The Natural, Coemergent Gods and Demons

"People become obscured by their personal superficial defilement of ignorance and accumulate negative karma, creating unlimited causes for cyclic existence. They are constantly trapped in their karma and afflictive emotion. Therefore, the root of all problems is ego-fixation. Not knowing how to apply the antidote-the completely illuminating firelight of intelligent timeless wisdom-is remaining in the dark about the general meaning of karma and about all actions." - Machik Labdron


Machik Labdron, is one of the greatest female saints and an accomplished yogini. She lived in the 11th century in Tibet. Machik developed a system, the Mahamudra Chöd, that takes the Buddha's teachings as a basis and applies them to the immediate experiences of negative mind states and malignant forces. Machik's unique feminine approach was to invoke and nurture the very "demons" that we fear and hate, transforming those reactive emotions into love. It is the tantric version of developing compassion and fearlessness, a radical method of cutting through ego-fixation.