Offering the Body: The Tibetan Practice of Chöd

Offering the Body: The Tibetan Practice of Chöd

The eagle does its day job feasting on what’s left by crow and vulture. Anything I’d planned to do is over.

As my head nods its usual consent to imaginary promises and dreams my corpse appears before me.

Time’s come to set my mind to ribbon flesh, chop small, pile it in a dish made from the cranial bones.

I scout the stinking ground for anything to start the fire, use my own desire. The skull cup, on its tripod, enlarges as it heats. Half-moon on a finger pokes from the pile of blood and bones simmering to stew, to nectar.

All who are wise, the ordinary, furred, obstructors, germs of sickness— may their bodies, minds, be sated.

From every distance and dimension, beings afraid, unsatisfied, or blessed, feast to satisfaction— devils, angels, animals, everyone I owe.

I see no stopping to the world but there is respite from the demons that arise daily in the head.

That this ritual could do the same thing twice —my awareness cuts that thought. O, I cherished this poor body. I quake. Invite.

Now, knife the ritual words in vast space reduced to dust mounded like clouds clinging dearly held to let in silence.

For all that is perceived, flesh or consciousness, appears then disappears, image in a mirror— red drop, a fingernail, a ball of hair.

Tampa Review 51 (2016)

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