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11
On the Tibetan plateau, in the Himalayas and in Mongolia, the chöd (gcod) or
“cutting” teaching is practiced. Chöd is performed primarily by lay yogins and yoginīs,
but also by monastics. The chödpas (practitioners of chöd) are known to disregard
conventional behavior, and in Tibet they often look like beggars. In contemporary
Mongolia, chöd (Mong. luijin) recitation can give practitioners substantial income and
has become somewhat of a fashion in the spiritual community.1 The chöd practitioners
perform rituals for the dying and the dead, since one of their ritual specialties is
“the transference [of consciousness]” (’pho ba) performed to guide the deceased’s
consciousness to a better rebirth. The chödpas meditate at haunted sites, as well as at
charnel grounds where corpses are dismembered. The practitioners are believed to be
able to heal illnesses and turn back epidemics and to be immune from diseases.
Chöd was codified and made popular in Tibet in the eleventh century by a woman,
Machig Labdron (Ma cig lab sgron), and to this day women in the Tibetan Buddhist
tradition are active in the tradition, emulating her example. One of them was Ani
Lochen (A ne Lo chen 1865–1951), a yoginī and later an ordained nun, who promoted
this meditation practice throughout the Himalayas and Tibet.2
higher tantric practices of the Anuttarayogatantras, and Sorensen (2010) argues that
chöd borrowed several elements from Buddhist tantric practice and can be fully
explained within the context of Mahāyāna Buddhism.5 While some scholars emphasize
similarities between chöd and shamanistic techniques—for example the use of
a drum, ritual music, and dance, the communication with spirits and demons, the
dismemberment of the body, the transference of consciousness, and healing6—others
warn against the tendency to confuse meditation techniques in Buddhism and Bon
with New Age healing and shamanism.7
Transmissions of chöd
The origin of chöd is connected with two eleventh-century adepts, the South Indian
yogin Padampa Sangye, who stayed a number of years in Tibet, and Machig Labdron
from E in southeastern Central Tibet.11 Hagiographies of Machig Labdron emphasize
different transmission lineages of chöd, some stating that Padampa Sangye transmitted
the teaching to Machig Labdron—others that Machig received chöd directly from a
transhuman sphere, from Tārā or Yeshe Tsogyal (Ye shes mtsho rgyal). Machig Labdron
is also believed to be an emanation of the latter.12 Chöd is divided into the Father
Lineage (pha brgyud), the Mother Lineage (ma brgyud), and the Son’s Lineage (sras
brgyud), and Machig Labdron is said to be the transmitter of the Mother Lineage. In
spite of the different origins of chöd traced in the sources, Machig Labdron is credited
with its codification and as the one who made the practice popular in Tibet. In her
hagiographies, Padampa Sangye figures as one of her teachers.
The drum
According to the text, the small hand drum, the d̩amaru, is a symbol of sam̩sāra,
the empty inner part symbolizing emptiness, and the skin on the drum the union of
sam̩sāra and nirvān̩a.19 When the practitioner beats the drum, sam̩sāra is connected
with the basic ground (gzhi) from where all appearances (snang ba) of the phenomenal
world arise: the outer melodious sound is that of the Mahāyāna teachings; the red cloth
band between both sides increases the lineage of “awareness-holders”; the bundles of
five cowry shells are the palaces of the root and lineage lamas; and the beaters of the
drum shake the depths of sam̩sāra, while the holder of the strap, the yogin or chödpa,
controls appearances.
corpse by someone without attachment or hatred20; others say the thighbone should
come from a corpse of a sixteen-year-old girl.21 The yogin further stresses that when
cleansed of flesh, the bone trumpet symbolizes the renouncement of inner and outer
turmoil, the flat opening the “same taste” (ro snyom) of every phenomenon, while the
central hold represents the central channel (Skt. avadhūtī, Tib. dbu ma) of liberation.
When blowing the trumpet, the chödpa invites the deities to the feast. The first blow
is an offering to the lama, the second overwhelms appearances, the third summons all
sentient beings, the fourth transfers accumulated merit, and the fifth cuts through the
grasping mind and the grasped object.
Ritual dance
The chödpa not only performed recitations to beautiful melodies, but would also
dance. The chöd dance is done to control the demons in the five directions who
personify the power of negative emotions: hatred and anger (east), pride and
miserliness (south), desire and attachment (west), jealousy and envy (north), and
ignorance and confusion (center).22 Ritual dance is part of public monastic ceremonies
in Tibet, while the esoteric dance of the chödpa is often performed at haunted sites.
Because of its secret nature there are hardly any descriptions of chödpas dancing at
charnel grounds.23
Wandering hermits
Contrary to our image of the Buddhist yogin meditating in a secluded hermitage,
the chödpas wandered from place to place and could practice in groups. During
chöd pilgrimage, a network of such dangerous sites (ideally 108 springs and
8 charnel grounds) were visited and considered ideal places to perform the ritual. In
contemporary Mongolia, luijin practitioners perform pilgrimages (jardz),24 a short
circuit in the mountains around Ulaanbaatar, while a long pilgrimage extends wider
and lasts for four months.25
Wandering chödpa would earn their living performing services for laypeople,
and today chödpa can be observed in towns and villages in Tibet reciting chöd while
passers-by offer money into their beggar’s boxes. In Mongolia, chöd, or luijin (lus
sbyin, “offering the body”), is performed as a daily ritual in Red Tradition temples and
also by individual practitioners, some of them old women.
Ani Lochen was a nonsectarian but primarily Nyingmapa yoginī and nun. She was
born in northern India and took part in a vibrant milieu of itinerant tantric yoga and
chöd practitioners roaming the Himalayas and Western and Central Tibet during the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During the first decade of the twentieth century,
Ani Lochen established a combined hermitage and nunnery for 300 women at Shugseb
(Shug gseb), south of Lhasa; here chöd continued to be a focus of meditational practice.27
After her father died, the thirteen-year-old Ani Lochen and her mother joined a
group of nonsectarian adepts, male as well as female, roaming the Himalayas and the
Tibetan plateau. The group gathered around a charismatic yogin, who was a direct
disciple of a famous nonsectarian master from Amdo (A mdo), northeastern Tibet,
Shabkar Tshogdrug Rangdrol (Zhabs dkar Tshogs drug Rang grol 1781–1851).28 Along
their path the group of adepts halted in caves and mountain hermitages to meditate
and practice yoga. They performed chöd at haunted sites and were asked by locals
to stop epidemics and to perform funerary rituals. They called each other “religious
friend” (mched grogs), an appellation also used for a tantric partner. From their root
teacher, the yogins and yoginīs received religious teachings transferred in the lineages
of some of the most famous sages in Tibet. The practice of chöd was an important part
of their repertoire and became a hallmark of Ani Lochen’s spiritual expertise.
Buddhist nun in her late twenties. Several of Ani Lochen’s female disciples kept their
hair long throughout their lives, wearing either monastic robes or lay clothes.
Nyingma chöd
A famous chödpa from eastern Tibet, Dharma Senge (Dharma Seng ge) or “the
Madman from Kham” (Khams smyon), was one of Ani Lochen’s main chöd masters
who imparted to her the root lineage of chöd. Ani Lochen was also an adept in the
highest teachings of the Nyingmapa school, called dzogchen (rdzogs chen), in which
chöd is an integral part. One of the most widespread ritual texts on chöd, mKha’ ’gro
gad rgyangs “The Laughter of the D̩ākinīs” in the Klong chen snying thig collection by
Jigme Lingpa (’Jigs med Gling pa, 1729–98), is an esoteric teaching cycle classified as
dzogchen.32 The mKha’ ’gro gad rgyangs is identified as the Yeshe Tsogyal tradition
of chöd. While both Yeshe Tsogyal and Guru Rinpoche are important in Nyingmapa
chöd, Ani Lochen’s favorite meditational deity was Machig Labdron, who is considered
an emanation of Yeshe Tsogyal. Ani Lochen received the sNying thig teachings from her
root lamas, and sNying thig was, throughout her life, the core of her religious practice.
The hermit, poet, philosopher, and “treasure revealer” Longchen Rabjampa
(Klong chen Rab ’byams pa, 1308–63), one of the greatest scholars and nonsectarian
religious masters the Nyingmapa tradition has produced prepared the ground for the
Figure 11.2 A mural of Ani Lochen’s lineage in Longchen Rabjampa’s cave at Gangri
Thökar. Ani Lochen, bottom right. (Photo: Havnevik 2001).
Klong chen snying thig teachings later revealed by Jigme Lingpa. The institution Ani
Lochen built, Shugseb Nunnery, is located just below Longchen Rabjampa’s cave on
the sacred mountain Gangri Thökar (Gangs ri Thod dkar), located south of Lhasa.
Vajravārāhī or Dorje Phagmo (rDo rje Phag mo), one of the principal meditational
deities of chöd, was also one of Longchen Rabjampa’s main meditational deities. The
sacralized landscape of Gangri Thökar is conceived as the body of Vajravārāhī laying
on her back, with milky water streaming from her breasts and a major stream from her
yoni. Shugseb Nunnery is believed to be located on Vajravārāhī’s left knee.33
Figure 11.3 New mural at Samding with portrayals of Machig Labdron (top left) and
some of the Dorje Phagmo reincarnations. (Photo: Havnevik 2010).
Ani Lochen says that once, when she was practicing chöd, two monks came up to her
to refute her views, whereupon she blew the thighbone trumpet, making the monks’
legs lame. The next day the monks’ teacher had to plead on their behalf, whereupon
Ani Lochen released them from the paralysis.
Machig Labdron and Ani Lochen were both yoginīs and nuns, but while Machig’s
sexual relationship with men is explicit—she was married for twelve years and a
mother of three sons—Ani Lochen was never married. Ani Lochen’s practice of sexual
yoga is, however, implicit, but kept secret as part of the highly esoteric inner practices
of chöd and dzogchen.
Chöd at Shugseb
Chöd continued to be a core of Ani Lochen’s religious practice and teaching after she
settled at Shugseb in 1904. When Ani Lochen in her mid-sixties ended a long secluded
meditation retreat in a cave on the mountain behind her nunnery, the first religious
teaching she imparted to her nuns was the Hundred Empowerments of Chöd (gCod
dbang brgya rtsa), and she sent them to “fearful places” (gnyan sa) and to the One
Hundred and Eight Springs to practice the meditation. Villagers from settlements
below Shugseb came to ask Ani Lochen for chöd rituals such as “the transference of
consciousness” (’pho ba). When dead bodies were brought to Shugseb for funerary
services, four to ten nuns performed the chöd dance around the bodies at a platform
by the local charnel ground.
Figure 11.4 Statue of Ani Lochen at Shugseb Nunnery. (Photo: Havnevik 2004).
prophecy saying that if a life-size statue of Machig Labdron was installed at Shugseb,
Ani Lochen would live as long, and be of equal significance, as Machig Labdron.40 The
statue was made in Lhasa, and numerous miracles were said to accompany it when
it was brought to Shugseb Nunnery. The statue was destroyed during the Cultural
Revolution, but a new one can today be seen in the assembly hall at Shugseb, along
with one of Ani Lochen, both portrayed when performing chöd. During the last days
of her life, Ani Lochen finally believed that she was indeed an emanation of Machig
Labdron.
Conclusion
In the first part of her religious career, Ani Lochen followed the path of the wandering
and unconventional yoga practitioner and participated in advanced esoteric chöd and
dzogchen rituals. At the end of her twenties she took ordination as a Buddhist nun
and later advised her disciples to follow her example.41 A few female adepts continued,
however, to engage as consorts of visiting yogins, and thus the combined monastic and
yogic path was maintained at Shugseb. Chöd is a living tradition in contemporary Tibet
as well as among Buddhist practitioners in the Himalayas, Mongolia, and Buryatia.
After she met her root lama at the age of thirteen, Ani Lochen made chöd a main focus
of her meditational practice, and as her fame spread throughout Central Tibet she
contributed to the popularity of the tradition, particularly among female practitioners.