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I first heard my teacher Anam Thubten speak about the practice of chöd (Tib.: gcod) when I was pregnant with my first son. My teacher said chöd meant cutting through, severance. He introduced Machig Lapdrön, the founder of the chöd dharma. She was a 12th-century Tibetan mahasiddha, a highly realized person. In the West, we might call such a person a saint.
I was sitting on a burgundy cushion in my teacher’s temple. It has soaring buttresses and is paneled in redwood. I’ve always felt so safe in that temple, like I am meditating in the rib cage of a whale and nothing can touch me. My teacher explained that there would be a group of people hiking into the Canyon de Chelly, on Navajo sacred land, to do a chöd retreat. They’d hike in the heat and camp in the canyon. I remember that day in the temple vividly because I had this toes-to-head whoosh of feeling. That’s mine, I fel...
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