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| (Here I am receiving Ngawog at Sha Gogona) |
At the end of any religious ritual be it for
the living or death, the head of the family or organizer usually receive Ngawog
from a Lam or Rinpoche. The Ngawog for the living is called Sen-ngawog (གསོན་བསྔོ)
and for the death Shin-ngawog (གཤིན་བསྔོ).
Ngawog is performed to arrest or block the movement of good omen, well beings and the auspiciousness of the rituals performed from moving out of the house. It ensures that all benefits of performing rituals remains within the house or go to the person to whom it is dedicated to.
There is certain process to follow and the timing will be
intimated by the Choepon
(མཆོད་དཔོད).
When receiving Ngawog, you
should first prostrate three times to the Lama, after that the Chepon will come
to get scarf (khadar) from you and offer it to lam along with Ngoten (བསྔོ་རྟེན), offering
of dedication and the Drelsham (གྲལ་བཤམས), offering
of dedication prayer to the assembly,
which could be either items or money. There is certain sequence in offering
Ngoten and Drelsham. If the Ngawog is for the death person, the Chepon will
place the Ngoten below the Lam’s Chotri (Table) and if it is for the living the
same will be placed on the Lam’s Chotri. The assembly of monks will know for
whom the Ngawog is dedicated by observing the placement of Ngoten. Drelsham is placed on the floor aligned to the
last row sitting monk. Anyway this sequence will be handled by the Choepon and
you need not to worry about it.
Before the Ngoten is placed on the Lama’s Chothri, make another 3 prostrations and sit on a bent legs with folded hand till Lam complete the Ngawog recitation. After that stand up and again make three prostrations to the lama and proceed to receive Khadar from Lam. After that return to the same place and make three prostration to the kilkhor(དཀྱིལ་འཁོར). This completes the procedure to receive the Ngawog and by then you would have made 12 prostrations.
At the end of the ritual if Ngawog is dedicated for
the death person by the family, the 100% benefit of the rituals goes to the deceased
person.
So Ngawog has very deep meaning. Next time when you
are asked to receive Ngawog, think of this meaning and receive properly.
