Chod: Cutting with cowardice

Egyptian Apprentice:

Unless you dare to face your own fears and ghosts,
you will never unfetter your mind from the wheel of suffering.

You can keep mingling around, pretending to know,
but only facing your dark side and cutting with fear will release you.

Ignorance of your real nature is the real enemy,
giving EGO a boost and keeping you in the mud of suffering.

You must take the determination to RENOUNCE to confused
consciousness, and start training in the art of cutting the veils of ignorance.

Only establishing yourself in the Right Vision of NO-SELF,
you will be able to embrace RIGPA and BLISS.

So, take a penetrating look at yourself into the mirror of
clear mind, and drop all prejudices about reality.

Focus on the five aggregates, and cut with the sword of wisdom
until you are left with your real self: LUMINOUS EMPTINESS.

Then you will see the next camp on our way up to the summit:
the MADIAMAKA camp.

Go ahead, with STRENGTH,
and you will soon become a fellow.

JUMPING INTO EMPTINESS

Don´t be scared to jump.

If you are accompanied by a qualified jumpmaster,
and you have trained properly,
the jump will unfetter your mind
from prejudices and conceptual thinking,
landing on the Nature of Mind.

Cut with your fear!

Padampa Sangye: The Vampire

The symbol of the vampire can be a good starting point to face our ancestral fears, hidden in the depth of the colective mind of the human race.

The vampire is a being who lives in the dark night of ignorance, who feeds on the blood or energy of its fascinated victims, and who can not bear the light of wisdom, just because it means his end, his vanishment.

In fact, the symbol of the vampire is the symbol of ego.

Ego drains our vital energy, fascinating us with its vain fantasies and projects, with its chimeras and fears, and it keeps us in a state of drowsiness or sleepiness, always keeping us away from the light of the clear mind, fettering us in its dark world of ilusion.

If we were aware that all of us, in a higher or lesser degree, are victims of the vampire of ego, then we could act in order to get rid of our unconscious victimism, and finish up the tyranny of this entity that deprives us from expressing our full potential.

But if we want to get rid of the vampire, we have to FACE it, and that means facing our deepest fears, accepting that right now they are fettering and limiting us.

This is what CHOD , or Cutting, is all about. This system was designed for qualified practitioners who DARE to LOOK at themselves in the true mirror of the master, and who have the STRENGTH and COURAGE to cut their FEARS.

CHOD is a DIRECT method that enables us to SEE the Nature of Mind, but if we are not prepared and qualified, it can be very dangerous and have terrible consequences on our mental balance, because there is a great deal of subconscious energy being unleashed.

This is the reason why we need to be under the supervision of a genuine master, just in case we need some help.

So, my friend, are you ready to face the vampire, or you just want to keep beeing its victim?

This is what Padampa Sangye said to Machig Labdron when they met for the first time.

CHOD: Padampa Sangye

Face your fears, don´t turn your back on them;
Put them on the back yard of emptiness, and cut
their necks with the sword of clarity.

Take their entrails out to the light, without fear,
and let them dry up under the sun of Rigpa:
then eat them, and tell me what their taste is.

If you say it is salty, I will give you more salt;
If you say it is sweet, I will give you more sugar.
Be careful when you answer, because you can
lose your tongue.

When you recognize One Taste,
you will SEE that fear is only the
shadow of Original Unborn Wisdom.

When Wisdom lights up the Mind,
fears vanish and there is only
Unlimited LOVE left.

Cut my friend, but do not forget to sharpen
your mind, because without a master,
the edge is lost, even if you know how to CUT.

Four yogas: One-pointedness

SEE the Nature of Mind:
Luminous Emptiness.

If you are of sharp faculties:
PHET

If you have medium capacity:
listen to your master and LOOK.

If you are of the gradual type:
train in shine and laktong.

Once you have seen the essence,
keep that Natural Awareness.

If you get distracted,use MINDFULNESS
to return to Awareness.

After you familiarizate with this state,
duality will vanish.

Then you will enter the second Yoga:
SIMPLICITY.

Unless you find a genuine master,
these are only empty words.

If your motivation is not pure,
SHINE will become an obstacle.

If your VISION is not perfect,
you will never see the essence.

Only ONE THING matters:
SEEING as you LOOK.

RIGPA

KUKURIPA: The Mirror

,
The first thing that a genuine master will do, is to act like a MIRROR, and reflect what the practitioner brings with himself, be this good or bad qualities.

Usually we have a very idealistic image of ourselves, only focussing on what we think are good qualities, and very often this image is very distorted, so we keep acting following habitudes that keep us away from the right path of liberation from ignorance.

During many lives we have been practicing different so called spiritual methods, and we have forged a very powerful "spiritual ego", which pushes us to act in a way that reinforces his growth and sends us to a sidetrack or sometimes a cul-de-sac.

The master has to show us the true reality of our situation, so we can SEE what we need to CHANGE in order to progress, and CUT the "spiritual EGO", which has been in some way useful in the past, but now is preventing us from AWAKENING to the TRUE NATURE of MIND.

There are many techniques that can be used, and which one will be used depends on many factors that the genuine master will take into account.

One method that is in close relation to mahamudra is CHOD (cutting), and if we use this powerful technique we can go beyond the dual "spiritual ego" into non-dual awareness.

In order to be successful in this, we have to trust our master when he will show us our limitations and imperfections, and be Courageous in polishing them, so we can progress to a more advanced level of being.

If the master is not a genuine one, his reflection of ourselves will be distorted, and we can end up lost in the middle of nowhere, traumatized or even going crazy.

This is a crucial stage in the path, because if we do a good job, everything will be much easier later on. But we must acknowledge that this stage is going to be difficult and dangerous, and that is why we need a trustworthy master who will make sure that this CUTTING process turns into a constructive one, and not into a destructive one.

The master that did most of this "dirty" work with Marpa was Kukuripa, helping him to overcome his bad temper.

So, let´s work on it.