Without hope, Chöd practitioners are freed from the limits of hope and fear; having cut the ropes of grasping, definitely enlightened, where does one go?

Oh, noble child, everything is severing the mind. As for the mind, it is severing pride. There is nothing whatsoever that is not included in pride. If one simply understands that it is merely the...

Without discursive thought it is just dharma practice. Hope together with aim obscures. One does not cut through pride by meditatively cultivating the desire for happiness. If there is hope, even the hope for buddhas,...

…the Chöd teachings attributed to Machik Labdrön both rely and innovate on Buddhist representations of mental functionings of a human being, including the onto-epistemological trope of the Universal Base Consciousness [ālaya-vijñāna] and the psycho-ethical trope...

Dharma practice means physical hardship; it means that you shouldn’t be pansies about it. You should exert yourselves wholeheartedly to engage in the practice, so that it will affect your body, speech, and mind.

That is to say, attachments to signs of accomplishment (drod rtags) and circumstantial effects are precisely what are called Negative Forces [demons].

Chöd is conventionally and misleadingly seen as analogous to, if not derived from, shamanic initiatory dismemberment visions, as well as dualistic anti-body ascetic practices. Two of the elements most commonly referenced by authors in their...

To seek the self, one must first have a clear idea of what one is looking for. Thus, some meditation manuals advise actively cultivating the sense of self, despite the fact that this sense is...

When we are meditating in a haunted graveyard, or even in our rooms, frightening external and internal appearances may arise during Chöd practice. If this happens, check the two ‘superstitions’—the external, frightening appearance, and the...

As in other Buddhist Tantric techniques, recommended preliminaries for these practices include developing skill at both calm-abiding (zhi gnas; śamatha) and insight meditation (lhag mthong; vipaśyanā). As in earlier Buddhist teachings, many Chöd dehadāna practices...

If we lack the proper antidotes of emptiness and bodhichitta, we will not be able to control our minds when frightening appearances manifest. It is considered a sign of progress in this practice if we...

Machik thus maintains that what is conventionally referred to as a “god” is in fact the positive nature of reflexive awareness that characterizes the full potential of the enlightened mind when it is unsullied by...

If there is destruction of hope, there is freedom from gods [lha]; if there is destruction of fear, there is freedom from spirits [‘dre, demons].