takeover. He spent the next five years in Bylakuppe, where exiles from the different Tibetan Buddhist schools built monasteries. Ayang Rinpoche lived at a Nyingma monastery, Namdrol Ling, until he started a Drikung monastery, Thupten Shedrub Jangchub Ling Monastic Institute, in Bylakuppe. “At the time I had only one hundred rupees in my pocket,” he later said. While clearly not enough to build a monastery, he forged on with determination. “I thought [that] through positive thought—pure motivation—if we do this activity, something will happen.” Ayang Rinpoche’s pure motivation paid off, as he was able to collect enough donations from the Tibetan community to build Thupten Shedrub Jangchub Ling. “The Tibetans were very poor but still donated,” he said. “We started from that seed.”

The foundation of the building was stone and mud. “No cement. We thought very soon Tibet would be an independent country, and we would be going back,” he explained. Today, a new temple is being built at Thupten Shedrub Jangchub Ling, and construction is also under way at a monastery Ayang Rinpoche established two hundred fifty miles north of Bylakuppe, in Mundgod, India. 

Ayang Rinpoche also founded a large center, Opak Kyilkhor Choling (Amitabha Mandala Temple and Retreat Center), overlooking the Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The mountaintop temple is surrounded by fifteen smaller temples and sixty-four retreat cottages that are open to lay visitors as well as Buddhist practitioners. And even after his passing, construction continues on the Amitabha Meditation Center in Bodhgaya, with recent renovations including the replacing of a tent where for many years Ayang Rinpoche’s annual phowa retreat was held.

“Every Tibetan is expected to get phowa transmission once before they die,” Rande Brown points out. With his phowa teachings well established in Asia, Ayang Rinpoche was asked by the Dalai Lama and the 16th Karmapa to teach phowa in the West so that even “inexperienced practitioners” could benefit from the practice. Buddhadharma is new to Westerners, the Karmapa told him, but “phowa’s effect of quickly producing physical signs in the practitioner’s body would help give the materialistic European or American student confidence in the dharma,” a biography from the Amitabha Foundation US states. When Ayang Rinpoche checked his teaching methods with the Dalai Lama, His Holiness told him to continue, assuring him that the results of phowa would be positive not only at the time of death but also in this lifetime. From the 1980s on, Ayang Rinpoche taught in Europe, Australia, and North America, as well as in Asia. 

Ayang Rinpoche established the Amitabha Foundation in 1986 as a worldwide network for the preservation of Tibetan culture. The foundation supports a number of cultural and humanitarian projects in Tibet, India, and Nepal, including the Ayang Gompa Clinic and Safe Childbirth Education Project in Rima, Tibet. And there are now Amitabha practice centers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and America. 

According to a biography on Ayang Rinpoche’s website, “The core of Rinpoche’s vision is compassionate activity (bodhicitta) undertaken from pure motivation and supported by strong practice. These three themes—compassionate activity, pure motivation, and strong practice—are woven through all of Rinpoche’s talks, activities, and directions.” 

“He was incredibly charismatic without being showy,” recalls Rande Brown. “He was very serious—he could be incredibly stern—but he was very compassionate, warm, and welcoming.” And yet it was his mastery of the teachings that truly set him apart. “His devotion to dharma was absolute,” says Brown. “He really devoted his life wholeheartedly.”