KTD 10-Day Teachings/Song of the Turkey Buzzard

Turkey Vulture, photo by Elizabeth Barakah Hodges

Back in the 1980s, when I was working as a program assistant for the University Extension division of the University of California at Berkeley, I made the mistake of reading Lew Welch’s poem Song of the Turkey Buzzard on my lunch hour.

I say “mistake” because the poem—in which Welch predicts his own suicide and sky burial—had a profound emotional effect on me, and I went into what I can only describe as some kind of altered state for about four hours. In short—I was useless at my job that afternoon.

In Tibet, where the ground is often too frozen to allow for burial and where firewood for cremations can be scarce, one way that the dead are “buried” is through what is called sky burial—ritual dismemberment of the corpse, the parts of which are then consumed by vultures.

So I was stunned to hear the following story, tacked onto one of the morning teachings by Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche as a seemingly impromptu embellishment. (Note from AWW: This is not a verbatim transcript.)

In Tibet, the people who prepare bodies for sky burial are chod practitioners who do practice for the people who have died.

The birds that eat the bodies are considered dakas and dakinis, and are remarkable in their behavior.

After people who have earned merit through compassionate actions are dismembered, vultures will encircle the body but not touch it. Another vulture comes from the sky, gives a call, and lands on the center of the body. This vulture does a little dance, and then begins to eat—at which point the other vultures begin to eat, too.

The feast is considered a ganachakra (sacred feast), and the central vulture is the ganachakra master.

Now, many people will think this is a gruesome story, but I think it’s beautiful—and it connected me, immediately, to that experience long ago when I read Song of the Turkey Buzzard for the first time.

So I wonder if Lew Welch provided the food for a ganachakra, never seen by human eyes, out there in the California wilderness so long ago.

SONG OF THE TURKEY BUZZARD

For Rock Scully

who heard it

the first

time

Praises, Tamalpais,

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,

She of the Wheeling Birds

I.

The rider riddle is easy to ask,

but the answer might surprise you.

How desperately I wanted Cougar

(I, Leo, etc.)

brilliant proofs: terrain,

color, food, all

nonsense. All made up.

They were always there, the

laziest high-flyers, bronze-winged,

the silent ones

"A cunning man always laughs and smiles,

even if he's desperately hungry,

while a good bird always flies like a vulture,

even if it is starving."

(Milarepa sang)

Over and over again, that sign:

I hit one once, with a .22

heard the "flak" and a feather flew off, he

flapped his wings just once and

went on sailing. Bronze

(when seen from above)

as I have seen them, all day sitting

on a cliff so steep they

circled below me, in the up-draft

passed so close I could see his

eye.

Praises, Tamalpais,

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,

She of the Wheeling Birds

Another time the vision was so clear another saw it, too.

Wet, a hatching bird, the shell of the egg streaked with dry scum,

exhausted, wet, too weak to move the shriveled wings, fierce

sun-heat, sand. Twitching, as with elbows (we all have the same

parts). Beak open, neck stretched, gasping for air. O how we

want to live!

"Poor little bird," she said, "he'll never make it."

Praises, Tamalpais,

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,

She of the Wheeling Birds

Even so, I didn't get it for a long long while. It finally came

in a trance, a coma, half in sleep and half in fever-mind. A Turkey

Buzzard, wounded, found by a rock on the mountain. He wanted

to die alone. I had never seen one, wild, so close. When I reached

out, he sidled away, head drooping, as dizzy as I was. I put my

hands on his wing-shoulders and lifted him. He tried, feebly, to

tear at my hands with his beak. He tore my flesh too slightly to

make any difference. Then he tried to heave his great wings. Weak

as he was, I could barely hold him.

A drunken veterinarian found a festering bullet in his side,

a .22 that slid between the great bronze scales his feathers were.

We removed it and cleansed the wound.

Finally he ate the rotten gophers I trapped and prepared

for him. Even at first, he drank a lot of water. My dog seemed

frightened of him.

They smell sweet

meat is dry on their talons

The very opposite of

death

bird of re-birth

Buzzard

meat is rotten meat made

sweet again and

lean, unkillable, wing-locked

soarer till he's but a

speck in the highest sky

infallible

eye finds Feast! on

baked concrete

free!

squashed rabbit ripened:

our good cheese

(to keep the highways clean, and bother no Being )

II.

Praises Gentle Tamalpais

Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty of the

sweetest water

and the soaring birds

great seas at the feet of thy cliffs

Hear my last Will & Testament:

Among my friends there shall always be

one with proper instructions

for my continuance.

Let no one grieve.

I shall have used it all up

used up every bit of it.

What an extravagance!

What a relief!

On a marked rock, following his orders,

place my meat.

All care must be taken not to

frighten the natives of this

barbarous land, who

will not let us die, even,

as we wish.

With proper ceremony disembowel what I

no longer need, that it might more quickly

rot and tempt

my new form

-

NOT THE BRONZE CASKET BUT THE BRAZEN WING

SOARING FOREVER ABOVE THEE O PERFECT

O SWEETEST WATER O GLORIOUS

WHEELING

BIRD

(From "Ring of Bone" by Lew Welch, Grey Fox Press, Bolinas, California)

KTD 10-Day Teachings/Machik Labdron and the Practice of Severance (Chod)

The picture of Machik Labdron, above, is from an absolutely beautiful thangka that was won in a fundraising raffle (for the benefit of KTD) by one of our Western lamas.

I came to these teachings, a continuation of a teaching that was begun last year, for three reasons—first, because I am fascinated by the Tibetan woman Machik Labdron and her system of practice, chod or the severance of self-fixation; second, because the only relief I have ever experienced from being stuck in this bag of bones and flesh has come while writing or working with the tarot cards, and I think there must be some other way to overcome being stuck on “I”; third and finally, because as a Buddhist I have vowed to try to help all sentient beings, and so eventually being able to practice Machik’s system of severance on self-fixation may enable me to do this.

I have learned from my teachers—and it does seems to me to be true—that fixating on my own wants and desires is the source of numerous, all-pervasive problems. Severance offers the opportunity to cut through self-fixation once and for all, in order to benefit both the individual practitioner and, by extension, all sentient beings.

So I arrived in Woodstock and at KTD with a keen interest in getting further instruction from Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche on the text titled Machik’s Complete Explanation.

What I did not realize (and this falls into the category of things about which I can only say, DUH!) was that the teaching encompassed not only the reading transmission of the severance practice text, but also the full instructions on the practice itself! Rinpoche let this cat out of the bag in response to a question during the first couple of days of the teaching. My first clue about this should have come from the title of the text and the teaching—Machik’s COMPLETE Explanation—but for some reason, the idea that I would be receiving transmission and practice instructions went right over my head, probably because I have received these kinds of teachings in a different order in the past.

Usually I have taken an empowerment as part of a group and received the reading transmission (if it wasn’t done as part of the empowerment) and practice instructions later. So I asked Rinpoche if we weren’t getting the information backwards this time, and he explained that no, this is how practice instructions were usually given in Tibet—reading transmission and instructions first, and empowerment later. He explained that it’s fine to do things in this order, “as long as you plan to take the empowerment at a later date.”

So right away, my mind was blown; it got really blown apart a day or two later (see next post).

Here, in no particular order, are some gems from the teachings, things that I believe it’s okay to share:

-You include your parents in the practice of severance because they gave you the gift of your body. Your mind comes from your previous karma.

-The liturgy of the “Charity of the Body” (lu jin in Tibetan) was written by Machik herself. Note from A Word Witch (AWW): So when we hear the liturgy, or chant her words, we are really hearing her.

-Machik’s system begins with love (or lovingkindness, the wish for all beings to be happy) because “Love is like a pipe; compassion is the water that runs through the pipe.” (Compassion = the wish for beings to be free from suffering.)

-We are born with self-fixation, life after life. We mistake the absence of a self as the existence of a self. The seventh consciousness, which is the afflicted consciousness, mistakes the eighth or all-basis consciousness as a self. Note from AWW: So we are, in a sense, born trapped. This idea does not help my claustrophobia. L

-The idea that beings spend 49 days in the bardo (the in-between state between death and rebirth) is “a gross generalization.” For some beings, the time is shorter; for others, longer; and some beings don’t go into the bardo at all, but rather go straight to a pure realm or a hell realm.

-A highlight of the 10-day experience was watching some of the lamas who have gone through KTD’s three-year retreat perform the chod ritual, complete with mesmerizing drum and trumpet sounds and melodious chanting. Rinpoche encouraged us to pray to Machik throughout the ritual: “Great Mother, please grant me your blessings.” Note from AWW: I did as Rinpoche suggested, and felt that I had already received her blessings just by being there!

-Powa, or the transference of consciousness done at the time of death, was performed on animals (as well as people) in Tibet.

-Less effective: “May we get rid of swine flu.” More effective: “May everyone’s swine flu dissolve into me.”

-What we call death is simply the separation of body and mind. Note from AWW: Body rots. Mind doesn’t.

-There is no “near” or “far” with regard to the guru’s blessing. Blessings can be received anywhere, regardless of locality. Whenever anyone thinks of Buddha, Buddha is there—and the same applies to His Holiness Karmapa, Guru Rinpoche, and all other enlightened beings. People who hear statues speak (as is the case in Tibet; there are many stories) are those who are certain of the Buddha’s blessing; these sounds are not hallucinations. “Pray to those whose compassion is beyond near and far.”

-Someone asked a question about the relationship between taking pain medications at the time of death and doing the Buddhist practices that are usually performed at that time—good idea, or bad? Rinpoche said that if the medications help you to concentrate, they are okay; if they make you woozy, no.

-The very first question I ever asked Rinpoche, back in 1991, was related to my curiosity about whether some places were more conducive to meditation practice than others—so I was interested in hearing him say, in relation to a similar but not identical question, that the place of practice does not really matter for us as long as we are confident that the Buddhas and bodhisattvas are present. It’s good to think that “All wisdom dakas and dakinis are gathered in this place”; then your practice will flourish, and obstacles will be dispelled. When teachers have told students to go to certain places to meditate, it’s because the teachers have seen “through their wisdom vision” that the students have connections to those places that will help to ripen their dharmic development.

-Positive meditation experiences are not necessarily good. Negative meditation experiences are not necessarily bad.

Now, about the vultures…(see next post).

Who Is Machik Labdron, and Why Do I Care About Her? (Part Three)

Fast forward about another 20 years to the publication of Machik’s Complete Explanation, translated by Sarah Harding—the most complete account of Machik’s life and teachings that is available, at least that I’m aware of—and to the summer of 2008, when my own refuge lama, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, began a series of teachings on that text.

I had wanted to get teachings about Machik’s life and practice for many years, so to be able to attend these seminars with my very own dharma teacher is a precious opportunity indeed. Like many Machik fans, I yearn to do chod—the practice she developed and taught—but even more important, at least to me, is the opportunity to learn about her life and to hear her words of wisdom voiced by Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche.

The spiritual autobiography of a Tibetan Buddhist teacher is called a namthar. Reading or listening to namthars has always been one of my favorite things, because a namthar is really a teaching in itself as well as a source of tremendous inspiration, both creatively and with regard to putting the dharma into practice. And according to Rinpoche, Machik’s Complete Explanation is not only her authoritative biography, but also the earliest source of her own teachings.

Last summer’s 10-day teachings at KTD featured Rinpoche concluding a teaching about Gampopa’s instructions to the assembly (his disciples and students), and beginning the teaching on Machik’s Complete Explanation. To signify the end of one set of teachings and the beginning of another, Rinpoche wore a large butterfly pin on his robes the day he started teaching about Machik Labdron.

Attending the 10-day teachings is a unique experience that offers students the opportunity to immerse themselves completely in the dharma, from listening to the teachings to spending time in dharma practice, meeting other students from throughout the country, volunteering to do some of the many tasks required to keep the center running, enjoying a vegetarian diet, and browsing and shopping in what may well be the best Buddhist bookstore in North America, Namse Bangdzo. (Yes, I was born to shop—primarily for books—and Namse Bangdzo is a kind of heaven for me.)

Some highlights from my notes from last year’s teachings: Machik Labdron had to be born as a woman in order to tame Tibet; “A man couldn’t have done it,” Rinpoche said.

Machik was an expert in triple voice modulation; she could read several lines of text at once. “Maybe only one person today can do this.”

Machik and Milarepa were contemporaries. There are no stories about the two of them meeting, but Rinpoche said it would have been possible.

There is not just one form of chod, in which the practitioner imagines feeding his or her own body to surrounding demons; there are many. The essence of chod practice is the cutting through of selfishness.

Thanks to the American teacher and writer Pema Chodron, many people here in the West have learned about the practice of tonglen, sometimes called “sending and taking,” during which we work with our breath to transform negativity into positive energy.

“Tonglen is imaginary,” Rinpoche said at one point. “Chod is real.” In response to a question, Rinpoche said that for accomplished practitioners, this is actually true—the more harm that demons cause, the happier the chod practitioner becomes, because the ground for practice becomes more fertile.

The greatest demon or mara (obstruction to enlightenment) is fixation on the self. To cut through fixation—“That is the dharma system of this beggar woman,” Machik Labdron.

The longer I am around the dharma, the more it becomes obvious to me that in order to really practice for the benefit of sentient beings, the more one has to give up attachments to hopes, fears, and personal rewards—even to the point of giving up ideas about “I, Me, Mine,” as my favorite Beatle, George Harrison, sang all those years ago.

Giving up attachment to self, giving up hope and fear, giving up everything we have been taught to hold dear—giving it all up in a supreme act of generosity for the benefit of other sentient beings—that is what Machik Labdron and her teachings are all about; that is who she is, and why I care about her.

Who Is Machik Labdron, and Why Do I Care About Her? (Part Two)

Fast forward a good 20 years from the time I first read about chod until I stumbled upon another book that mentioned that practice, Women of Wisdom by Tsultrim Allione.

Women of Wisdom is a remarkable book that opened my eyes to the fact that Tibet was home to many great female practitioners of Buddhism—practitioners who lived and practiced, in large part, outside the monasteries that were the most well known centers of Buddhist practice.

These women weren’t necessarily solitary practitioners—many had families and disciples—but their practice places were the charnel grounds, the haunted places, the spots under lone trees, the caves and springs and hills and mountains of wild Tibet, not the well-kept shrine rooms of the monastic centers. This idea of doing practice outdoors, in natural settings, drew me like a magnet.

The story of Machik Labdron features prominently in Women of Wisdom (in which her first name is spelled “Machig”). Like Alexandra David-Neel’s and Janis Nelson’s, Machik’s life story is the stuff of Hollywood epics.

With a previous incarnation as a male yogi in India, Machik manifests in Tibet—through the intercession of dakinis—as a young girl with three eyes, the third of which is located at the “third eye” spot in the middle of her forehead. One of her early given names was Sherab Dronme, “Burning Torch of Wisdom,” which reminds me so much of Alexandra David-Neel’s Tibetan name, “Lamp of Wisdom.”

Because she had unique talents in reading Buddhist scripture aloud, Machik spent several years as a reader at a nearby monastery. From one of her teachers, she received the following instruction:

“…if you do not grasp with your mind, you will find a fresh state of being. If you let go of clinging, a state beyond all conceptions will be born. Then the fire of great Prajna [wisdom] will grow. Dark, self-clinging ignorance will be conquered. The root teaching is to examine the movement of your own mind very carefully. Do this!”

Later, doing practice at another place, Machik levitated through a wall and landed in a tree over a spring where an angry naga lived. The naga was frightened of her and called up an army of demons, but instead of being afraid of them, Machik offered them her body, but they could not devour her because she was egoless.

They could not devour her because she was egoless. Such is the heart of the chod teachings: Those who are egoless cannot fall prey to demons, including the three demons of attachment, aversion, and ignorance, and, it is said, the demons of contagious diseases.

Machik goes on to meet her primary teacher, Phadampa Sangye (who may or may not be the same person as the Bodhidharma who took Buddhist teachings into China); marry her consort, Topabhadra, with whom she had children; receive teachings directly from the Bodhisattva Arya Tara in a vision; and blend the teachings of mahamudra with the shamanistic elements of chod to create her own unique practice that comes down to us today in an unbroken lineage.

I was mesmerized by all the stories in Women of Wisdom, but especially by the story of Machik Labdron. It is worth noting Tsultrim Allione, the Western woman who wrote the book, has a fascinating story herself; she was recently recognized as an emanation of Machik by the lama at Machik’s center in Tibet, and she has started her own center, Tara Mandala, here in the United States.

Who Is Machik Labdron, and Why Do I Care About Her? (Part One)

The first time I can remember learning about Machik Labdron’s unique practice, chod or “cutting”—as in cutting attachment to the ego, the idea of “me” as an individual who is separate from others, and therefore special—was in Alexandra David-Neel’s book Magic and Mystery in Tibet.

In that book, David-Neel describes a conversation about a chod practitioner that she has with one of Tibet’s rinpoches, or precious teachers, in which the rinpoche tells her:

“It is hard to free oneself from delusion…to blot out the mirage of the imaginary world and to liberate one’s mind from fanciful beliefs. Enlightenment is a precious gem and must be bought at a high price. Methods to reach supreme liberation are many. You may follow another one, less coarse than that suited to the man whom you pity, but I am certain that your way must be as hard as that of my disciple. If it is easy it is a wrong one.”

If your path is easy, it is a wrong path. These words ring true for me, based on my own experience since taking refuge as a Buddhist just a few months before my father died in 1991. While I am not a great meditator, I do try to put the teachings of Buddhism into practice in my daily life; I can truthfully say that this is the hardest work I have ever done.

Like that of Janis Nelson, mentioned earlier in this blog, the story of Alexandra David-Neel’s life would make a great movie: from opera star to intrepid traveler to Buddhist practitioner who became, in all likelihood, the first Western woman to enter Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, during the time when Tibet was almost completely isolated from the Western world.

I can really see Lucy Lawless, of Xena: Warrior Princess fame, in the title role as Alexandra—but I digress.

David-Neel’s Tibetan name, bestowed upon her by one of her Buddhist teachers, was “Lamp of Wisdom.”

Several centuries before David-Neel’s visits to Tibet, the practice of chod had been established in Tibet by another female “lamp,” Machik Lapkyi Dronma or Machik Labdron—“One Mother, Light of Lap” (Lap being the region into which Machik was born).

Maybe one reason I resonate so strongly with these women is because my own given name comes from a Latin root meaning “light"—or maybe because, when I was learning to talk, “light” was my first word.

Hmmm, mentioning my own stuff—I guess I’m still attached to the idea of “me” as a separate, special individual. I guess the awareness of that attachment is one of the reasons I am drawn to the teachings of Machik Labdron.