Chod is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist practise for breaking through the illusion of self and hence freeing us from suffering. It involves a mechanism for destroying the self that causes the suffering.
One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Chod is an ancient Tibetan Buddhist practise for breaking through the illusion of self and hence freeing us from suffering.
Chod means ‘to cut’ and this is literally what we do.In Chod we say that the only demon that ever needs to be slain is the demon of the illusion of self. Once we break this delusion all the other illusions and their suffering go with it. Simply, if we cut the central tree of suffering, which is the illusion of self, all the other delusions and suffering naturally go with it.
Chod is particularly effective as a practise as, if we destroy the self that is suffering, we cease suffering.
Imagine for a moment you are in a state of anguish, a state of pain. Now this state will have a particular facial posture, an actual face which you can photograph and look at. If we visualise this face and then visualise it being destroyed in any number of ways, no longer can we find the face and so we cease to identify with the suffering, as we can no longer visualise ourselves as suffering.
‘No person, no problem’ in a nutshell.How we see ourselves is often a cause of massive suffering when we either do not look the way we want to, or we buy into an image of ourselves that is suffering.
In Chod we offer a piece of ourselves to the creatures of the six realms which are all just aspects of our self and hence empty of any real meaning once we embrace them fully as aspects of self.
The six realms are the hell realm, where the governing emotion is anger; the hungry ghosts whose flaw is unsatisfied desire; the animal realm where our problem is ignorance of what is transpiring; the jealous gods where jealousy of others is our governing flaw; and then the god realm where we are bound by pride and its sufferings. The human realm is where we struggle with desire and aversion.
They say that when the demons come to a river, they see molten lava; when the hungry ghosts come to a river, they see blood and puss. The animal realm sees the river just as the river; the jealous gods see the river as weapons; and the gods see it as nectar. It is all the same river, but in a moment when we are angry, we are in the hell realm and the river is molten lava. When we snap out of the anger, we once again see the river as a river.
We all have aspects of these to some extent although some people might have more jealousy and less ignorance, or less pride, or more unsatisfied desire and less anger but our Chinese element determines which area we really need to look at. For example, my element is earth so I have more unsatisfied desire as well as more jealousy, as fire is the element that feeds earth.
The practise of Chod is traditionally done in scary places, like haunted places or burial grounds in order to bring up feelings associated with the six realms which we may then work with.
In these places, or just in our homes, we conjure up images of gods, hungry ghosts, demons and animals which are just aspects of ourselves. We offer our body to them so that they may devour us and be satisfied.
This performs two functions; it breaks the idea that we are a solid thing and it is precisely this solidity which causes us to suffer and live in fear. Secondly, it allows us to move beyond fear as we have done the most feared thing already to our self. As the lions crunch on your eyeball, and you look out of your remaining eye, you see that the eyes in the lions head are in fact your own eyes.
This is massively liberating as then we cannot take our own suffering too seriously, and we simultaneously conquer the idea of destruction and obliteration.
In this way, we offer ourselves to each of the six realms and give them that aspect of our self they want. In devouring, they become satisfied and leave us alone.
I have done this for years and for me it is the most powerful practise in the world to move beyond fear and identity. As we move through the immortality process it is useful to regularly put the image of ourselves into a liquidizer, give it quick whiz and pour it on the garden.We are reinventing ourselves at a younger age and this age literally needs a new younger face.
Once we get over the initial flinching around Chod where we cringe a bit pulling off our skin to feed to the jackals or burn ourselves and let the flames waft up for the gods or the hungry ghosts to inhale, we become very free.
There really are no words to describe how massively I have benefitted from this practise over the years. I would even say it has saved my life on numerous occasions.
A practical example of its use was when I was driving my motorbike and I went into fear of falling. For the next 5km, I visualized myself being scraped down to the bone on the road until the fear completely disappeared and I was able to continue the ride without worry.
Now I know this seems a bit hectic but in truth, it is the fastest and actually the easiest way through, once one gets over the flinching related to the imaging of self-harm.
A lot of people even get into the spirit of it and the trick is not to make it too antiseptic, a Samurai sword is good but tends to avoid some of the meat and bone imagery and the benefits we might get from say a potato peeler on our fingers, some pruning scissors cutting off our toes, or the sinewy and squirmy effect of an arm in a meat grinder.
Now of course we do all of this in our head to ourselves.We do not do it in the flesh as that would just be stupid and would defeat the purpose of this practise completely.It is all about freeing us from the suffering of the self, not generating more.
This practise is not for everyone especially those used to putting angelic light around themselves for protection.But for those that do this, it is an amazingly potent and rapid path to the unbinding of the illusion of self which is the cause of all of our suffering.
Without Chod I would have been dead many times over.In Buddhism they say that the wrathful practises are the most compassionate as they cut through the mess quickly, and in so doing, leave less suffering.
Chod is particularly useful in the immortality process as we are in the process of breaking down the old to allow the new to come into form on a cellular level. Any practise that aids this is a massive benefit to us.