Translator’s Introduction
So much on Severance has been written in European languages, not to mention the vast literature in Tibetan, that the following brief summary should be enough to introduce the subject and provide a context for the texts translated here.
Chö (gcod), translated here as “severance,” is a Tibetan term referring to a cycle of Tibetan Buddhist practice and to the lineage initiated by the Tibetan woman Machik Labdrön some time during the eleventh to twelfth centuries. It is primarily associated with the Perfection of Wisdom (Skt. Prajñāpāramitā), a set of sutras attributed to Buddha Śākyamuni that represent the second phase of Buddhist teachings that developed in India, which has been called the “middle turning” of the wheel of Dharma. The Tibetan term for Severance is normally spelled gcod, but is often used interchangeably with its homonym spyod (Skt. caryā), meaning “conduct” or “activity.” Caryā is used often in the Perfection of Wisdom literature to describe the activity of a bodhisattva, the enactment of their realization of emptiness and compassion. The substitute by Tibetan authors of the spelling gcod seems to reflect its vernacular usage to indicate something that is decided or resolved once and for all. For instance, the phrases thag gcod pa (literally, “to cut the rope”), or rtsa ba nas bcad pa (literally, “to cut from the roots”), are both idiomatic expressions that have nothing to do with actual cutting. This identification of the term “severance” with the Perfection of Wisdom terminology of “practice” and “conduct” exactly reveals its intent—to act out (spyod) in a decisive way (gcod) one’s own integration of that perfect wisdom. (See the glossary of terms for more on this.)
In Tibet itself, Severance was one of the many new sects that flourished in the second dissemination of Buddhism from India (950–1350 CE). It has been classified as a branch of Shijé (zhi byed), or “Pacification,” one of the eight practice lineages, or “chariots,” delineated in a particular Tibetan scheme to organize the vast amount of material that entered Tibet from India. However, no actual text on Severance has been discovered in the early texts of Pacification. Despite this quandary, its classification has afforded a kind of validation in being connected with the sources of Buddhism through the great Indian master Dampa Sangyé.
There is no doubt, however, that Machik Labdrön herself is the sole progenitor for the teachings and the lineage. This remarkable woman was born in a village called Tsomer in lower Tamshö in Ei Gangwa, in the Labchi region of central Tibet. She became known as Labkyi Drönma, “the Light of Lab,” or sometimes Labkyi Drölma, “the Liberator of Lab.” The respectful title Machik, “One Mother,” was bestowed later, and is shared with several other important women of the time. It must be conceded, however, that Machik Labdrön’s exceptionally compassionate practice of dealing with negative forces by feeding them seems particularly motherly. She showed remarkable abilities from an early age, and later gained mastery of speed reading. This led to a job as a chaplain in a patron’s house, where she met her future partner, providing her biographers with a fascinating narrative revealing the problematic status of female masters in Tibet. The recitation of the Perfection of Wisdom texts also led to her epiphany about the sections on māra, which can be translated as “devil,” “demon,” or [spiritual] “death.” She also had visionary relationships with the bodhisattva Tārā and the Great Mother (yum chen mo), the personification of the Perfection of Wisdom. These, and her important connection with the Indian master Dampa Sangyé, were the inspiration for what became one of the most widespread practices in Tibet.
The early Severance teachings represent aspects derived from both sutra and tantra sources. Their focus is on the understanding of emptiness that severs fixation on the reification of the self and the resultant conduct based on compassion for others. The impediments that prevent such realization, the māras, were a point of departure. As time went on, specific techniques and methods of practice (Skt. sādhana) accrued to this philosophy. While the main practice has remained the cultivation of insight and the enactment of separating consciousness from the body, the post-meditation practice known as lü jin (lus byin, “giving the body”) developed elaborate visualizations and ritual accoutrements that came to dominate popular practice. The sources for this aspect are obscure and may well come from the surrounding culture of the Tibetan plateau, harking back to Bön and other pre-Buddhist practices. Some elements associated with shamanic practices are enacted in the Severance rituals, despite their Buddhist soteriological assertions. And many of the spirits that are mentioned occupied Tibetan territories long before the advent of Buddhism.
"The spirits of Tibet were part of the landscape long before Indian Buddhism found its way over the Himalayas."
With its beautiful melodies and lurid visualizations, Severance quickly became popular in Tibet for exorcism, healing, and other practical usages. Its followers did not establish monasteries, as the lifestyle of the roaming mendicant was emphasized, but Severance was incorporated into most Buddhist schools in Tibet. Their liturgies are drawn from the works of Labdrön’s descendants, or from the visionary experiences of yogis and yoginīs, or found as treasure texts, or terma (gter ma). In recent years, Severance has gained popularity worldwide, with many iterations in current practice.
Invisible Forces
Severance is the practice of facing one’s fears. There is much that concerns spirits in the literature because they were a principal source of fear in Tibetan culture. And yet they defy categorization or comparison with the spirits of other cultures. Though many of their names were assigned by Tibetan translators of Sanskrit based on names of the spirits of India at the time of the Buddha, the spirits of Tibet were part of the landscape long before Indian Buddhism found its way over the Himalayas. Whether they are the same spirits that were commonly thought to occupy the subcontinent is doubtful and, in any case, impossible to know. Not only that, but it seems each subculture and valley in Tibet, even each village, may have had different ideas about their invisible neighbors. (For the names of specific spirits, see glossary 2.)
The one centrally important idea taken from Indian Buddhism that appears throughout Severance literature regarding these unseen forces is māra, “devil” or “evil.” In Sanskrit, māra is a nominalized form of the verbal root mṛ-, “to die,” and can be associated with actual death or spiritual death. It was personified in the Perfection of Wisdom scriptures and elsewhere as the familiar figure of the Buddha’s antagonist or tempter, a role similar to the “devil” in other religious traditions. The Tibetan translation of māra as bdud (pronounced “dü” with a silent final “d”) is complicated, since there were already hordes of bdud in Tibet before the advent of Buddhism. Nevertheless, in the context here, it is used to indicate hindrances to the attainment of enlightenment. This is what gives Severance its full name: Dükyi Chö Yul (bdud kyi gcod yul), “the devil/evil that is the object to sever.” It is not only the personification of evil as so many demons to be severed, but also of any reification of objective reality (yul: “object”) as intrinsically existing—the most salient point of all Perfection of Wisdom teachings, or even of all Buddhist teachings.
There were four māras in the teachings of the Buddha: that of the five aggregates, afflictive emotions, actual death, and complacency (“divine child”). These four obviously interrupt or prevent spiritual development. Machik Labdrön would eventually focus on four other devils: the tangible devil, the intangible devil, the devil of exaltation, and the devil of inflation. These are thoroughly described in the course of this commentary. All of them come down to the last one—the devil of inflating a nonexistent self into reified existence. Machik says:
That which is called “devil” is not some actual great big black thing
that scares and petrifies whomever sees it. A devil is anything that
obstructs the achievement of freedom. Therefore, even loving and
affectionate friends become devils [with regard to] freedom. Most
of all, there is no greater devil than this fixation to a self.
The other important term in Severance literature is “gods and demons,” or perhaps just “god-demons” (lha ’dre). (Or even the familiar duality, “angels and demons.”) These are manifestations of unseen forces conceived of as benevolent or malicious, the helpers and harmers of negotiated existence. There is not much discussion of gods separately from demons in Severance practice. Rather, the terms are signals of our overall perception of the phenomenal world as basically dualistic, either good or bad. But this binary is shifty at best, which should be the first clue to its emptiness.
Severance has remained essentially an instruction on coping with stressful situations that provoke fear and, beyond that, a way to actively seek out such circumstances in order to test one’s realization of perfect wisdom. This is clearly evident and relentlessly repeated in these works by Jamyang Gönpo.
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Severance, or Cho, is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of facing one’s fears. In three remarkable texts lucidly translated and introduced by Sarah Harding, the thirteenth-century Severance master Jamyang Gönpo shares advice that goes straight to the heart of both understanding and experiencing the practice. For hundreds of years, Severance has remained essentially an instruction on coping with stressful situations that provoke fear and, beyond that, a way to actively seek out such circumstances in order to test one’s realization of perfect wisdom.
