SCHOLARSHIP ON CHÖD

Scholarship on Chöd in the West has ranged from early sensationalist descriptions that emphasize the “exotic” aspects of Chöd to contemporary interpretations that discuss the praxis of Chöd as a uniform tradition. Western scholarship in general has not been adequately attentive to the historical and cultural contexts of the emergence and development of Chöd. Recently, Chöd has been interpreted through the lenses of Bön and/or “shamanism,” precluding study of the explicit relationship between the teachings of Machik and traditional Buddhist teachings. My study aims to address the Buddhist foundations, transmissions and developments of Chöd that have been largely neglected in Chöd scholarship.

6 For example, Sarah Harding writes, “Chöd is practiced widely in one form or another in all sects of Tibetan Buddhism as well as in the Bon tradition” (Ma gcig lab sgron 2003, 47). Others make similar remarks; see Gyatso 1985, 337; Edou 1996, 53; Kapstein 1996, 279. Rossi-Filibeck, although remarking that “[t]he doctrine of Chöd was received, even if with adequate adaptations, by the other schools of Buddhism,” has a more nuanced perspective which does not substantiate the existence of Chöd in Sakya: “[t]he Chöd teaching (man ngags precepts and ñams len practice) was accepted by the bKa’ brgyud pa, by the Karma pa, a branch of the same school, by the Jo nang pa, by the Śaṅs pa and by some rÑyiṅ ma pa traditions not only, standing by the authority of the source, by the same dGe lugs pa” (1983, 47; 48). Erberto Lo Bue suggests that because there is no transmission of Gcod yul in the Sakya tradition, Gzhon nu dpal gives Ma gcig zha ma—also a student of Padampa Sangyé—less attention than Machik Labdrön in the Deb ther snon po (1994, 482).

Although the 18th and 19th centuries were a time of increased Tibetan interest in Chöd, with texts being recovered, authored and edited, Europeans and North Americans did not begin to write on Chöd until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early sensational representations of Chöd as a morbid Tibetan Buddhist ritual were included in foreign ethnographic travel narratives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; such representations continue to influence the way that Chöd is considered to the present day. Perhaps the earliest reference to Chöd in a Western source is in an 1863 text, Buddhism in Tibet, by Emil Schlaginweit (162-63). Lawrence Austine Waddell also briefly mentions Chöd in his The Buddhism in Tibet, or Lamaism, first published in 1895 (74). A lengthier first-hand description of a Chöd practice is provided by Alexandra David-Neel in her 1929 writing, Mystiques et magiciens du Tibet; however, like the previously mentioned Western authors, David-Neel represents Chöd as a sensational and

macabre “Mystery” performance (1993, 148-166).7 In the early 20th century, English-reading audiences were exposed to the details of one particular form of Chöd practice attributed to the Nyingma scholar, Longchenpa (Klong chen Rab ‘byams pa, 1308-1363). This teaching was recovered by Jigmé Lingpa (‘Jigs med gling pa, 1729/30-1798) and was translated and published in 1935 by Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup.8 Dawa-Samdup was a Sikkimese translator for the British government and a teacher of and translator for David-Neel. This was the first Chöd practice text that was widely available in the English language.9 The first Western author to characterize 7 David-Neel’s volume includes photographs of a body being cut up and of an unidentified Chöd practitioner, reminiscent of Harding’s inclusion of a photo of an unidentified Chöd practitioner (2003) and a more recent image of a Bon practitioner used for the cover of Alejandro Chaoul’s text (2009). The reader of her text is left with a crude impression of Chöd extracted from any meaningful context.

8 Ye shes mkha’ ‘gro ma, by Kun mkhyen ‘Jigs med gling pa, translated by Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup and included Evans-Wentz, 1958 (1935), 276-341. See also Hermann-Pfandt 1990, which contains a discussion of the Chöd Ye shes mkha’‘gro ma practice composed by Kun mkhyen ‘Jigs med gling pa and translated by Lama Kazi Dawa- Samdup in Evans-Wentz.

9 More recent translations of ritual texts and commentaries on Chöd practice include: Phabongkha bde chen snying9 Chöd as a form of “shamanism” was the comparative religion theorist, Mircea Eliade, in his book Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1964). Unlike David-Neel, Eliade had not done ethnographic field study of Chöd; however, his description of Chöd as a shamanic practice has remained popular. Fokke Sierksma, in Tibet's Terrifying Deities: Sex and aggression in religious acculturation (1966), classifies Chöd as “shamanism” and “mysticism.” The influence of these early texts is felt in misinterpretations of practices central to the Chöd tradition. As I mentioned above, one genre of Chöd teachings employs the practitioner’s cherishing of her own body as the most fundamental source of subject/object perception and thus existential attachment. Various Chöd instructions in this genre feature a visualization method of offering one’s body to other sentient beings (lus sbyin). Unfortunately, it is common for secondary sources on Chöd to interpret these methods erroneously. For example, in Geoffrey Samuel’s translation of Giuseppe Tucci’s The Religions of Tibet: “If a fear-inspiring phantom arises, there is no point in avoiding it; one must look it boldly straight in the eye, and indeed look through the meditation on non-existence at both the object causing fear and also the subject experiencing fear, and the fear itself. The meditation is particularly strengthened by the offering of one’s own bo

dy as food or plunder to fear appearing or manifesting itself in demonic form” (1988, 90).

As with much Western commentary on Chöd, this interpretation mistakenly asserts that fear is the essential affliction to be confronted.10 According to the Chöd texts attributed to po, Chod: Cutting Off the Truly Existent “I,” trans. Lama Thupten Zopa Rinpoche (London: Wisdom, 1984); Anila Rinchen Palmo, Cutting Through Ego-Clinging (Montignac: Dzambala, 1987); trans. Sarah Harding; Throma Nagmo: A Practice Cycle for Realization of the Wrathful Black Dakini, A Treasure of Dudjom Lingpa (Junction City, California: Padma, 1990); Jamgön Kongtrül, The Garden of All Joy, trans. Lama Lodo Rinpoche (San Francisco: Kagyu Drodon Kunchab, 1994); Kalu Rinpoche, “Chod,” in Secret Buddhism: Vajrayana Practices, trans. Francois Jacquemart and Christiane Buchet (San Francisco: Clear Point, 1995), 141-164; and Patrul Rinpoche, The Words of My Perfect Teacher (which has a discussion of “Kusali Chöd”), trans. Padmakara Translation Group (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994).

Machik, the practitioner confronts the obstructions, obscurations, and suffering produced by one’s own mind. Many texts also make the error of equating the obstacles to be confronted, usually called “Düd” (bdud) in Chöd texts, with “demons.” In the texts included in my study, I have translated “bdud” as “Negative Force” in order to remind the reader of Machik’s fundamental position that these forces are products of the practitioner’s own discriminative thinking. Although the practice of visualizing the offering of one’s body to illusory beings has become an oft-cited characteristic of Chöd (to the point of being identified with it in some cases), it is often overlooked that many versions of this offering feature a variety of recipients to whom one is beholden in positive or in negative relationships, from the three jewels to one’s karmic creditors. In chapters four and five, I provide an analysis of these practices that aims to correct such misinterpretations.

Western scholars’ interest in Chöd was revived in the late twentieth century. Janet Gyatso published an important study in 1985, “The Development of the gCod Tradition,” which describes various source texts and contributes a preliminary historicization of Chöd. Several other Western scholars have also recently provided access to important Chöd texts. For example, Giacomella Orofino has been engaged in the study of Chöd since the mid-eighties and has published several Italian translations of Chöd texts, including Contributo allo studio dell’insegnamento di Ma gcig lab sgron (1987) and Ma gcig: Canti Spirituali (1995), as well as an abridged English-language translation of The Great Speech Chapter (Bka’ tshoms chen mo) in “The Great Wisdom Mother and the Chöd Tradition” (2000). Michael Azzato wrote an extensive MA thesis on Buddhist Chöd in 1981, including a translation of a biography of Machik (Ma cig gi rnam thar mdzad pa lnga pa by Gshongs chen Ri khrod pa), as well as a translation of 10 More recently, there has been an interest in theorizing the psychology of Chöd with an emphasis on the role of fear by authors such as Michael R. Sheehy (2005), who has written on the “contemplative dynamics” of Chöd, Tsultrim Allione (2008), and in the teachings of Pema Chodron.

The Great Speech Chapter. Carol D. Savvas’ 1990 dissertation contains translations of several Chöd texts from the Geluk lineage. Elena de Rossi-Filibeck (1983) also considers Chöd in a Geluk context in her study of the Second Dalai Lama’s account of the transmission lineage. In Der Schmuck der Befreiung’: Die Geschichte der Zhi byed-und Gcod-Schule des tibetischen Buddhismus, Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz provides a German translation of the Tibetan language Zhijé and Chöd History (Zhi byed dang gcod chos byung) by the 19th century Nyingma scholar Dharmasengé; she supplements this translation with an annotated bibliography of Tibetan sources on both Zhijé and Chöd lineages.

While this scholarship has enriched the study of Chöd by making more primary sources available in western langages, many of these works revisit the same territory. There is still a vast quantity of indigenous materials available on Buddhist Chöd that has not been critically translated. Many of the works that have been made available in European languages have not been either adequately studied or critically examined. An example of the latter is the first complete English language translation of what is considered a central collection of teachings attributed to Machik, the Phung po gzan skyur gyi rnam bshad gcod kyi don gsal byed, commonly referred to as the Rnam bshad chen mo, or The Great Explanation, by Sarah Harding, entitled Machik’s Complete Explanation: Clarifying the Meaning of Chöd: A Complete Explanation of Casting Out the Body as Food by (2003). Unfortunately, Harding’s presentation is not complemented by sufficient historical contextualization nor by critical examination of the philosophical and practical content and the literary genres that are represented in the ten chapters.11

11 For my review of this edition, see Sorensen 2006.

A weakness endemic to the majority of Chöd studies, both Tibetan and Western, is what might be considered hermeneutic anachronism: there is scant attention paid to the temporality of sources and their relation to one another in time and cultural context. A related weakness is the uncritical reliance on 19th-century texts such as Dharmasengé’s Zhijé and Chöd History and Jamgön Kongtrül’s volumes for the historical, cultural and philosophical accounting of 12th- century events and developments. Not only has the reliance on these texts perpetuated errors in the identification of key figures and timelines of important events and teachings, but the biases of these projects—leading to generalizations about figures, transmissions, and teachings—have not been critically considered.12

To counter this tendency to hermeneutic anachronism, my work aims to provide a muchneeded historicization of the Chöd tradition. The majority of texts discussing the praxis of Tibetan Buddhist Chöd, as well as Bön Chöd, have generalized over the problem of the transmission and evolution of Chöd in the Tibetan cultural sphere.13 Chöd is presently taught to groups of various sizes in Tibet, India, Europe, and the Americas. It is often the case that teachers are transmitting a teaching—usually based in a practice text—as they have received it; rarely have teachers or students engaged in the critical and comparative study of the variations of Chöd. In my experience, teachers and practitioners alike often resort to ahistorical

generalizations of Chöd and its transmission histories, thus neglecting issues of the sources of the 12 On a related note, Gene Smith suggests that Jamgön Kongtrül utilized the gzhan stong doctrine as “the mortar that held his eclectic structure together” (2001b, 237). In his discussion of the place of the Shes bya mdzod in the context of nonsectarian thought, Smith observes: “As the relationship between Mkhen brtse and Kong sprul matured, their conception of the implications of the nonsectarian movement for the various traditions of Tibetan religious life changed. They stretched the bounds of eclectic thinking, integrating both structured bodies of doctrine and fragile lineages of oral transmission. Their innovation called into question the extent to which the synthetic effort may efface the very traditions it seeks to preserve” (2001b, 237). 13 This is also the case with discussions of Bon Chöd, which are becoming more prevalent, but demonstrate problems of ahistoricity in their analyses, even though particular texts are used as authoritative sources. See, for example, Jones 1998 and Chaoul 2009.

discrete transmissions, their location in time, their development and the ways in which they reflect textual sources.14

Examples of this ahistoricism may be drawn from two recently published texts. The first is a 2006 publication of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche’s teachings on Chöd in the Ganden (dga’ ldan) tradition of the Gelukpa school. This text does distinguish the particular Chöd lineage that it follows, as well as its origination with Je Tsongkhapa (Rje Tsong kha pa Blo bzang Grags pa); however, other than a biography of Kyabje Zong Rinpoche, it provides little historical discussion of the tradition. David Molk, the editor of Zong Rinpoche’s text, writes that “[f]rom Khedrup Chöje (also known as Khedrub Chenpo Zhönu Drub), Je Tsongkhapa received the Chöd lineages that can be traced back through Machig Labdrön and Padampa Sangyé to Buddha Shakyamuni. Je Tsongkhapa also received teachings on Chöd directly from Manjushri. This visionary lineage is known as the Ganden Oral Lineage of Chöd. A ‘Dakini’ oral lineage is also practiced in Gelug. Je Tsongkhapa passed the Chöd [sic] to only one of his disciples, Togden Jampel Gyatso, who was the principal holder of his Tantric Mahamudra lineage as well” (2006, 28). This discussion of “the Chöd” suggests that the Ganden tradition is the preeminent, or even singular, transmission of Chöd.15 Unfortunately, such obscuration of Chöd’s history is common to many such practice texts.

14 These are often organized teachings that are fee-based and may or may not require any evidence of a student’s previous familiarity with Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism or Vajrayāna philosophy. I am not denying that Chöd also continues to be transmitted in much more intimate and delimited scenarios, such as within families, but from my field research, it appears to be the case that the atemporal and alocalization of even these type of transmissions is still a common situation. Of course, given the practice-oriented nature of many of these transmissions, it may be argued that such information would be more obfuscatory than enlightening.

15 Jeffrey Cupchik (2009) has recently completed a study of Ganden (Gelukpa) Chöd practices from a primarily ethnomusicological standpoint, positing that there is a correspondence between songs (mgur) and practice texts (sgrub thabs; sādhana), and between the musical performances and text-based visualizations. Based on his readings of formal ritual texts (and not the actual songs of Machik or other Chöd practitioners), Cupchik argues that earlier impressions of such songs as spontaneous are undermined by this connection with practice texts. An early ethnomusicological study of Chöd was published by Ringjing Dorjé and Ter Ellingson (1979).

A similar problem occurs in a Chöd practice text by the fourteenth Karmapa, Thegchok Dorjé (1798/9-1868/9), with a commentary by Jamgön Kongtrül, considered to belong to the Kagyü lineage (particularly the Karma Kagyü), and translated by Lama Lodö Rinpoche. This text contains an oral biography of Machik Labdrön by Lodö Rinpoche that appears to be an abbreviated version of the biographies contained in The Great Explanation. Lodö Rinpoche remarks that “[t]he especially well-known, profound practice of Chöd was brought from India to Tibet by the great mahasiddha Dampa Sangye. This teaching flourished through the great wisdom dakini Machik Labkyi Drönma by the depth of her realization and compassion. Specifically, the Chöd teachings and practice were transmitted in Tibet by Machik Labdrön, who thus played a very important role in the Chöd lineage” (2007, 11).16 Lodö Rinpoche’s biography of Machik is included in the same volume as translations of a Chöd practice text (grub thabs, sādhana) for the offering of one’s body (lus sbyin) and a commentary on this practice text, both of which are from 19th century Karma Kagyü scholars. Unfortunately, Lodö Rinpoche does not explain why these texts are qualified as “Mahāmudrā” (rather than, for example,

Prajñāpāramitā). Given that the text does not provide a teaching lineage originating with either Padampa Sangyé or Machik in narrative (although one can use the supplied tables to piece together an unbroken lineage), the characterization of Machik’s teaching as specifically “Mahāmudrā” appears to be somewhat partisan.17 Lodö Rinpoche later repeats the ubiquitous claim that “(w)hile the teachings of the Buddha had been faithfully carried from India to Tibet and elsewhere, never before had any tradition been transmitted from Tibet to India. Machik’s Chöd of Mahamudra transmission was the first time in history that a valid source of Dharma 16 The issue of whether or not Padampa taught Machik directly, and whether or not he taught her Chöd, will be discussed further in later chapters.

17 Lodö Rinpoche himself transmits both the Karmapa and Shangpa Kagyü lineages, according to the Kagyu Droden Kunchab website: www.kdk.org.

went from Tibet to India. Thus, such a great being, Machik Labdrön, was the first lineage holder, and this unbroken lineage continues until the present guru” (2007, 13). As I discuss later in this study, the identification of Chöd with Mahāmudrā does not originate with Machik herself, but is a historical development of the transmission of her teachings.

Several aspects of Lodö Rinpoche’s biographical sketch raise questions and issues that I will be considering throughout my study. First, as in several other biographies of Machik, Lodö Rinpoche reports that Machik’s system of Chöd was paradoxically both originally transmitted by Padampa Sangyé from India and initially transmitted by Machik to India. Concomitant with this apparent contradiction is the paradox that Machik inherited the Chöd teachings from someone— according to various sources this may have been Padampa Sangyé—and that she is the initial lineage holder and genetrix of these teachings. In chapter two on the transmission lineages of Chöd, I address these problems. Assumptions that the system of Chöd that is attributed to

Machik was always characterized as “Mahāmudrā” is a problem I grapple with at the end of this study. This association with Mahāmudrā also invokes the parallel Sūtra and Tantra aspects of Chöd, which I explore in chapter three. Lodö Rinpoche’s text illustrates the prevailing tendency to neglect or gloss over the many distinctions in Chöd transmission lineages, in Chöd teachings, and in Chöd practices, by students and scholars alike. This disregard has not only resulted in undervaluing the role of Machik in the origination of Chöd, but also rendered Chöd’s theoretical, practical and cultural development obscure.

Another problematic development in the recent study of Chöd has been the prevailing insistence on the indigenous Tibetan roots of Chöd and the neglect of its fundamental Buddhist grounds. In her PhD thesis, Lucy A. Jones (1998) puts her study of a Bön Chöd practice text in dialogue with the theory of Georges Bataille and emphasizes the intersections of transgression

and compassion in these two systems. Alejandro Chaoul’s work complements the study of Bön Chöd by Jones; however, his efforts to historicize Bön Chöd as antecedent to Buddhist Chöd is undermined by his dependence on Buddhist Chöd materials for his discussion. In his 1989 article, “Offering the Body: The Practice of Gcod in Tibetan Buddhism,” David Stott makes brief mention of the Indic underpinnings of the Chöd tradition, and he provides a cursory analysis of Jamgon Kongtrul’s Gcod yul rgya mtsho’i snying po stan thog gcig tu nyams su len pa’i tshul according to an oral teaching he received. Stott follows Eliade in suggesting parallels between Chöd and shamanism. As these works by Stott, Jones, and Chaoul indicate, many recent studies

of Chöd associate it with “shamanism.” This tendency is the result of identifying Chöd with its outer ritual practices rather than systemically investigating the lineages of the tradition. Those who have made such connections also generally fail to clearly articulate what they mean by “shamanism.” Early writers drew connections between Chöd and shamanism based on the drumming and movements of some Chöd practices, while contemporary writers refer to recent classificatory systems, such as those proposed by Mumford18 and by Samuel,19 to equate Chöd with shamanism. Chaoul, influenced by such theoretical suppositions, has recently gone so far as to suggest the equation of “shamanism” with “Tantra.” Charles Van Tuyl, in his article on Milarepa and Chöd, not only suggests connections between Chöd and shamanism, but also considers it to be possibly prehistoric. According to Van Tuyl, “The ch’ö ritual is of great importance to the history of religions, in part due to the antiquity of the rite. Since a form of the ch’ö ritual is practised not only in Tibet and North Asia, but also among the Eskimos and some 18 Mumford (1989), influenced by Bakhtin, characterizes the interaction between Buddhist “Lamaism” and Gurung “Shamanism” in Nepal as a “dialogue” with three layers of “temporal identity”: “the ancient matrix”; “the individual life sequence”; and “historical becoming.”

19 Samuel (1993) employs the classificatory dyad of “clerics” and “shamans” to characterize the development of Tibetan Buddhism as a synthesis of the two types of praxis.

of the Indian tribes of North America, this rite appears to date back to the times of the peopling of the Americas by migrations across the Bering Straits, perhaps as early as 25,000 BC. This ritual thus constitutes one of the oldest human possessions and might be accurately described as a living fossil” (1979, 34). There are two important problems in identifying Chöd with shamanism. The first is that if we take a general description of what might be called “shamanic,” it is difficult to see how the adjective applies to Chöd. For example, Chöd contains no communication with supramundane beings, no return from the dead, and no supramundane travel to other realms. The second and more important problem with yoking Chöd to shamanism is that it obscures the Buddhist core of the tradition. Often when this connection is made, it seems that the purpose is to suggest that there is something “non Buddhist,” or “non Indic,” or “indigenously Tibetan” about Chöd. But rather than illuminating the tradition, the term

“shamanic” suggests elements by association that are not present, such as possession. Part of the purpose of my present study is to counter this unfortunate tendency in the study of Chöd by providing an account of the tradition on its own historical and philosophical terms. In addition to the limitations of current scholarship on Chöd, there has been little sustained critical study of the philosophy, praxis and contributions of Machik to the maledominated Prajñāpāramitā commentarial tradition. The reception and canonization of Machik is symptomatic of the production and reproduction of woman through and in Buddhist Tantric traditions. As I explain further in chapter three, Machik is frequently deified as an embodiment of Prajñāpāramitā and thus becomes a static personification of wisdom. In complementary representations of Machik, she stands in for the enlightenment of all women, but as a symbol illustrating the positive valorization of women in Tantra as uneducated helpmates who provide assistance as nurturers and sexual partners, thus eliding female sovereignty and emphasizing the

path to male enlightenment. In order to interrogate these conventional gender constructs, it is crucial to seriously consider Machik’s philosophy and praxis rather than simply emphasizing her lived experience as represented in hagiographies.20

Machik was renowned as a “reader” of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras, texts that articulate the central Mahāyāna Buddhist teaching of emptiness (stong nyid, śūnyatā). Recognizing the ways in which Machik’s Chöd praxis builds on the tradition of the Prajñāpāramitā contests the image of Machik as an uneducated woman. As I have noted, such a reading also counters the typical way in which Chöd is represented in Western studies: as an unduly exotic ritual that advocates the “renunciation” of the body. I would suggest that such representations perpetuate cognitive formulations of the West—particularly a “self” that possesses a mind and a body—as part of a received rational tradition that undervalues the body, embodiment and women's experience. Such rationalism, one might argue, dovetails with hegemonic commentarial

traditions established by men throughout the histories of Buddhism. In Buddhist traditions, the idea of embodiment has often been used to perpetuate regimes of ascetic misogyny grounded in preoccupations with women as objects of desire.21 Subverting such constructs, Chöd refigures the centrality of embodiment in an existential reorientation toward the impermanence of being human—of being subject to death. Chöd meditation techniques assist in cultivating compassion as a complementary experiential process, as a “cognitive responsiveness,” to the teachings of

emptiness and of the Prajñāpāramitā. In Chöd, process is enlightening: cultivating liberative 20 Studies that focus on the biography of Machik include: Elisabeth Benard, “Ma gcig Labs sgron, a Tibetan Saint,” Chö Yang 3 (1990); Massimo Facchini, “The Spiritual Heritage of Ma gcig Lab sgron,” Journal of the Tibet Society 3 (1983): 21-26; Migyur Dorjée Madrang, “A Discussion on Great Women in Tibetan History,” trans. Sonam Tsering, Tibet Journal 2 (1997): 69-90; K. Kollmar-Paulenz, “Ma gcig lab sgron ma: The Life of a Tibetan Woman Mystic Between Adaption and Rebellion,” Tibet Journal 23.2 (1998): 11-32, and “Die biographie der Ma gcig lab sgron ma—Quellenanalytische Vorarbeiten,” XXIV Deutscher Orientalistentag vom 26 bis 30 September 1988 in Koln, ed. Werner Diem (Stuttgart: Abdoldjavad Falaturi, 1990), 372-380; and Adelheid Hermann-Pfandt, “On a Previous Birth Story of Ma gcig Lab sgron ma,” Tibet Journal 25.3 (2000): 19-31. 21 See, for example, Liz Wilson (1996).

techniques (thabs; upāya) with the complements of wisdom (shes rab; prajña) and compassion (snying rje; karuṇā) as generated by the impulse to enlightenment (byang chub sems; bodhicitta).

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