CUTTING THROUGH THE MIND: OPENING THE GATE OF SPACE AND THE DUD

In the preceding chapter I described how the Prajnaparamita Chod doctrine of Machik Labdron adapts traditional discussions of the practice of dehadana within the context of the perfection of giving and the development of the wisdom that is defined by emptiness. Through introducing new strategies for visualizing the practice of giving one's body, Machik Labdron revives canonical discussions from Indic Buddhist teachings to ground her development of an innovative practice that a variety of practitioners can engage in for personal and communal spiritual development.

In this chapter, I continue my discussion of Machik's tradition and innovation in her development of the practices of Chod: I trace her reception and refiguration of classical Buddhist teachings to make them efficacious for her audience of Buddhist practitioners. As I argued in the preceding chapter, Chod praxis addresses what I called the “body-mind modality,” a non- dualistic conception of being. In understanding the complex strategies of Chod,

however, it is useful to distinguish provisionally between practices that use the body as a meditative focal point and those that use the mind as a site for transformation. While in the previous chapter I focused on Chod techniques for cutting through the body, here I will be considering corresponding techniques for cutting through the mind.

The Chod system provides several techniques to aid the practitioner in attaining non-dual awareness. Such techniques complement the analytical dismantling of the discursive construction of conventional existence as presented in the Prajhaparamitasutra teachings with an emphasis on the cultivation of non-dual awareness as articulated in the Tantra teachings. Chod, grounded in the Mahayana motivation of bodhicitta, explores the manifestations and limitations of mind and mental activities in order to cut through the root of karmic attachment. In a parallel movement, Chod also cultivates mental capacities in order

to cut through the root of these manifestations and limitations. In this chapter, I will discuss how the Chod teachings attributed to Machik Labdron both rely and innovate on Buddhist representations of mental functionings of a human being, including the onto-epistemological trope of the Universal Base Consciousness and the psycho-ethical trope of Negative Forces as Dud. By drawing on and revising these traditional models, Chod is able to develop effective techniques for “cutting through mind.”

As I discussed in the previous chapter, the Chod tradition explores the problem of what is to be cut through various engagements with the body-mind aggregates (phung po; skhandha). In Buddhism, it is these aggregates onto which beings impute an individual mind and self, and in Chod, they are foregrounded as the objects that are to be cut. In his verse composition, The Great Poem on the Prajhaparamita and regarded as a root text of Chod, Aryadeva explains that Chod praxis is ultimately aimed at cutting through the root of mind:

To cut through the root of mind itself, And to cut through the five poisons of mental afflictions, And because all extreme views, mental formations during meditation, And anxiety, hope and fear in activity, And arrogance, are cut through, This is the definition of ‘Chod.'

This trope of “cutting” through the root of mind can be traced to early Buddhist texts. For example, in the fifth century Pali text, the Visuddhimagga, Buddhaghosa writes that the “relinquishment by means of cutting off takes place in the one who cultivates the supermundane path leading to the destruction of contaminations.” In The Blue Annals, Go Lotsawa cites Vasubandhu's Abhidharmakosa (V.34) as another fifth century Indic source for Chod: “Mental afflictions (nyon mongs) are generated from holding on to tendencies, from the presence of external objects, and from inappropriate mental activities.” Go

Lotsawa's commentary then links the Abhidharmakosa to the system of Chod: “What should be cut are mental afflictions. If these mental afflictions are generated from tendencies, and objects, and mental fabrications of inappropriate mental activities, when the yogin has contact with an object, habitual tendencies (bag chags) are taken on. It is called ‘Gcod yul' because one precisely cuts through the mental afflictions preceded by the mental fabrication of inappropriate mental activities and objects.” One obvious set of questions arising from this formulation concerns the nature of mind. If the principal goal of Chod is to cut mind at its root, what is it that is cut and what is it that is doing the cutting? These problems can be articulated more clearly

when Chod is considered as a non¬dual Sutra and Tantra practice. Briefly, cutting through the root of mind should be understood on both conventional and ultimate levels. On an outer, conventional level, what is to be cut is depicted as the body: basically, one’s self-grasping desire for identity and

permanence manifests as an attachment to physical form. On an inner, more profound level, what is to be cut is the mental functioning that discriminates subject and object, and generates a mistaken sense of identity, independence, and permanence, thus obscuring the ultimate nature of actuality as emptiness. Like most mainstream Buddhist teachings from the time of the Buddha, Chod addresses the different needs and abilities of its audience of practitioners: the

teachings not only explicitly identify the different needs and resources of practitioners, they provide multivalent instruction on levels including those of “inner” and “outer” discourse. In what is considered the “outer” form of Chod, physical embodiment represents the body-mind modality, and practitioners are taught to cut through the attachment to body in order to cut through attachment to ego. As in other traditions, the body-mind modality is a necessary condition for liberation. Chod, however, entails a more profound transvaluation of the body than do other traditions. As I explained in chapter four, the

physical body is not simply used as a meditative support or as a condition to be transcended, but through mentally visualizing one’s body transformed into pleasing offerings for a variety of sentient beings, the practitioner’s understanding of his mental and physical interrelationship and interdependency with conventional and ultimate reality is transformed. In “inner” Chod teachings that are intended for advanced practitioners, more attention is paid to the fact that four of the five body-mind aggregates are mental. At this deeper level, Chod praxis explicitly addresses the mind as the source of our perpetual self-grasping and thus the root of what is to be severed.

CHOD AND UNIVERSAL BASE CONSCIOUSNESS

In order to understand the processes of “cutting through mind,” Chod praxis can be schematized using the Mahayana Buddhist concepts of “Universal Base Consciousness” (kun gzhi rnam par shes pa; alaya-vijnana) and “Universal Base” (kun gzhi; alaya). The “Universal Base Consciousness” can be understood as the discriminating consciousness of the body-mind modality, which is simultaneously constructed and defiled through conventional ego grasping and dualistic conceptualization processes. The term “Universal Base” signifies the realized potential of non-discriminating primordial consciousness free of defilements.

While the terms “Universal Base Consciousness” and “Universal Base” are not used in all Buddhist texts, they represent a fundamental Buddhist opposition between mundane discriminating consciousness and supramundane nondualistic matrix. A goal of Buddhist praxis is to sublate this duality. The Pali Anguttara Nikaya posits mind as originally pure and luminous, but defiled by ignorance and its consequent emotional reactions and habitual

predispositions. This canonical description is a precursor for Mahayana Buddhist discussions of transformation of the defiled consciousness, such as in Asanga's Yogacarabhumi. The Yogacarabhumi describes liberation of the defiled Universal Base Consciousness through a process called “transforming the basis” (asraya-paravrtti). This transformation of the basis—the realization of a supramundane consciousness—is achieved through the “cultivation of wisdom (jnana) which takes true reality (tathata) as its object.” There are many manifestations of this practice in Buddhism, but they have in common the apprehension of reality as conditioned and impermanent.

Although the Universal Base Consciousness functions as a principle of karmic continuity, it should itself be understood as conditioned and impermanent, without an independent existence. The Universal Base Consciousness is conditioned because it is compounded through the causes and conditions of karmic actions (las; karma). It is impermanent because, due to its conditioned nature, it is continually subject to change. The term Universal Base Consciousness

first came into use between the third and fifth centuries in the Yogacara tradition and was elaborated by thinkers such as Asanga and Vasubandhu as a heuristic category to provide a locus for the operations of karma and rebirth. As William Waldron (2003) and Paul Griffiths (1999) have pointed out, the Mahayana theorizing of the Universal Base Consciousness (or, as they write, “all-

ground consciousness”) as an element of mind—though not equated with mind—provides a means for understanding the functioning of karma. Within the Universal Base Consciousness, the aggregates (phung po) are proliferated and karmic being is perpetuated. Griffiths calls Universal Base Consciousness an “explanatory category” which provides a locus and principle of continuity for the logical functioning of karma and rebirth. The causes, conditions and consequences of one's positive and negative actions dependently co-arise with the four mental phung po. In combination, the phung po comprise not only the

discursive mind and consciousness, but also the material form of the karmic being as ethical agent. The discursive mind is susceptible to mental habits and emotional reactions which, when one lacks awareness, proliferate and thus perpetuate the phung po. In turn, the phung po accrue the karmic traces deposited in the Universal Base Consciousness. Milerepa, a contemporary of Machik Labdron, explains this dynamic in a song about his own practice. In preparing to

offer his body to sentient beings, Milarepa describes the accumulation of karmic traces as phung po: “we have all taken myriads of bodily forms in our past incarnations. . . . Nevertheless, we have seldom utilized these bodies for a worthwhile purpose. Instead, we have wasted them by doing meaningless things [over and over again], thus accumulating more and more Skandhas and pains." Milarepa intimates an equation between the proliferation of skandhas and the perpetuation of samsara in a practice that has marked affinities with Chod. Milarepa experiences a situation which provokes fear of his own impermanence and the corollary attitude of self-grasping. He mediates this experience by analyzing the composition of his being and offering his phung po for the sake of all sentient beings.

The Universal Base Consciousness is produced by the symbiotic relationship between one's accumulating karmic traces and discriminating cognitive activities such as perception and conception. This consciousness generally functions below the level of awareness, susceptible to mental habits and proliferating emotional reactions that perpetuate samsara. Dualistic cognitive processes produce the experience of cyclic existence, and Universal Base Consciousness provides a locus for the functioning of these processes. The Universal Base

Consciousness contains and undergirds the causes and effects of karmic activity and emotional afflictions, resulting in the continuity of identity through successive rebirths. According to Buddhist traditions that have inherited this Yogacara paradigm, liberation from this suffering is only possible through a transformation of this defiled consciousness into a perfected and non-discriminating awareness.

In Sutra presentations of Chod, the Universal Base Consciousness is a cognitive ground for conceptual and perceptual processes. Especially in certain Vijnanavada interpretations, the Universal Base Consciousness seems to become an absolute entity in itself. In contrast, Tantra Chod interprets the Universal Base Consciousness as composed of the subtle mental capacity (sems) and subtle energy wind (rlung), which are ultimately impermanent and non-

abiding. In a Tantra context, the Universal Base Consciousness denotes a potentiality that can be overlaid with traces of experience and experiential structures. In conjunction with appropriate conditions, this potentiality founds future experiences. Even given these differences, both Sutra and Tantra Chod retain a pragmatic understanding of the Universal Base as an indeterminate ground of the causes, conditions and consequences of the law of karma. The trope of the Universal Base Consciousness provides for a theorization of the ethical effects of the law of karma and of the beings that undergo cyclic existence.

According to Buddhist philosophy, the realization of the impermanence of one's physical form, along with the desire for a non-changing permanent physical form, perpetuates one's karmic attachment to samsara. As Waldron, contextualizing alayavijhana in the Abhidharma, explains: “karmic action creates results which are experienced as feelings, which evoke the active counterparts (klesa) of the afflictions underlying them, which then lead to more karmically

productive activities, which produce more results, and so on, ensuring the perpetuation of cyclic existence” (2003, 69). That is, one’s habit of self-grasping, although unsuccessful in yielding a permanent self, is successful at proliferating the body-mind modality which will keep one karmically attached to cyclic existence. Thus, in order to be liberated from samsara, Chod provides techniques for cutting through the proliferation of the body-mind modality

and cultivating an awareness of the uncontaminated Universal Base. By cutting through the body¬mind modality, one is actually severing one’s flawed identification with fabricated mental consciousness. Or, as Aryadeva claims in the Chod root text, “to cut through the mind itself” is to sever all mental afflictions which tie one to existential suffering.

OPENING THE GATE OF SPACE

Such theoretical understandings of the onto-epistemology of Universal Base and Universal Base Consciousness help us to understand the Chod practice of “Opening the Gate of Space” (nam mkha’ sgo ‘byed). This practice both recalls and recontextualizes traditional previous Buddhist teachings, and it provides an innovative interpretation of similar Tantric practices, such as the

transference of consciousness techniques of ’pho ba. According to historical and biographical sources, Machik received the teaching of Opening from Padampa Sangye’s student, Kyoton Sonam Lama. Apparently, the format for this initiation was recorded in Padampa Sangye’s ‘Brul tsho drug pa; however, no copy of this text has been located. Versions of the initiation are recorded in Panchen Lozang Chokyi Gyaltsen’s (Blo bzang chos kyi rgyal mtshan) Gcod dbang nam mkha sgo byed,411 Thu’ukwan blo bzang chos kyi nyi ma’s Gcod dbang nam mkha’ sgo byed kyi dbang chos kyi sgo ‘byedpa’i Ide mig, and Taranatha’s Gcod yul gyi dbang nam mkha sgo ‘byed du grags pa.

One of the more elaborate discussions of the onto-epistemological framework of Universal Base and Universal Base Consciousness is found in the Ma gcig gsang spyod recovered treasure (gter ma) tradition of the Bhutanese philosopher-adept Thang stong rgyal po (ca. 1361-1485). Thang stong rgyal po is revered for activities as diverse as his bridge engineering skills, medical knowledge, and expertise in performing arts, as well as for being a great discoverer of hidden Buddhist teachings, or “Terton” (gter ston). According to the Gsang spyod snyan brgyud (SPNG) collection associated with the school of Thang stong

rgyal po, Thang stong rgyal po received teachings from Machik in the form of Vajravarahi. In the Dge sdig ‘khrul spong rgyu ‘bras gsal ba'i don ston, Thang stong rgyal po discusses the connection between the Universal Base (kun gzhi) and karmic action (las), including positive and negative actions in the context of Chod. According to this exposition, it is within one's own mental capacities to know mind alone [sems] as the Universal Base of samsara and

nirvana. It is also within one's own mental capacities to realize the non-duality of subject and object. To such philosophical theories of consciousness, Tantric Buddhist teachings contribute methods aimed at the transformation of consciousness to its undefiled and ultimately luminous, aware and empty state. I will discuss some of these methods as they are elaborated in the Chod tradition, using texts from The Great Explanation attributed to Machik Labdron and from the SPNG collection. The school of thought associated with Thang stong rgyal-po's SPNG

cycle of teachings emphasizes the Chod practice of Opening the Gate of Space. These texts present a philosophy of mind and consciousness in relation to practices of ethical activity and liberation from suffering. The SPNG Chod tradition systematically articulates the relationship between the supramundane and mundane consciousness, or Universal Base and Universal Base Consciousness, in the context of practice.

Various Buddhist teachers who have transmitted Chod teachings identify the practice of Opening the Gate of Space as the most significant element of the Chod system—possibly more important even than offerings of the body—including Aryadeva the Brahmin (the author of the “root text" of Chod), Thang stong rgyal pa, Tsong kha pa (1357-1419, who cites Aryadeva), Jamgon Kongtrul and, more recently, the Geluk teacher Zong Rinpoche (1905-1984) and the Karma Kagyu teacher Kalu Rinpoche (1905-1989). For example, Jamgon Kongtrul blo gros mtha' yas (1813-1899), the scholar responsible for collecting many rare

texts from Tibetan traditions such as Chod, emphasizes the importance of the Opening the Gate of Space practice, which he describes as a method enabling one to focus on intrinsic awareness (rig pa) and to settle mental phenomena (1982, 3:425). Kongtrul develops his own teaching on offering the body, which he explicitly connects with the Chod lineage of Machik. In this teaching, Kongtrul refers to the Opening as “the king of all transference; the meaning of the wisdom mind of the Mother [i.e. Machik qua the Mother Prajnapapramita]; the actual Holy Dharma; the final meaning of the doctrine of cutting off the

object—the demons." For Kongtrul, not only is the practice of Opening as outlined according to Chod the epitome of all transference practices, it encapsulates the perfection of wisdom, the Buddhist Dharma, and the quintessential meaning of Chod which severs the Negative Forces. More recently, Kalu Rinpoche has stated that Opening “is said to be one hundred times superior to ordinary powa [‘pho ba]” (1995, 156).

As Kalu Rinpoche suggests, precursors for the Chod practice of Opening the Gate of Space might be located in the ‘pho ba techniques of separating consciousness from the body taught by Niguma and Naropa. A key difference between Chod Opening the Gate of Space and ‘pho ba is that the former is an integral part of a more elaborate practice, while the latter is considered its own practice. Conventionally, the practice of ‘pho ba is repeated a number

of times in preparation for death, but then is not practiced again until the time of death. On the other hand, Opening is a method for reorienting consciousness to uncontaminated emptiness (stong pa nyid; sunyata); that is, returning to a state of intrinsic awareness released from processes of dualistic thinking. In Mahayana Buddhism, emptiness is defined as the lack of inherent existence, and thus permanence, of “self” and “other.” While “self”

and “other” appear to be independent, they are concepts arising from mental operations of discrimination and categorization of phenomena that are impermanent and lacking any independent essence. Through the practice of Opening the Gate of Space, one is able to transform one's discriminating consciousness to an “extra-discriminating” or immediate mode of awareness. One's conventionally-functioning consciousness, constructed through discriminating “self” and “other” from birth (or even from previous births), is thereby transformed and reunited with its

Source

[[Category:]] [[Category:]] [[Category:]]