herbs in Healing Chod

[Lozen]

Does anybody know what the herbs they use in Chod are? I was just curious. I went to a Healing Chod with a visiting teacher in July '05. I think it helped me temporarily. Afterwards they gave us a spoonful of stuff. I asked what it was, and they just said "herbs." I asked what they were for, and a nun said, "to soothe what ails you." It was very bitter, red and I think I tasted myrrh....

[Pero]

Can you say more about healing Chod? I think I vaguely remember reading once that it can be used for healing too, but other than that I know nothing about the healing use of Chod.

[Lozen]

Can you say more about healing Chod? I think I vaguely remember reading once that it can be used for healing too, but other than that I know nothing about the healing use of Chod.

 

Let me find the write-up I wrote and I'll post it.

[Lozen]

Oh, here it is, I wrote this a year and a half ago. By the way, the area that I felt was healed in that ritual, the weirdness there came back. It didn't go away for real until I did a ceremony a year later called Holy Ground, but that's a different post.

 

after boxing and a quick shower i went to a tibetan healing ritual called chod. it is about cutting away demons, or ego, or whatever you want to call it. they asked us to take off all protective jewelry and to stop working to defend or protect our bodies but just let them go and give them up for whatever wants to use them. i of course was a bit nervous at the proposition (everyone's expelling demons and i'm supposed to just turn my body over to whatever wants to use it? hands up elbows in chin down!!) but i did it anyway, and it was intense. i felt a lot of pain in that area in my hara which seemed to mostly go away by the end of the ritual but came back a little after. i am praying it is just residual. the lama, who i actually liked btw (even though the translator was a sexist asshole) played a drum and bell and chanted and thigh bone horn and stuff, and then after he put his drum on everyone's head and gave a blessing. i was filled with bliss. it is hard to describe. then he gave us some weird herb called distum or ditso or something which is a variety of herbs and ground crystals which have been prayed for. i put it under my tongue even without positively ID-ing it first, and it gave a new meaning to the word bitter. however i feel good and that hara area and my right knee feel pretty numb, which i guess is a good thing.

 

more on chod

I did some research on chod it is a ritual with roots in Tibetan Buddhism and Siberian shamanism.

 

It was interesting that the area where I had an imbalance hurt a lot, and then the pain was just gone and it feels great now. They say theyare "cutting" the afflictions of greed, hatred, confusion, pride and avarice. But if you get more advanced, you also cut through hope and fear. When you get even more advanced, you can go to burial grounds and terrifying places where most people would not go and lay the spirits to rest.

 

I am not a Buddhist, and the ritual I went to we didn't have to do anything, the lama did it all for us and we just had to face him, lie down and be open. But it is fascinating to me how so many of these concepts overlap...

 

The way I experienced it was letting the demons use my body and then destroying them. But they say the demons are internal and we were really cutting through attachment to the body, letting pure

awareness take over, and perceiving reality as it is.

 

I have had medicine people and healers tell me I was holding onto imbalances and now I see I was holding on to fear. I think the reason this ritual worked when so many others haven't for me was because I

finally let go of the fear-based need to "defend" my physical body.

 

Does this make sense? I know people who will visualize people they don't like when trying to get angry, or to take action, and I was one of those people, carrying faces around with me... It is hard to explain but I

think I held on to the imbalance because I was used to it. I think it is gone for real now. I hope so!!

 

More on Chod:

 

http://www.dharmafellowship.org/library/essays/chod.htm

 

http://www.vajrayanahawaii.org/teachings/chod.html

[Pero]

Very interesting, thank you.

[Lozen]

No problem... but I'm curious what the ditso or ditsum ground crystal and herb thingy was if anyone knows!

[rex]

I've got a listing of the contents of some dutsi somewhere and will dig it out for you.

 

This Holy Ground ceremony sounds good - what does it involve?

Edited January 25, 2007 by rex

[Lozen]

Rex, please do! Dutsi, ey?

 

Holy Ground is an Apache ceremony. I don't know how the Diiyin set it up, but I did go through it twice. I don't know what the men wear, but the women come decked out in dresses with no underwear and their hair down. (There's a reason for those two things...) There is colored sand arranged in a specific way on blankets that you stand on and certain songs that are sung. There is the use of a hoop and there are Healers doing whatever they are called to. I don't remember much of it only that it's very important to look in the Diiyin's (medicine woman's) eyes when she comes around... We had beautiful abalone shells we held in one hand, I think they had sage, but I don't really remember... I know there was water in it we would dump out... I forget all the details. The first time I went through it I was still holding onto some things, but the second time was the trick.

 

This is a Native American ceremony and as such needs to be performed by medicine men or medicine women (and not just people that call themselves that, either....) The only two places I know of where it is performed is Initiation Camp and before some Native American runs they do. I'm sure it's on the Apache rez as well.

 

Basically you let go of what is separating you from God... It ends up on the colored sand you are standing on somehow, and the group takes the blanket and throws the sand off of it. I went through Holy Ground twice.

[Lozen]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutsi

[rex]

The Holy Ground ceremony sounds wonderful Lozen! I remember hearing of a lama in the US who allowed a bona fide medicine man conduct a traditional Native American ceremony at this teaching retreat - it was one of those spur of the moment things and his students must have needed it

 

As you may have found out by now dutsi comes in liquid and pill form and is regarded as a spiritual medicine. The ingredients vary from the simple to the complex. High lamas may use crushed gems, holy relics (crushed bone, hair etc.) precious metals and earth from sacred sites during extended retreat or ritual. Ordinary tantric practitioners can use blessed water coloured with mustard or sesame seeds which is then empowered with their mantra practice. Some dutsi is said to be made from substances gathered from different realms of existance and hidden by Padmasambava in the tenth century.

 

I've found the files, not quite dutsi recipes I'm afraid, but they give the general idea:

Rilbu Pill Ingredients

Fortune Vase

[Lozen]

Ours was powder and you took it by the spoonful. It tasted gross. I still have no idea what was in it. lol.

 

Thanks for the info!