Vajrayana · 1055–1149
Machig Labdron
Tibetan Vajrayana · Chöd · The Practice of Cutting Through · Chöd
A woman who founded a lineage that flowed out into Tibet, not in from India. She taught the cutting of fear by feeding it your very self.
The essence of the teaching: The highest nature of mind is empty and clear, like the depth of space. What you fear most loses its power the moment you stop running from it.
Transmission
Machig Labdron created Chöd – "the cutting through." The practitioner goes at night to a charnel ground or a place of terror and, in vision, offers their own body to the demons of fear as food. Not to punish themselves – but to see that there is no solid "I" that can be lost. When you give away what you cling to most fiercely, fear loses its ground. The mind that remains is empty and clear, like the very depth of the sky. Her lineage is so strong that it went the reverse way – from Tibet into India, the only one of them all.
The full transmission — for members of the School. Here is its essence and its taste.
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