CHOD IN THE PERIOD OF THE LATER SPREAD
by Michelle Janet Sorensen
The Buddhist Chod tradition transmitted by Machik Labdron is consonant with conservative movements in the period, in that it is grounded in orthodox Buddhist teachings, particularly an explicit dependence on the Prajhaparamita corpus. Chod was also heterodox in its organization, with a non-partisan orientation toward the significance of the lived experience of the practitioner. Chod is often connected with the Zhije teachings of the South Asian
teacher, Padampa Sangye, probably due to the fact that some historical materials suggest that Machik Labdron received teachings—although not necessarily Chod—from Padampa Sangye. By the time it became popular to refer to the Eight Great Chariots of the Practice Lineages (sgrub brgyud shing rta chen po brgyad), Zhije and Chod were considered linked.
These “chariots” are the following lineages:
1) Snga ‘gyur Nyingma;
2) Kadam;
3) Kagyu;
5) Sakya;
7) Dus ‘khor or Sbyor drug (Kalacakra); and
Unfortunately, the origins of this classificatory schema are somewhat obscure. The taxonomy is popularly considered to be a means for identifying the various lineages of teachings that were transmitted from India to Tibet; however, this transmission aspect seems to be a somewhat later development. The arrangement is often identified with Jamgon Kongtrul's editing
schema as featured first in the Treasury of Knowledge (Shes bya kun khyab) and also used as an organizing principle for the Treasury of Instructions. In the Treasury of Knowledge, Jamgon Kongtrul credits the Nyingma treasure revealer, Phreng bo gter ston Shes rab ‘od zer (aka. Prajnarasmi, 1517-1584), for the initial classification of schools. Unlike several of these lineages, most notably the schools of Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Kadam, Chod did not retain
its independent status. It is often claimed that Chod is found in all four of the dominant schools-- Kadam (both alone and in relation to Geluk), Sakya, Nyingma and Kagyu. However, there is scant evidence for a “Sakya Chod,” unless one wants to draw parallels between Sakya Ku sa li’i tshogs bsags practice and the Chod offering of the aggregates. Even if one were to do this, it appears that this practice of the Kusali offering probably began with Lce Bstan ‘dzin phrin las, who was born in the 18th century and composed the text, Na ro mkha' spyod ma'i ku sa li'itshogs bsag dang 'brel bar gnyis 'dzin 'khrul ba gcod pa'i man ngag. The Sa skya Ngor chos ‘byung does mention Chod, but its dates are difficult to determine since it was composed between the 16th and early 18th centuries (it was published in 1705).
While forms of Chod praxis have been assimilated into a number of different Tibetan schools, Machik often explicitly characterizes her teachings and herself as outside of contemporaneous institutions and doxological debates. David Jackson (1994, 35-37) cites a discussion between Sgam po pa and the Dge bshes Brgya yon bdag on the inferiority of five other contemporaneous Tibetan Buddhist traditions—Dzogchen, Mtshan nyid, Pha rol tu phyin pa, Sngags pa and Kadam. All these traditions are superseded by Sgam po pa's Mahamudra tradition, which is “outside the standard textually expounded Buddhist doctrines”
(35). Machik employs similar rhetoric when she dismisses a range of traditions in The Great Speech Chapter:
The nihilist has knowledge of the non-existent object; the absolutist has knowledge of the changeless object; the sravaka has knowledge of the perceiver and perceived object; the pratyekabuddha has knowledge of the emptiness of dependent relations; the Mind Only student has knowledge of his mind's own knowledge; the Madhyamaka student has knowledge that is freed from elaborations; the Father Tantra student has knowledge of bliss, clarity and winds; the Mother Tantra student has knowledge of bliss, emptiness, and extensive offerings; students of skillful means and wisdom have knowledge of non¬duality; students of Mahamudra have knowledge of transcending the mind; students of Dzogchen have knowledge of the great primordiality.
However, in this context, Machik does not claim that Mahamudra is superior—as does Gampopa (Sgam po pa)—nor does she claim that Chod supersedes all other Buddhist teachings. Rather, she refers to the Great Mother—Prajnaparamita—as the ground of all, and she posits that “as for all knowledge, it is knowledge of the knowledge of objects. Subjects are without identity (de nyid min). Lacking an object, the mind is without knowledge; one is fettered by knowledge of
whatever is known.” Through the objectification of classes of teachings, the mind is restricted. Rangjung Dorje, who wrote the earliest extant commentary on this text by Machik (which I have translated in an appendix to this study and address further in a later chapter), chooses to interpret Machik's observation from his own doctrinal standpoint. Although Rangjung Dorje agrees with Machik in cautioning against the myopia that can arise from adherence to tenet systems, he augments his gloss of this passage with a reference to Tilopa in order to privilege the Mahamudra perspective. Tilopa maintains that
although vehicles including Mantra, Paramita, Vinaya, Sutra, and Abhidharma have their own textual traditions and tenet systems, they all embody the luminosity of the Mahamudra; however, adherents of the various systems are blinded by their own prejudices and are unable to see the luminous Mahamudra. By reading Machik through Tilopa, Rangjung Dorje incorporates Chod into Mahamudra, a move which acts as a precursor to the institutionalization of Chod into the Kagyu tradition.
In another teaching attributed to Machik, the tenth chapter of The Great Explanation, which takes the form of a lung bstan or prophetic text, the author takes a stronger iconoclastic position. In her replies to questions posed by one of her spiritual daughters, Machik claims that her system simultaneously is consistent with all dharma teachings as well as independent of both Sutra and Tantra teachings and commentaries. She first states that “the meaning of my Dharma system is not especially dissimilar from other [systems], either Sutra or Tantra, that have arisen from the instructions of the buddhas. . . .
There is nothing in the meaning of any such outer or inner Dharma teachings, moreover, that is discordant with me.” Here she emphasizes that her teachings are essentially buddhavacana and thus not to be distinguished from the authoritative teachings of the buddhas. However, as I will discuss further in the next chapter, her strategy for establishing the authority of her teachings requires her to situate herself within the authoritative lineage of the buddhas
and simultaneously to acknowledge her innovative contributions. In the same section of The Great Explanation, Machik notes that her teachings are distinctive because they do not rely on direct quotations from scholarly commentary, but rather reflect the meaning of the dharma without secondary interpolation. This is an example of how Machik legitimates her teachings through a strategy that verges on iconoclasm. In doing so, her discourse uses the dialectical relationship between a historicity and historicity: she acknowledges her reliance on and inheritance of the Buddhist teachings while
foregrounding her unique position to interpret and transmit these teachings according to her particular historical situation. This tactic of negotiating ahistorical and historical components is a powerful factor in the survival of cultural ideologies.
Martin has characterized lay movements of the eleventh and twelfth centuries such as Chod as “an ‘alternative second spread,' in which lay spiritual leadership and potential were provided for.” Martin acknowledges that these movements often did not have a sustained lifespan: “for the most part they eventually either faded away or were absorbed into or directly opposed and defeated by the emerging monastic institutions” (1996a, 24). He further argues that lay religious movements of the eleventh and twelfth centuries must be considered “in the light of different religious points of view about the ideal
sources of authoritative guidance and blessing”: perspectives which emphasize individual personal experience along with proximity to or identity with enlightened beings often do not have the same authority as perspectives which are legitimated through a more formalized lineage of teaching transmissions (1996a, 47). Martin cautions against a common scholarly myopia: “Too often we assume that everyone in Tibetan culture did, or had to, share a single vision on these sorts of issues” (1996a, 47). Yet, given the difficulty of locating or dating source material, it is understandable that this area of study is less developed than that of the scholastic and monastic traditions.
In contrast to Martin, Davidson has a more ambivalent assessment of traditions such as Padampa Sangye's Zhije and their assimilation into the Tibetan environment of the eleventh century. Davidson notes that Padampa Sangye's extant texts demonstrate an originality that bespeaks the influence of “Tibetan social realities and images” on them (2005, 246-9). But Davidson also writes of Zhije as a “curious rubric” which includes a “highly differentiated
ideology and practice” with greater “inconsistency and discontinuity” than he has seen in his study of Tantra traditions. According to Davidson, the “sense of insubstantiality” was not limited to the teachings alone, but “extended to Padampa's Tibetan disciples as well, for the holders of the several Zhiche traditions imitated Padampa himself and tended to wander hither, thither and yon all over Tibet, collecting odd scraps of teachings and practicing in disparate environments” and “were not motivated to construct long-lived centers” (op. cit. 249). The somewhat disparaging language used by Davidson is evidence of the critical attitude that remains prevalent in discussions of iconoclastic yogic traditions of Buddhism, even those that were popular and
important. Conservative scholastic traditions have been more successful at defining orthodoxy and orthopraxy, even among contemporary scholars.
Of course, those positioned—voluntarily or not—outside of traditional lineages had reason to exercise skepticism regarding orthodoxy. Unfortunately, we do not know how explicitly competitive Machik was in such a melee; however, the continued transmission and spread of Chod up to the present day speaks to her success as a charismatic figure. Machik was obviously adept at transmitting and interpreting traditional teachings in a sanctionable yet distinctive
manner. In his discussion of authority and ambition during this period, Kapstein observes that “a distinctive vision that at once established both the personal virtuosity of the author and his (or in rare cases, her) mastery of what was sanctioned by tradition became a fundamental means of self-representation” (2000, 120). Here Kapstein subtly points to the issue of gender exclusivity in lineage construction, and in a footnote to the above statement he explains that he means “her” to refer to Machik as “the best example” of the “rare case” of a female presence (2000, 249 n. 171). Yet, others, including Martin and Davidson, have posited that this environment was relatively hospitable to women practitioners of esoteric traditions.
Davidson observes that, especially in contrast with India, women practitioners were important and “gained greater expressive power” from the eleventh to early twelfth century in Tibetan regions, “especially in Tsang Province where all these women either studied or lived” (2005, 293). Martin elaborates that “[considering their rarity in later times, women religious leaders and lineage holders were relatively much more common in the late 11th through early 13th
centuries. This is particularly true of the early Zhi-byed-pa and Chod schools, but one finds it also in a 13th-century Mahamudra lineage coming from Mitrayogin . . . and in some of the early Lam-‘bras transmissions” (Martin 1996a, 35 n. 29). Erberto Lo Bue suggests that the Nyingma tradition's lack of power allowed it to support women as active participants; he further observes that “[t]he emphasis placed by Tibetan authors on the fact that, thanks to Ma-gcig Labs- sgron, Buddhist teachings were taken for the first and only time from Tibet to India seems to reflect a certain amount of national pride and
a spirit of independence from canonical orthodoxy which are characteristic of the rNying-ma-pa and Bon-po traditions and differentiate themselves from other Buddhist schools in Tibet” (1994, 486). With the increasing dominance of conservative factions and male-dominated monastic institutions, female practitioners—as well as heterodox male practitioners—would become less influential and leave few historical traces. Davidson notes that as the political and cultural identity of Central Tibet developed into “a paragon of Buddhist practice—eclipsing even India,” women tended to be suppressed and silenced rather than supported and empowered.
Although Chod traditions have managed to survive to the present, the heterodox environment in which they originally flourished was gradually replaced by a culture of male- dominated orthodox institutions that have been effective in limiting women's participation. At the same time, it must be appreciated that male commentators and practitioners have been central to the projects of transmission and innovation in Chod traditions through their history. Because Chod has been profoundly transformed from its origins in the teachings of Machik, it is vital to return to a close and critical reading of the sources
available. Much work also remains to be done in understanding how Chod was preserved and transmitted. Traditions such as Chod developed their own identities through an innovative elaboration of philosophical interpretations and ritual methodologies. They also incorporated elements that could be
transmitted through popular culture, including hagiographical narratives, songs, and musical compositions (especially important to the continuing popularity of Chod). The popularity of such elements among monastic and lay communities was directly connected to the success and longevity of the tradition. The transmissions of Chod were disseminated through lay lineages and also were appropriated by monastic lineages: the profusion of its forms contributed to its cultural survival.
