An Offering of Chöd –

An Offering of Chöd

Machig Labdron. Machik’s Complete Explanation:

Clarifying the Meaning of Chod:

A Complete Explanation of Casting Out the Body as Food.

Ithaca: Snow Lion, 2003. 365 pp., ISBN 978-1-55939-182-5.

Reviewed by Michelle Sorensen

(Center for Buddhist Studies, Columbia University Department of Religion)

Published on H-Buddhism (September, 2006)

Machik Labdron (Ma gcig Lab kyi sgron ma,
ca. 1055-1153 C.E.) is revered by Tibetan Buddhists
as an exemplary female philosopher-adept, a yogini,
a dakini, and even as an embodiment of Prajnaparamita, the Great Mother Perfection of Wisdom.
Machik is primarily known for her role in developing
and disseminating the “Chod yul” teachings, one of
the “Eight Chariots of the Practice Lineage” in Tibetan
Buddhism.[1]

Western interest in Chod began with sensational
representations of the practice as a macabre Tibetan
Buddhist ritual in ethnographic travel narratives of
the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.[2]

Such myopic representations have been ameliorated
through later translations of Machik’s biography and
various ritual manuals, particularly those describing
the \banquet o erings.”[3] Since Western translators
have privileged the genres of biographical and ritual
texts, the richness of indigenous materials on Chod
(both in terms of quantity and quality) has been obscured.[
4] This problem has been redressed by Sarah
Harding’s translation of Machik’s Complete Explanation
[Phung po gzan skyur gyi rnam bshad gcod kyi
don gsal byed], one of the most comprehensive written
texts extant within the Chod tradition. Given the
prominence of Machik and Chod in the history and
praxis of Tibetan Buddhism, Harding’s translation is
a valuable contribution to the study of this gure and
her teachings.

Harding, a faculty member at Naropa University,
was asked by her teacher Khyabje Kalu Rinpoche to
do a translation of the Complete Explanation. She
became familiar with the text during a three-year retreat
in the late 1970s when she studied this text
and had a daily Chod practice based on texts by
Karma Chagmed and Jamgon Kongtrul. Although
Harding suggests that questions of provenance (of the tradition and of the text under consideration)
are outside the scope of her project, it would have
been interesting if she had discussed how this text
was actually used by retreatants, herself included,
within the context of the Kagyu lineage. It is frequently
observed that Chod, although not continuing
as a lineage unto itself, became incorporated into the
Bon tradition and the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Geluk
schools of Tibetan Buddhism, but individual variations
in the interpretations and practices of Chod remain
to be charted and discussed.

The Complete Explanation consists of ten chapters,
composed in a wide range of genres. The first
two chapters are in the rnam thar (“liberation biography”)
genre. The colophon of the Tibetan text ascribes
the liberation story to the fourteenth-century figure Namkha Gyaltsen (Nam-mkha’ rGyal-mtshan),
who has been recognized as eighth in the Gangs-pa
Chod lineage originating with Machik. These two
chapters have been translated into English numerous
times, including popular interpretations by Tsultrim
Allione and by Jerome Edou.[5] Although Harding
does not intend to provide a comparative study of the
various biographies of Machik, the majority of which
are still awaiting translation, her recontextualization
of the rnam thar within a work of indigenous Chod
commentarial literature provides readers with a more
nuanced understanding of Machik and her system,
and contributes to a growing discussion on Tibetan
Buddhist liberation stories.[6]

The following eight chapters illustrate core elements
of Chod philosophy and praxis according to
the traditions of Machik. Each of these chapters
takes the form of a dialogue between Machik and a
principal student or students. The third chapter includes
Machik’s discussion of the periodic degeneration
of the Buddhist Dharma, as well as a description of a visualization of Machik and her retinue.

Here Machik also outlines characteristics of the “specialness
of Chod”: Chod contains the essence of sutra and tantra combined, it liberates the four bdud (negative
forces), and it cuts the root of ego-fixation.

The fourth chapter discusses bdud and lha-dre
(divine-demonic forces). The motif and significance
of bdud in Chod have been discussed by many writers,
and Chod is often reductively represented as exclusively
concerned with bdud. Etymologically, “bdud”
is a Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit word “m?-
ra,” and refers to the source of death, including spiritual
death. In Indic and Buddhist traditions, m?ra
has been personi ed into a demon (or demons) which
causes obstructions to spiritual practice. As Harding’s
translation makes clear, in Chod the four m?-
ra are manifestations of the individual’s own mental
a ictions, thus di ering from conventional presentations
in Buddhist texts. Although Harding acknowledges
the complexity of Machik’s systems of bdud, she
opts primarily to translate bdud as \devil” (p. 38),
thus obfuscating the individual’s mental production
of the bdud. Although Machik does entertain the “reality”
of demons and deities, her primary emphasis is
on the role of the mind in producing and elaborating
such manifestations as a source of ego-clinging and
suffering.

The fifth chapter, which Harding says “is unquestionably
the core of the book” (p. 16), provides a detailed
description of Chod praxis.[7] Although Harding
does not point this out, Chod is presented here in
the form of preliminary activities (sngon ‘gro) that
traditionally form the foundation for Tibetan Buddhist
practice in various lineages. With little variation
from other traditions, the text describes taking
refuge, cultivation of bodhicitta, training of the mind
in the Four Immeasurables, o erings for the accumulation
of merit, and the act of dedication. Because
Chod stresses the equality of all beings, as well as
the development of compassion towards those who
are conventionally discriminated against, traditional
teachings on topics such as \the Four Immeasurables”
have a special poignancy and depth in the context
of Chod. Chod di ers from other traditions in its
emphasis on the ultimate perfection of generosityin
particular, the giving of one’s own body to a variety
of sentient beings without discriminationand it
echoes Mah?y?na teachings such as the meditations
on the equalizing and exchange of self and others.