Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

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Malcolm
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by Malcolm »

yagmort wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 4:00 pmchod liturgy
Is not real chod. It is actually a practice one engages in after one has throughly grasped the principles of the four māras. The Lujin is a practice related to conduct.
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Johnny Dangerous
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by Johnny Dangerous »

yagmort wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 4:00 pm
Lingpupa wrote: Fri Feb 03, 2023 9:23 am ...I don't know if the lama has given a detailed explanation.
darn it.. would be really interesting to know!
Johnny Dangerous wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 12:18 am ...If people want fearful and difficult environments, they are all over.
i am not getting the point, honestly. i am not saying there are not enough scary or haunted places nowadays, i am saying it's seems unlikely to be visiting them for practice regularly, as chod liturgy is quite loud and there will always be danger of violating some one's property, federal laws, social norms, etc.
I don’t know where you are from, but crazy nonsense goes down all over the place where I live. Even traditional Chodpas wouldn’t be that out of place. And why would you need to trespass, etc.? There are all kinds of places you could go.
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Meditate upon Bodhicitta when sad

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when suffering occurs

Meditate upon Bodhicitta when you are scared

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treehuggingoctopus
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by treehuggingoctopus »

Johnny Dangerous wrote: Thu Feb 02, 2023 12:18 am
heart wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 10:54 pm
Silent Bob wrote: Wed Feb 01, 2023 9:57 pm In a long-ago community meeting in Boulder someone asked Trungpa Rinpoche if practicing chod in cemetery on University Hill would be charnel ground practice.
"Just go work in a hospital", CTR replied--'that's a real charnel ground".
I took him at his word, went back to school for a couple of years and spent the next 25 years of my life doing bedside patient care. It was a charnel ground for sure, but I (hardly ever) regretted my decision.
:good:
Yeah, this is what I was getting at. If people want fearful and difficult environments, they are all over.
The haunted cemetery/eerie woodland theme has become a literary convention, attractive to some, mildly frightening to others, meh to most of us in Europe and the Anglosphere. Give me ghosts, demons, evil fairies and the whole lot of the Monster Manual, please, let them take away at least a bit of the modern disenchantment and the all-consuming ennui -- which is, I think, a valid reason to practice chod, but certainly not the reason traditional chodpas would give for choosing their spot.

Genuinely hair-raising environments (i.e., frightening in a bad way) are hardly in short supply, these days. And, as people have said, one really does not need a special place anymore, as much of the terrifying is placeless, and disseminates itself wildly.

PS. I think it is really not a good idea to visit emergency rooms, terminal wards, etc., in order to foster one's chod practice. There is a whiff of voyeurism here, and one is of course perfectly safe, it is the others who are in pain -- whereas the original chodpa risked not just their comfort, but also life.
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BareBones
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by BareBones »

Many people have correctly pointed out that hospitals, areas with high levels of predatory criminality (I don't really recommend experimenting with this though), etc, are remain fear inducing environs - charnel grounds, more or less. Totally agree, but I also think that traditional locations (cemeteries, etc) remain appropriate. Sure, they seem banal to your awareness at the moment, and most of them these days are really designed to promote a feeling of peaceful repose. But they're still places of grief and death. You just need to open up to that. Some of you are being too dismissive, I think. It has nothing to do with disenchantment/re-enchantment. Just being aware and taking things seriously.

I also again recommend actually getting out into the wilderness, or other desolate places. If you think you can't get spooked in the woods, in abandoned buildings, etc, in the deep night, you're blowing smoke up your ass and haven't spent enough time there. Things can get weird.

In short, Chod remains potent. The world hasn't really changed very much, under the surface, and I think understanding this will enhance all of your Vajrayana practices.
Kalavinka
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by Kalavinka »

I agree. The woods even on a sunny day can be very creepy….a primal sense of being watched by multiple other than human intelligences.

A different point that has been missed from several of the recent threads on this and related topics is that each person is at a different point in their practice. Most teachers stress that there’s no point starting charnel ground practice until your guru indicates you are ready. In my experience they are also able to advise what will be a meaningful ‘charnel ground’ for the individual and that is often very different from what the practitioner would have thought / chosen of their own accord.
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by Ayu »

IMHO, it's worth to work softly on one's anxieties. One can train in small steps to face them.

Woods and woods can be very differently.
Some little gatherings of picea scare me at night and I cannot find out why.
Other woods feel like home to me. I feel secure and protected there even in darkness.
Soma999
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by Soma999 »

The charnel ground is inside, you have an army of god and demons inside, so you can practice at home and receive great benefits from it.

If you want to practice outside, charnel ground is not the only place to go. You can practice in the forest, near a river, at the ocean, on the mountains, in beautiful places. The elemental energy and beings may respond to your practice.

That being said, i would not do chod in such a way without proper guidance, good understanding of the practice and how to behave for what could happen, and without some experience.

Chod is very real, not just a mind game, and should be practice in a reasonnable way.

To practice well, it is good to have good guidance. I suggested on this thread very good books to learn chod in a profund way.
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heart
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by heart »

yagmort wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 3:13 pm i may be wrong but here's my curiosity: as far as i understand, the main thing about chöd is practicing in spooky, fear inducing environments (tib. nyentsa). back in the days in Tibet everyone knew who chodpas are, so there were no big obstacles for their practices. nowadays though, nyentsa seems no longer feasible as it used to be, as doing all these loud "weird" chöd things may call unwelcome attention from people who unaware of what’s going on, so they can be very judgemental or perhaps even hostile. is that the issue for chöd practice? or hostile people or cops are as welcome for the practice as visualized entities? if not, does that mean that practicing chöd in safe environments, as a home sadhana, make it just a pale of it former self and renders it essentially ineffective?
You are looking at this the wrong way. No one in Tibet started doing chöd practice in a spooky, fear inducing environment. They got transmissions, they studied the texts, they learnt how to do the practice, they asked questions, got more transmissions and so on and that took years and years. When they had a lot of confidence in doing the practice, some genuine experience, in a normal safe environment then their teacher might send them to a scary place to practice in order heighten their experience and realisation.
Many Tibetans are also really scared of ghosts so charnel ground practice was probably very rare. So looking at it this way there is no problem practicing chöd today, even in the West. The problem, as always, is finding a genuine teacher and to have the strength to apply the teachings and then over many years again and again request clarifications and further instructions as your practice progress. This is the truly difficult part. And if you actually arrive at the point of needing a scary place it isn't impossible to find.

/magnus
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"The principal practice is Guruyoga. But we need to understand that any secondary practice combined with Guruyoga becomes a principal practice." ChNNR (Teachings on Thun and Ganapuja)
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by pemachophel »

A couple of years ago I read about a Westerner who did the "100 springs chod retreat" in the Scottish Highlands.
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VolkerK
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Re: Has the Chöd practice become almost obsolete in modern times?

Post by VolkerK »

pemachophel wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 7:25 pm A couple of years ago I read about a Westerner who did the "100 springs chod retreat" in the Scottish Highlands.
see https://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=7287
James Low did chod retreats in india and ladakh and write a book about it: The Yogins of Ladakh: A Pilgrimage Among the Hermits of the Buddhist Himalayas
https://simplybeing.co.uk/book/books/yogins-of-ladakh/

he tanslate the Secret biography of Machig Labdron
https://simplybeing.co.uk/texts/transla ... g-labdron/

Machig Labdrön’s dzogchen
https://simplybeing.co.uk/audio-records ... anslation/

sarva mangalam
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