"Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

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DGA
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"Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by DGA »

http://wordpress.tsadra.org/?p=2334

Harding argues that there is little to no direct evidence that Machik Labdron taught the body offering (lu jin) that is now understood as chod practice proper.

Thoughts?
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by Lindama »

I have no way to answer this question. I am not a scholar, I'm not sure one is needed here. I am suspect to the question given that the idea of an unbroken lineage/scholarship is questionable and that Machig was a woman. The women's lineage has been partially reclaimed, but nearly bypassed in zen and Tibetan. So, why should I believe her who wants to have a scholarly certainty when there may not be one. Who would have cared enough to insure it's legacy? She was nearly lost as I understand... again, I am not a scholar.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by Grigoris »

Well, my teachers have taught me that Machik taught Chod, and their teachers taught them that Machik taught Chod and... So why would I care what Sarah Harding has to say?

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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by Ayu »

The questioning by Sarah Harding might be interesting for historians. The question whether chod was invented by a woman or a man may be intersting for politicians or feminists.
For the practitioner of chod there are more interesting questions: is the practice able to help others out of their misery? Am I following the teaching with the right intention? Am I practicing for good?
The traditional story about Machig Lapdrön is very helpful for these tasks.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by anjali »

I'm not a Chod practioner, so I don't have any skin in the game so to speak ;). In the Theravada tradition there is something call the ten asubha (repulsion) practices:
  • (1) swollen corpse,
    (2) discolored, bluish, corpse,
    (3) festering corpse,
    (4) fissured corpse,
    (5) gnawed corpse,
    (6,7) dismembered, or hacked and scattered, corpse,
    (8) bleeding corpse,
    (9) worm-eaten corpse,
    (10) skeleton.

Basically, it's the contemplation of a decaying corpse. These practices seem to be quite old. From an historian's perspective, it would be interesting to trace these kinds of practices throughout the Buddhist world. For example, were/are such practices in the East Asian traditions, and if so, how are they practiced. Chod may well have been the unique Tibetan innovation on practices already present within the Northern Indian tradition. For example, the practice of chopping up corpses and feeding them to the vultures in Tibet would easily lend itself to the development of contemplation practices around bodily dismemberment (6/7) and feeding to demons. Of course this is all just speculation.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by DGA »

Harding's a chodpa and an important translator. She knows this practice intimately. I think her perspective is an important one.

If you read the article carefully, you can see that her claim is much more limited than the title of her article suggests. She claims that there's scant evidence to suppose that Machik created the lu jin portion of the chod practice, the body offering. There's plenty of evidence that someone named Machik existed, and taught a system of practice called "chod" that is built directly from the Prajnaparamita. What's the take-away from Harding's article, then?

Perhaps the body offering has become more important to the chod tradition now than it was in Machik's time, perhaps much more so.

Or not: it could be that Harding has it completely wrong, that she missed some important evidence, &c.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by conebeckham »

The text linked to is actually a presentation Sarah gave a couple years back at a conference. It's interesting, but it's also pretty clear from looking at the Tibetan texts that are currently used for "Chod" practice that these were written by someone after Machig herself. She is the central figure in the refuge visualization, the central figure in purification preliminaries, as well. I'd argue that it would make sense, from these details, that the basics of the liturgy were formulated after Machig herself. Of course, we know Kongtrul condensed the daily "Lujin" practice, and the longer rituals like Rinchen Trengwa were the work of masters long after Machig.

Also, if you read the biographies and recollections of Maching written by her various students, you'll find out that the real practice of "Chod" was really a sort of Mahamudra/Prajnaparamita approach, blending sutra and tantra, and the "Offering of the Body" is actually the practice for the lowest class of students (ourselves, I suppose). You'll also find lists of the empowerments and transmissions Machig held, which included HYT practices like Samvara, Mahamaya, etc. Much of what she taught is, I think, no longer extant. But, you know, it's possible there are oral transmissions that have not been committed to paper--and that is also one possible answer to the main question. Perhaps Machig transmitted the specifics of the "inferior Chod practice" of Lujin orally and it was passed for a few generations before someone wrote down the basics. Sarah makes a possible case for this, as well, when writing about the Appendices.

Sarah is definitely a practitioner, as well as a translator and I think there's no contradiction here between the question she poses and the genuine "authenticity" of the Lujin practice.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by DGA »

conebeckham wrote: there's no contradiction here between the question she poses and the genuine "authenticity" of the Lujin practice.
Agreed completely, and I hope I didn't imply otherwise in my posts in this thread.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by Malcolm »

Jikan wrote:
conebeckham wrote: there's no contradiction here between the question she poses and the genuine "authenticity" of the Lujin practice.
Agreed completely, and I hope I didn't imply otherwise in my posts in this thread.

You are all forgetting that so called lus sbyin, aka kusuli accumulation offering, has its roots in the Hevajra Tantra:
  • Having given the gift of the body
    afterwards begin conduct.
The practice was already widespread. Machilk's tradition merely "Tibetanized" it with nice melodies and a big drum.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

I've even read Mahayana Lojong trainings - a number of em in fact...which involve visualization of sectioning one's body, turning it into Nectar etc...It seems to be common enough. One in particular I can remember is in the context of Tonglen, but the visualization is not so far off from Chod or the Kusulis accumulation near as I can remember, just with no yidam involved.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by DGA »

I split some posts on the important topic of lojong to a dedicated thread here:

http://dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?f= ... 87#p266461
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by ClearblueSky »

It's an interesting and seemingly valid question (and Sarah Harding definitely has "chod credit" for what it's worth), and for me these types of things are often reminders that historical facts, and then our faith in Dharma and the overall lineage are not one in the same. The truth is a lot of what we learn is probably not historically quite accurate. The stories of Shakyamuni, Padmasambhava, Milarepa, etc all probably happened a lot differently than was written in the the books, including what they taught, and from a scholarly POV there's not a lot of evidence for a lot of things. But people have still been practicing/believing certain things for a long, long time, and presumably getting realization and happiness from it... so maybe it's okay to "purposely" believe something that isn't true once in a while. Either way Machig is relevant to the lineages that are chod as we know it today.
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Re: "Did Machik Really Teach Chod?" by Sarah Harding

Post by Losal Samten »

An interesting post from another forum.
The article is interesting but the question of the author is badly put. Machik was a student of Pha Dampa Sangye who taught Zhi-byed (of Healing) which he also pulled the Chod. So the founder of Chöd among Buddhists is Pha Dampa, not Machik. Moreover, as JLA showed in one of his recent PDF booklets on Chöd (I do not have references on hand), Pha Dampa had a friend called Bönpo Trotsang Druklha from which he received the teachings of Chod before introducing them to his Buddhist students. For Bonpos, Chod is the source of the immortal Tsewang Rigzin. The lineage that can be traced for Chöd Pha Dampa must be: Tsewang Rigzin -> Trotsang Druklha -> Pha Dampa Sangye -> Machik. However, this does not diminish the contribution of Machik in the Buddhist context. Indeed, for Bonpos Chöd is tantric, while in the line of Machik, Prajnaparamita (thus the level of Sutra) is the reference work. In reality, what distinguishes the Bönpo Chod and the Chod of other schools of Tibetan Buddhism is that of Bonpos is tantric and is the source of the lineage of Pha Dampa, while that of Machik is sutric.
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