Tsultrim Allione

Women of Wisdom
Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2000

Extract :
MACHIG LAPDRON
Prologue
Machig Lapdron is one of the most renowned and beloved ofTibetan women mystics. She is said
to be an incarnation of Yeshe Tsogyel, the eighth-century consort of Gum Padma Sambhava who
brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet. There are many biographies of Machig, but this one is the
longest and most complete that I have seen.
In the '"Life of Yeshe Tsogyel," Padma Sambhava predicted that Yeshe Tsogyel would be reborn
as Machig Lapdron; her consort, Atsara Sale, would become Topabhadra, Machig's husband; her
assistant and Padma Sambhava's secondary consort, Tashi Khyidren, would be reborn as
Machig's only daughter, and so on. All of the important figures in Tsogyel's life were to be
reborn in the life of Machig Lapdron, including Padma Sambhava himself, who would become
Phadampa Sangye.
Naturally there is no way to prove these connections scientifically, and for a Westerner it may
seem strange that family trees are cited through reincarnation lineages rather than blood lines,
but many Tibetan hagiographies (sacred biographies) commence with a history of the
incarnations going back hundreds of years. Even the biography of Machig begins rather
disconcertingly with the biography of a man. It turns out that this man is in fact the preceding
incarnation of Machig. The extraordinary switchover into the body of a girl in Tibet from a yogi
in India, through the intercession of dakinis, is an exceptionally supernatural occurrence. It is not
that he dies, but rather that his consciousness is transferred to Tibet. At the end of the story we
return to his body, which has remained unchanged for fifty or more years, in a cave in Southern
India. In order to understand this kind of story, we must surrender our Western frame of
reference, which limits our ideas of what is possible and what is impossible, and understand that,
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at higher levels of spiritual development, the material world can be manipulated by the
consciousness, and many things become possible. In this story we find people flying through the
air, cremated bodies producing sculptured forms, and vaiious other psychic phenomena. Having
witnessed some of these phenomena myself, I ask the readers to put aside their ideas of the limits
of the mind and body, and open themselves to further possibilities.
In Tibet and India yogis developed the mind and body while we were concentrating on scientific
discoveries. We achieved our own mirades with the development of television, telephones,
airplanes and so on, which two hundred years ago would have seemed equally fantastic and
miraculous. Meanwhile, the Tibetans were working in the laboratory of the mind, developing
themselves in the silent recesses of mountain retreats and caves. Considering the time and
concentration that went into their research and training, the "miraculous" phenomena which have
resulted are not so very strange.
Machig Lapdron was an integral part of the great renaissance of Buddhism which occurred in the
eleventh century in Tibet. During this time there was a great deal of exchange between Tibet and
the scholarly and yogic schools of India, which later ceased as Buddhism died out in India,
shortly after Machig's time. There were many religious pilgrims traveling around and to Tibet,
India, and Nepal. This prompted cultural and spiritual developments, and it must have been a
very exciting time to have lived in Tibet.
In order to give an idea of what the Mahamudra ChOd is, I will start with a short explanation of
this practice, which is the primary teaching that Machig Lapdron is famous for.
The philosophical basis for the Chd is the Prajna Paramita Sutra. Machig was thoroughly
immersed in this teaching from childhood, because she became a professional reader at an early
age, and the most popular text to be read was this sutra. Professional readers were people who
could read very quickly. They were sent out to the homes of lay devotees to read through a text a
certain number of times. The logic behind this was twofold: first, the hearing of a text would be
beneficial to the householders immersed in worldly preoccupations, and secondly, the recitation
of such a text would cause the accumulation of merit. Because the Buddhists believe that every
act has a certain result, a positive act causes the accumulation of positive results, and therefore a
kind of stockpile of good karma could be accumulated by having sacred texts read aloud. What
was considered important was the number of times something was read rather than
understanding the meaning therefore the faster the reader was, the better. In this way the patron
could accumulate more merit in less time and have to spend less on maintenance and gifts for the
reader. Machig, from a very young age, was an extraordinarily fast reader, and so she was highly
valued as a professional reader. She probably repaid her teacher by being his reader.
It was not until she made contact with Lama Sonam Drapa, who questioned her understanding
and told her to reread her texts, that she gained real insight into the teaching. This, combined
with her contact with Phadampa Sangye, master of the School of Pacifying Suffering (sDug
bsngal zhi byed), led her to a real understanding of the teachings - intuitive as well as
intellectual.

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The Prajna Paramita is a very profound philosophical doctrine, and 1 will just outline the main
ideas in it in order to clarify the Chd. First we start off with the confused egocentric state of
mind. This state of mind causes us to suffer, and so, to alleviate the suffering, we start to practice
meditation. What happens in meditation is that the speedy mind begins to slow down and things
begin to settle, like the mud sinking to the bottom of a puddle of water when it is left
undisturbed. When this settling has occurred, a kind of dear understanding of the way things
work in the mind takes place. This understanding is prajna, profound cognition. Then, according
to Buddhist doctrine, through the use of this prajna, we begin to see that, in fact, although we
think that we have a separate and unique essence, or self, which we call the 'ego,"' when we look
dosely, we are a composite of form, sense-perceptions, consciousness, etc., and are merely a sum
of these parts. This realization is the understanding of sunyata, usually translated as emptiness, or
voidness. it means there is no self-essence, that we are "'void of a self."' If we are void of a self,
there is no reason to be egocentric, since the whole notion of a separate ego is false. Therefore
we can afford to be compassionate, and need not continually defend ourselves or force our
desires onto others.
In order to reinforce and develop the understanding of egolessness and in order to develop
compassion for all sentient beings, Machig developed the Chd practice. In this practice, after
various preliminaries, the practitioner performs the offering of the body - this is the essence of
the Chd practice. 'Chd'" (gCod) literally means '"to cut,' referring to cutting attachment to the
body and ego. First the practitioner visualizes the consciousness leaving the body through the top
of the head and transforming itself into a wrathful dakini. This wrathful dakini then takes her
crescent-shaped hooked knife and cuts off the top of the head of the body of the practitioner.
This skull cup is then placed on a tripod of threeskulls, over a flame. The rest of the body is
chopped up and placed into the skull, which is vastly expanded. Then the whole cadaver is
transformed from blood and entrails into nectar, which is then fed to every conceivable kind of
being, satisfying every kind of desire these beings might have. After all beings have taken their
fill and been satisfied, the practitioner reminds himself or herself that the offerer, the offering
process, and those who have been offered to, are all 'empty,'" and seeks to remain in the state of
that understanding. The ritual ends with further teachings on the true nature of reality~ and some
ending prayers for the eventual enlightenment of all beings.
Through this process, four demons are overcome. These are demons connected to the ego. It was
when she understood the true nature of demons as functions of the ego by having reread the
Prajna Paramita texts, that she began to formulate the Chd. Before going on to explain the ritual
instruments and so on, I would like to discuss these four demons. This explanation is based on
oral explanation given by Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche.
The first demon is called '"the Demon that Blocks the Senses."' When we think of a demon, we
generally think of an external spirit which attacks us, but Machig realized that the true nature of
demons is the internal functioning of the ego. This particular demon manifests when we see or
experience something with the sense, and the senses get blocked and we get fixated on the
object. For example, when we see a beautiful woman or man, as soon as we see this person the
perception is blocked by the desire to possess that person. The process of perception stops, and
we try to meet that person, and so on. So this is one process that must be overcome by

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meditation. If we are in a state of true meditation, perception occurs without this fixation with, or
attachment to, the objects perceived.
The second demon is '"the Demon which Cannot be Controlled."' This is the thought-process
which just runs on and on. The thought-process takes over, the mind wanders from one thing to
another, and our awareness is completely lost in distraction.
The third demon is '"the Demon of Pleasure.'" When we experience something pleasurable, like
eating something delicious, we become attached to this delicacy and we want to get more and
avoid anything which stands between us and the object of pleasure. This does not mean that
pleasure is in itself demonic, but rather that our attachment to it becomes a hindrance to
remaining in a state of clarity. For example, a meditator might have an auspicious dream, which
is a sign of progress, but then '"the demon of pleasure"' comes into play and he gets very attached
to the dream. Or someone else might experience a period when everything goes well, he feels
good physically, and so he tries to continue this good period endlessly, but it must always end in
change and is therefore disappointing to us.
The fourth demon is "'the Demon of the Ego."' The ego is that with which we condition our
world. It rests on the principle of '"self'" and '"other"' which causes a blockage in awareness and
a lot of suffering for oneself and others.
Fundamentally, all four demons are thought-processes which block a state of clear, unattached
awareness, and they all grow out of the process of ego-fixation and the lack of prajna, with the
consequent misunderstanding of emptiness. The Chd practice seeks to do away with these
demons
The Chd practice employs four methods to make sound: the human voice, the drum, the bell
and the human thighbone trumpet. The drum is the size of the circle created when the hand is
placed on the hip; it is similar to the drum used by Siberian shamans and by the Bon priests in
the native Tibetan religion. It is double-faced, symbolizing the masculine and the feminine, with
two little balls hanging from strings on either side. When the drum is played, these little balls hit
opposite sides of the drum, symbolizing the inseparability of absolute and relative truth. The
drum makes a deep rhythmic march-like beat, and is accompanied by a bell, the symbol of the
primordial space of the feminine, which is held in the left hand. At the point when the
transformed flesh of the practitioner is offered to the demons, the thighbone trumpet, which is
said to summon the demons, is sounded, making an eerie whining sound. The whole practice is
sung, the tunes varying according to the tradition the practitioner has learned from. Each melody
has its own history developed by Chd practitioners (called Chdpa) after many years of
practice. The overall effect of these sounds combines to make a deeply sonorous, moving chant,
with a beautiful melody. The use of sound is an integral part of the Chd practice, creating a
vibration within the body which would not be there if the practice were merely recited silently.
The Chd was traditionally practiced in frightening places such as under lone trees (which were
thought to be inhabited by demons), and in cemeteries (as we see, for example, in the biography
of A-Yu Khadro). The direct encounter with one's fears and the transcending of them through the
understanding of the true nature of demons is the essential point of the Chad practice. Tibetans
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are so afraid of demons that many are afraid of the Chd practice, and it is considered very
secret. I once met a nun who, in her youth, had gone into a cave to practice the ChOd. She saw
something that made her so afraid that she had to do nine years of Amitabha practice (the
peaceful Buddha of the Western Paradise) to recover, and when I met her she was very old and
was still a bit mad.
The training for the Chd took place in colleges founded specifically for this study. It took at
least five years. Towards the end of the training the students would be sent out in groups and
finally alone. Chodpas were always called in when there were epidemics of infectious diseases,
such as cholera. They took care of the corpses, chopping up the bones and conducting the funeral
ceremony, apparently impervious to infection. Sometimes Chdpas would be called in for
exorcisms.
Chd practitioners wore cast-off clothes, would eat the food of beggars, and lived in places most
people disdained to go to. All of this is based on the example of Machig Lapdron, who lived in
this way, paying no heed to conventional limitations of dress and behaviour. Chd practitioners
would travel alone or in groups, practicing the Chd in appropriate places along the way. A-Yu
Khadro followed the teachings of Mathig Lapdron and lived the life of a Chdpa for many years.
This biography is from the Pungpo Zankur Gyi Namshe Chodkyi Don Sal.
The story is as it was told to her disciples by Machig at their request. It was compiled by Jamgon
Kongtrul Lodro Taye, at the request of Choje Kunga Jamyang in the nineteenth century.
Although it claims to be written by Machig herself, it is probably a composite of several
biographies which Jamgon Kongtrul found in his extensive research of ancient texts.

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