Offering the Body: The Tibetan Practice of Chöd
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Offering the Body: The Tibetan Practice of Chöd
The eagle does its day job feasting on what’s left by crow and vulture. Anything I’d planned to do is over.
As my head nods its usual consent to imaginary promises and dreams my corpse appears before me.
Time’s come to set my mind to ribbon flesh, chop small, pile it in a dish made from the cranial bones.
I scout the stinking ground for anything to start the fire, use my own desire. The skull cup, on its tripod, enlarges as it heats. Half-moon on a finger pokes from the pile of blood and bones simmering to stew, to nectar.
All who are wise, the ordinary, furred, obstructors, germs of sickness— may their bodies, minds, be sated.
From every distance and dimension, beings afraid, unsatisfied, or blessed, feast to satisfaction— devils, angels, animals, everyone I owe.
I see no stopping to the world but there is respite from the demons that arise daily in the head.
That this ritual could do the same thing twice —my awareness cuts that thought. O, I cherished this poor body. I quake. Invite.
Now, knife the ritual words in vast space reduced to dust mounded like clouds clinging dearly held to let in silence.
For all that is perceived, flesh or consciousness, appears then disappears, image in a mirror— red drop, a fingernail, a ball of hair.
Tampa Review 51 (2016)
Source
[[1]]