Chöd (severance, cutting )

One of the Eight Great Chariots of the

Practice Lineage, Chöd is somehow an
independent 'school' - though often
classed together with Shijed - but its
teachings are practiced by adepts of
many other schools at the higher stages
of the Inner Tantras. Because of Chöd's
esotericism on the one hand, and its
specific, dangerously "magical" rituals
on the other, it has often been
conveniently "forgotten" when speaking
of the various Tibetan schools and has
long received little attention in
Western works about Tibetan Buddhism.
The Tibetan gCod translates as cutting,
severing and/or dismemberment, terms to
be understood mainly in a symbolic
and/or psychological sense (as a radical
liberation from one's ego and all that
it usually fears). However, to a Tibetan
- in a culture in which the deceased
were actually left on a charnel ground
and their bodies cut up and fed to
vultures and other carrion animals -
such visions of dismemberment also
represent a "soon to come" reality.
In a typical Chöd ritual, the
practitioner - equipped with a damaru
and a trumpet of human thighbone -
visits a charnel ground visualizing the
"cutting up" and offering of his or her
body, a rather universal shamanic trance
practice during which the adept's body
is disassembled into pieces which, if
all goes well, are later re-assembled
once again by divinities, demons and
similar entities from the beyond.
As a whole, Chöd was inspired by the
teachings of the Indian adept Phadampa
Sangye (c. 1045-1117), and its adherents
regard the Prajnaparamita Sutra as the
school's most important sacred text. A
certain distinction exists between
pho-gCod (male Chöd) and mo-gCod (female
Chöd), indicating two strands of the
lineage.
The school of male Chöd was founded by
sKyo Sa-skya ye-shes (11th century
student of Phadampa Sangye). The other,
female development of Chöd is based in
the teachings of the unique and
fascinating Machig Lapdrön (1055-1145),
the Dakini Guru of this lineage and an
incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyal.