Chodpa's Inspiration

Machig’s Chöd, also known as Mahamudra Chöd, has been widespread in Tibet since Machig’s lifetime. It is also called ‘The Beggars’ Offering’ or the ‘The Cutting-Off-Ritual.’ Chöd is a visionary Buddhist practice of cutting attachment to one’s corporeal form (in terms of the dualistic proclivity to relate to one’s corporeal form as a reference-point that proves one’s existence). This means that a practitioner offers the mandala of their own body in a ganacakra rite. The practitioner works entirely with their own mind, visualizing the offering, and—by practicing in lonely and dreaded places, like cemeteries—works to overcome all fear. This is also why Chöd was often used to overcome sickness in order to heal oneself and others. In some lineages of the Chöd practice, chodpas and chodmas (practitioners of Chod) use a bell, small drum (a Chöd damaru), and a thigh-bone trumpet (kangling) made of human bone (often obtained from the charnal ground of sky burials).”