Machig's Six Paradigms of Daemonology

(Originally posted in 2021)

In Tibetan Buddhism, the Chöd lineage of Machig Labdrön is often touted as the most authoritative source of information for the study of daemonology - the study of spirits. I’m choosing to use this term daemonology, despite not really having a satisfying Tibetan correlate, for a couple of reasons. We all have an idea of what demonology is, but we also know that it has many different meanings in various cultural contexts. The spelling of “daemon” might remind us that demons were not always the bloodthirsty ghouls of sin and hellish terror that we know from the Catholic Church. Daemons were once revered tutelary deities and god-like spirits, quite antithetical to the sinister embodiments of evil found in The Exorcist. In learning about daemonology, it’s clear that we may encounter creatures that are at once familiar and deeply unfamiliar, ancient yet paradigmatically fresh. We’re not sure if we’ll see gods, devils, or both, but we’re likely intrigued nonetheless.

My own journey with Tibetan daemonology began with my studies and practice in the Chöd lineage, which started when I met my root teacher, Lama Tsultrim Allione, at age 14. Through her teachings on Chöd, I learned that the real ‘demons’ exist in the haunted landscape of our mind, and that their ultimate root is ego-fixation. But my ritual training also taught me the profound value of compassionately engaging with the unseen beings of the natural world. This was further supported during my training as a Tibetan doctor. In school, I had the great privilege of studying gDon Nad gSo Ba (“The Treatment of Provocation”) in a great deal of depth with my teacher, covering both the root texts and commentarial literature on diagnosis, classification, and treatment of spirit-related afflictions. Further studies in medicine, ritual arts, astrology, and tantric spirituality consistently revealed the conspicuous presence of unseen spirits in nearly all fields of traditional science. Lurking in the shadows, these mysterious beings seamlessly wove together phenomenology, epidemiology, psychology, ecology, sociology, and seemingly every other “-ology” imaginable. Exploring the ways that humans relate with the spirit world opens up an unimaginably vast universe of knowledge, revealing many of the most fundamental paradigms that inform our world. 

In modern society, demons are often spoken of as inner struggles that dwell in the dark corners of our psyche. These inner demons are the addictions, fears, mental illnesses, and traumas that we are meant to bravely fight and subjugate through the force of willpower. It’s particularly fascinating to see that, as we have mythologized the subjugation of demonic spirits through the framework of exorcism and repression, our management of personal and social demons have also been stuffed into the recesses of our societal consciousness. We habitually hide our demons away, pretending that they simply don’t exist, while simultaneously shaming those who are less successful or graceful in doing so. On a social level, demons like racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and homophobia have long simmered beneath the surface, and those who don’t suffer their malevolence would often prefer to keep it that way. We often hear the insinuation that discussing racism is itself racist - that awareness of our demons is what gives them form. But precisely the opposite is true. Ignoring symptoms doesn’t cause an illness to disappear.

Lama Tsultrim expertly expands upon this topic in her groundbreaking book, Feeding Your Demons, which clearly illustrates Machig’s teachings on the “Four Demons” to be severed in the process of Chöd. Instead of perpetuating the struggle by fighting against our demons, she advises dialoguing with them and seeking to understand the internal needs that they arise from. When we finally understand what it is that they need, we can “feed” our demons to complete satisfaction, effectively transforming them into allies. This process has helped me immensely throughout my life, and provides a grounded understanding of how to work with the most destructive “demons” that we deal with as modern humans. 

I’ve seen a similar trend of repression in our treatment of spirits, particularly in the western Buddhist world. Discussions of supernatural beings are often qualified with the disclaimer that if you don’t believe in spirits, then there’s no need to start. While it’s important not to create dichotomies of good and evil where they do not exist, the relative existence of non-animal forms of conscious life is quite a different matter. I feel it’s particularly important not to become too rationalistically ‘materialistic’ in our approach to the broad topic of demons and daemons in Tibetan society. While Machig’s teachings reveal that the true demons are anything that hinder our attainment of liberation, she never once discredits the relative existence of unseen spirits. Demons and daemons are not necessarily the same thing.

This is an important distinction to make, and helps to relieve some of the tension felt in modern Buddhist discussions surrounding supernatural phenomena. I have frequently encountered those who insist that Machig explained away spirits as fantastical illusions or superstitions, and that all mentions of paranormal entities in Tibetan Buddhism are merely symbolic representations of afflictive mental states. This is untenable both on an anthropological and doctrinal basis, as non-human spirits have been a part of Tibetan and Indian Buddhist societies for millennia, and can be found in textual materials even predating the rise of the Mahāyāna movement. The belief in spirits is neither merely “folk superstition” nor allegory - it is an integral component of a Buddhist understanding of the world. 

The general confusion regarding the term dön (gdon) is understandable, since it presents a unique translation challenge. Among various meanings, gdon can both imply certainty and doubt, and you will hear both described as the etymological root of the term, depending on who you ask. This is problematic, because dön is the most common term used to describe spirit influences in Tibetan Medicine, and finding the right language to discuss it has extensive ramifications. My own rGyud bZhi teacher, Dr. Phuntsog Wangmo, explains that dön essentially means “to appear,” indicating that these energies rather magically appear in cases of spirit illness. Dr. Malcolm Smith, himself a Tibetan doctor and prolific translator, explains that dön comes from “doubt,” because their precise origins are obscured to our senses, giving rise to a sense of confusion and uncertainty. However, both tend to use “provocation” as a workable translation of dön disorders, which I also follow. Like the spirits themselves, it seems that dön is inherently difficult to pin down - which does in fact seem to be the point. 

It’s common to see translators use terms like demons, evil spirits, negative forces, or malevolent energies when trying to describe dön. Some choose to evoke the subliminal horror that the word demon recalls in western religious culture, while others try to skirt around the sinister and culturally biased implications with more neutral terminology. Dön disorders themselves are usually described as forms of possession or madness, which is an unfortunate and reductive distillation of a far more vast and complex field of research. In Tibetan Medicine in particular, it’s common to find the study of dön disorders glossed as a kind of “Tibetan Psychiatry.” But as we can easily see by reviewing the related literature, only a minority of disorders connected to dön are principally psychological in nature. Almost all have distinctly physiological components, and are treated not only through ritual means but also through conventional therapies like nutrition, herbal medicine, external therapies, and behavioral treatment.

For instance, infectious diseases and epidemics are generally believed to be intricately linked to “unseen influences,” and it’s become quite common in medical contexts to relate dön with pathogenic microorganisms, which are themselves kinds of unseen beings. This has gained a bit more exposure in the Covid pandemic, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to encounter multiple discussions regarding the “energetic dimension” of viral outbreaks.

In the rGyud bZhi, myriad illnesses including severe ‘skin’ disorders (such as leprosy) are also explained in this so-called “psychiatry” section, identified as being connected with chthonic lu (klu) spirits (which were ultimately conflated with Indic nāgas). It’s worth noting that Mycobacterium leprae, the rather enigmatic bacteria responsible for modern leprosy diagnoses, has been observed in the soil in localities afflicted by leprosy, making the idea of unseen organisms casting afflictions from the ground less of an archaic superstition and more of a shockingly astute proto-microbiological observation. Looking above to the heavens, the planetary za (gza’) spirits are believed to be connected with strokes, though this is often mischaracterized as epilepsy. 

Also above us is the abode of the sky-traveling mamo (ma mo) spirits, disease-bearing beings connected with viral infections, including HIV and Covid-19 according to modern Tibetan medical authorities. It’s believed that these spirits travel through the atmosphere and are generally neutral, but when they become disturbed through environmental air pollution and other disturbing conditions, the toxic vapor of their breath falls to earth and initiates a chain of infection. Again looking at convergences, modern science has shown us that there is in fact an atmospheric layer of viruses (most of them medically inconsequential) which constantly fall to earth. The ultimate origin of these viruses is unknown - some believe they are driven up from the earth in the airstream, while others suggest that they might actually originate in outer space. In the spirit of entertaining all options, the concept of energetic intermediaries bridging the gap between ecological balance and epidemiology seems worth exploring, if only to encourage greater intersectional discussion between these two vitally important fields. In all of these disorders mentioned above, we can easily identify distinct physiological components, both in manifestation and etiology, but they have an additional shared component of influence from external, unseen forces tied to our energetic ecosystem.

In my work, I choose to translate dön disease as “provocation,” the vagueness of which also embodies a key component of these unusual afflictions. If the disease is a kind of provocation, then who is the provocateur? As it turns out, this question is highly consequential.

There is a general trend in traditional medicine where, in order to better integrate into a perceived rationalistic society, “archaic” or superstitious elements like spirit illness are kept at an arm’s length and brushed aside as “folk” influences. Modern Ayurvedic literature very infrequently discusses bhūta vidyā, the equivalent study of treating spirit illness, with any degree of depth. And when it does, it is usually tied to ancient “lost” traditions, far removed from the rationality of the core Ayurvedic teachings. This reconstructive fantasy is largely due to a progressive push to better integrate both with modern medicine and the global market. Since a shockingly large proportion of Americans and Europeans now know what their Ayurvedic dosha is, one could conclude that this has been successful. But has a baby been tossed out with the superstitious bath water? Is there any merit in examining the divergences between medical disciplines, or should we solely focus on the convergences? 

In the early 20th century, historian Max Weber pointed the world’s attention to a concept known as entzauberung, or the disenchantment of the world that took place across the era of Enlightenment. For many, the disenchantment narrative suggests that we have left behind primitive and archaic superstition in lieu of scientific rationality. This way of thinking has helped us to draw a solid division between the outdated pseudoscience of old and the rational empiricism of the modern world, and it has also served as a justification of colonialism. As Jason Josephson-Storm illustrates in his Myth of Enchantment, this has been largely misconstrued and misunderstood. It has also been used as a justification for an ethnocentric monopoly on science, dismissing the perspectives of anyone deemed primitive or un-evolved. However, many of the greatest scientific minds of the modern era, from Marie Curie to Issac Newton, were personally influenced and engaged in the paranormal. Indeed, western society as a whole has never truly abandoned magical thinking. Quite like the spirits themselves, the belief hasn’t disappeared, it’s only been pushed into the dark corners of our societal awareness - an unspoken open secret lurking in the shadows of our shared experience. 

So what, then, does the 11th century spiritual matriarch Machig Labdrön have to offer a modern field of daemonology? In the authoritative Chöd commentary known as the phung po gzan skyur gyi rnam bshad gcod kyi don gsal byed, masterfully translated by Sarah Harding in Machik’s Complete Explanation: Clarifying the Meaning of Chöd, the yogini Machig elucidates countless essential aspects of her Dharma system. She provides detailed practice instructions, foundational theory and advice, and also explicitly warns against a predicted trend in her future tradition to lose sight of the real “demons” to be severed. In order to clarify what was always destined to be an evolving system of practice (eventually being absorbed into nearly all schools of Tibetan Buddhism while largely losing its own independent presence), her instructions are precise, profound, and perennially valuable for anybody interested in Tibetan Buddhism, daemonology, or the workings of the mind.

Of particular interest to me is a short section from Machig’s teaching to her disciple Gangpa Muksang. After providing a systematic explanation for the precise “demons” that are to be severance through her practice - famously known as Machig’s Four Demons - Gangpa presses her for some further contextual clarification.

“Machik-la,” he asks, “you have described the characteristics of those devils. But is the term ‘gods and demons’ also applied to these devils, or does it refer to something else?” 

This was a very important question. Machig taught within a cultural context that largely revolved around an ongoing dialogue with the spirit world. Supernatural influence was not an imposed doctrinal belief, but a lived element of social and personal existence. Lu and térang spirits were no less real than one’s neighbors, so seeking a philosophically-sound explanation for their existence would seem reasonable. 

Machig responds that there are indeed many different ways of using the terms gods (lha) and demons (‘dre), and proceeds to offer a highly pragmatic critical analysis of various paradigms of daemonology - both the delusional and the enlightened. With this, she offers some truly valuable context for understanding the relationship between spirits, divinities, demons, afflictive emotions, and deities in tantric Buddhism.

Machig’s Six Paradigms of Daemonology are still incredibly fresh and relevant for a modern “disenchanted” audience. It’s easy to find ourselves within these six categories, based on our own adopted dichotomies of good and evil, and whether you’re a skeptic or psychic they are sure to be illuminating.

Gods and Demons as Designated by Worldly People (འཇིག་རྟེན་པའི་ཀུན་བཏགས་ཀྱི་ལྷ་འདྲེ)

The first daemonological paradigm described by Machig is the one that’s undoubtedly the most broadly prevalent, including in today's world - but it’s also considered to be fundamentally flawed. This is the most essential division between good and evil on the basis of immediate subjective help and harm. She describes such attributions as the “lewd talk of fools” with no ultimate truth, suggesting that those who perceive every hardship as a curse and every comfort a blessing are in fact deluding themselves on the basis of limited subjective preference. That which makes us feel good can actually be harmful, and sometimes that which feels bad is ultimately helpful. The gods of one individual may be the demons of another, and vice-versa. Because we are so easily deluded by our fleeting, myopic experiences, we delude ourselves into projecting ultimate good and evil onto what are really just ever-shifting transient dynamics of cyclic existence. 

Her advice? Abandon fixation upon perceived help and harm as the litmus test for designating phenomena as good or evil. This paradigm is useless for those who want to understand the real nature of things. I’d argue that this is particularly relevant in today’s political environment. Historically, some of the world’s most progressive political movements arose in response to tyranny and authoritarianism. Without the tyranny, progressive change may not have ever taken place. This forces us to reframe some of the more unsavory and cruel figures in history as both a force for evil and an inadvertent force for good. If evil can inspire us to commit ourselves to virtue, then is it really ultimately evil? In truth, worldly lha and dre (gods and demons) are not wholly separate - they are two perceptual sides of the same dualistic coin. 

This, of course, does not excuse cruel and malevolent behavior - it simply forces us to look at a far bigger karmic picture, and to avoid losing sight of the true gods and demons which cannot be found in the outside world. Machig concludes that this is a faulty paradigm, and advises her students to disregard it as such. 

Gods and Demons by Their Essential Mode of Being (ངོ་བོར་གནས་ཚུལ་གྱི་ལྷ་འདྲེ)

Machig’s second paradigm is very important to understand for the study of provocation, daemonology, and energetic ecology. It’s in this section that we receive a most straightforward explanation of the role and identity of relatively extant spirits in a cosmological framework. Machig explains that indeed there are beings who, based on their karma, are born into various modes of existence beyond what we can perceive in our human and animal world. This is a short but comprehensive overview of the various beings with which we interact as humans, including both transcendent enlightened beings and fellow sentient beings trapped in samsara.

Machig first describes three kinds of gods. There are those who transcend both the karmic force of cause and effect as well as worldly existence itself; those who transcend the force of karma but intentionally engage in worldly existence; and those who are in no way transcendent, and who are still bound to the force of karma and samsaric life. The first category includes dharmakāya buddhas such as the Great Mother Prajñāpāramitā and Vajradhāra as well as the Buddha Amitābha and others. These beings are not tied to cyclic existence, but rather temporally exist in pure dimensions outside the confines of samsara. The second category includes saṃbhogakāya and nirmāṇakāya beings such as Śākyamuni Buddha and the “three lord” bodhisattvas Avalokiteśvara, Vajrapāni, and Mañjuśrī. These beings are not bound by karmic conditions due to their enlightened nature, but still engage with beings of the material world in order to liberate them from cyclic existence. 

The final category of gods, however, refers specifically to the devas of the highest locus of samsara, who are in no way transcendent. While they share the name “god,” there is a strong distinction between the former two categories and the gods of worldly existence. We usually indicate this distinction in translated works by using deity and god, respectively, despite the fact that the Tibetan word (lha) is the same. Indeed the english terms are also the same in meaning, only derived from different root languages. 

Machig explicitly tells her students not to “be attached to worldly gods.” She explains that by attaching ourselves to the devas of samsara, we turn them into demons. However, in saying so she isn’t implying that these worldly gods don’t exist on a relative level - rather she instructs her followers to view them with compassion, seeing that they are not to be worshipped or envied but rather pitied for their curse of blissful ignorance. Furthermore, while we may refer to these beings as lha, devas, or gods, this is just a name. It’s no more accurate to define beings in the deva loka as “gods” than it is to define the Tasmanian Devil as a “devil.” Neither have anything to do with the real gods and devils, so we shouldn’t let philology mislead us. 

As for the demons of this category, Machig explains that demons by their essential mode of being are the “formless [spirits], well known in the world, that can manifest great magic, powers, hostility, and arrogance, and that cause embodied sentient beings much harm.” She mentions well-known demon classes such as tsen (btsan), dü (bdud), and the “eight classes” of unseen beings (of which there are countless variations). It is traditionally explained that these beings belong to the dimensional locus of the hungry ghosts (preta; yid dwags), which can be divided into two categories - the “sutric” pretas who are trapped within a kind of parallel dimension of incessant starvation, and the worldly pretas who interact with our own human dimension as unseen spirits. 

Again according to “worldly customs,” humans tend to designate all such spirits as demons, due to our own perceptions of temporary help and harm. Beings of the eight classes are known as demonic while worldly gods of the higher realms are designated as divine. This is misguided, however, since all are equally trapped in samsara just like us, and both can be connected with help and harm. 

Echoes of this paradigm are quite clearly seen in modern western religious frameworks, where supernatural phenomena can clearly be divided into help and harm based on their associated modes of existence. The dividing line between a “miracle” and demonic deception is often quite thin, and more determined by the religious and social identity of the miracle worker (and the spirit they invoke) than the act itself. If a pious Catholic monk heals a blind man through devotion to God, he may be seen as saintly, but if a 15th century healer did the same through spell-work and propitiation of nature spirits, she may have been tried as a satanic witch. If gods can act as demons and demons can act as gods, then how can we possibly rely on our own myopic dualism to distinguish between the two? Spirits, as it were, are just as morally ambiguous as any other living being.

I think it’s very important to underline the fact that Machig is not denying the relative existence of unseen beings like the devas and pretas, nor is she implying that they are altogether disconnected from the lived experience of human beings. Rather, she is advising against ascribing rash generalizations like good and evil to beings who are intrinsically capable of both, and who act out of karmic confusion and not as intermediaries of divine retribution. 

Machig recommends that fixation upon the dichotomy of good and evil is abandoned by Dharma practitioners in the Chöd system, especially when relating to other sentient beings. All living beings, even our own friends and relatives, have the potential to lead us astray and cause us pain. For this reason, neither worldly spirits nor any other form of encumbered sentient being should be engaged with as guides or villains, but rather as objects of compassion and generosity. 

This, to me, is one of the most important and misunderstood aspects of Machig’s teachings, particularly on the topic of daemonology. Many people seem to think that Machig said not to believe in spirits - that they are somehow less relatively real than the rest of phenomenal existence simply because they are unseen. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Quite simply, she advised to abandon the worldly division of “good guys” and “bad guys” as imposed upon the supernatural world, not to abandon unseen spirits as objects of love and compassion. Consciousness is not confined to human and other animal life, but it would be a mistake to paint these unseen beings to be wholly divine or wholly evil. They are confused and suffering, just like us, and are in need of tenderness. 

Taken in the spirit of ecological stewardship, this teaching pushes us to relate with the natural world as a dynamic matrix of conscious life. Simply avoiding the destructive impact that we have on the environment and its inhabitants is not so different from consciously avoiding genocide in a foreign land. It may alleviate some of our stress to avoid that which we cannot see, but what is out of mind is not necessarily gone, and to ignore a chance to practice compassion would be a wasted opportunity for a bodhisattva seeking liberation.

Gods and Demons Superimposed on Observable Phenomena (མཐོང་སྣང་སྒྲོ་བཏགས་ཀྱི་ལྷ་འདྲེ་)

The third paradigm of daemonology described by Machig is somewhat related to the second, but is more distinctly connected to phenomenal appearances in the outer world in a manner that we could possibly call “superstition.” Mundane phenomena like rainbows, seasonal abnormalities, and random die-offs of fish are listed as some of the worldly appearance that people misconstrue as magic, which is clear enough with our modern understanding of the observable physics underlying many of these natural processes. However, she also lists “nonhumans practically displaying their forms openly and making many predictions” and perceptible ghostly apparitions as other examples, which approach concepts of oracular possession and haunting. While she doesn’t negate these experiences, she warns against subjectively evaluating them as examples of gods or demons (i.e. good or evil).

Again we see an implicit acceptance of the relative existence of paranormal phenomena, but Machig advises against dwelling on such worldly superimpositions as a cause for veneration or fear. She is particularly warning against misconstruing natural or supernatural signs as ultimate indications of divinity or “spiritual powers,” a recommendation that is shared in many tantric Buddhist materials. Clinging to nyams (meditative experiences) is frequently described as a grave risk for serious meditators, as it can cause us to reify our subject-object fixation and fall off of the path of spiritual development.

This paradigm is perhaps more readily identifiable in its Tibetan cultural context, when all manner of phenomenal appearances may be described as being divine or demonic. Machig’s advice isn’t a tacit dismissal of the supernatural altogether, but rather a reminder that it would be false to superimpose concepts of ultimate good and evil onto the natural world. Rather, she says that resting in great equanimity, the very concepts of help and harm are “liberated in their own ground.” 

The Natural, Coemergent God and Demon (རང་བཞིན་ལྷན་སྐྱེས་ཀྱི་ལྷ་འདྲེ)

Beginning with this category, Machig’s paradigms of daemonology take a turn into a more philosophical and profound description of actual good and evil, an awareness of which she describes as being distinctly uncommon amongst worldly people. “From the very beginning of eternity,” she explains, “the timeless wisdom of reflexive awareness, which is primordially pure, unborn dharmakāya, and the afflictive emotion (mental state) of ignorant ego-fixation emerge together.” Therefore, the original god and demon are none other than awareness and ignorance themselves.

The co-emergence of these two states reflect their inseparable polarity. These are two sides of the same proverbial coin. Ignorance is none other than the misdirection of awareness, and distinguishing between these two is considered to be essential for Dharma practitioners. Unlike the former three categories, Machig instructs her students to indeed create a distinction between these two manifestations, and to sever the demonic ignorance of egocentricity with the timeless antidote of reflexive awareness.

Machig says, “At first, in the primordial basic ground, both awareness, the dharmakāya of timeless wisdom, and the lack of awareness (ignorance), the delusion of ego-fixation, existed inseparably; hence they are called ‘coemergent.’ This was not produced from any causes or conditions; it is a natural occurrence. Since there is no way to say exactly when the beginning occurred, it is naturally inborn, and so it is said to naturally emerge together. When it is not examined and distinguished, it seems that awareness and ignorance are together. Failing to distinguish the difference is ignorance. But if you examine and distinguish them, it is like the inseparability of the moon and the water [it is reflected in]. Since there is a difference in essence, a difference is distinguished.” 

As stated, it is impossible to place this ‘beginning’ on any kind of chronological scale. This illusory primordial separation from the ground of being is not some distant historical event, but rather an unending process of perpetual illusory self-alienation from ultimate reality. Unlike false dualities of good-bad, help-harm, god-demon, this is a highly consequential rift. But it is not to be found outside of ourselves, and thinking that it can be is part of our problem in the first place. Rather, Machig instructs us to apply the antidote of reflexive primordial wisdom, using awareness to examine awareness itself, in order to engender an experience of the Nature of Mind and mend our perceived rupture from the ground of being.

Gods and Demons of Inevitable Karmic Forces (བསླུ་མེད་ལས་དབང་གི་ལྷ་འདྲེ)

While the disembodied spirits of the natural world cannot force us into lower realms of existence, our karma certainly can. For this reason, this paradigm also contains some very important elements of truth, and even though Machig addresses the fundamental intangibility of karma in an absolute sense, she advises her students to take its lessons to heart in order to prevent hindrances on the path to liberation.

In this category, Machig describes two specific kinds of inevitable karmic forces: the collective karma that literally produces the phenomenological dynamics of a universe system, and the personal karma that influences our point of entry within that system.

‘Collective karma’ (spyi mthun las) in this sense refers primarily to the karmic conditions that influence the physical formation of the universe. According to Buddhist cosmology, in the voidness that exists between the destruction and re-emergence of a universe system, the wind of unfinished karma sown in the previous universe begins to blow within the insubstantial element of space. This gives rise to the subtle air element, which gives rise to heat (fire), and fivefold elemental formation proceeds to produce the entire array of physical phenomena. The karma of the previous universe’s sentient beings  - which were also us - literally results in the ‘naturally arisen’ (rang byung) physical laws of the universe. As such, we are the creators of our own world, in a figurative but also very literal sense. This collective karma comes with a host of dichotomies - winter and summer, day and night, birth and death, health and disease - all of which can be experienced as helpful or harmful on the basis of natural cause and effect. This isn’t to say that summer is intrinsically divine and winter is intrinsically demonic, but we are more or less karmically conditioned to experience certain phenomena as either supporting or challenging our sense of existential ease, and this is a result of collective karma.

Our personal karma is quite simply dependent upon our actions, and can lead to various fully-ripened experiences through our incarnation in myriad realms conditioned by suffering. As long as we are controlled by our dualistic grasping and ignorance of our true nature, we will accumulate negative karma and experience suffering as a result. This is true for all beings - hurt people hurt people, as they say. For this reason, an understanding of karma is also used to illustrate exactly why attributing concepts of intrinsic good and evil onto sentient beings is so faulty. Sentient beings (including ourselves, our friends, our enemies, devas, pretas, and all others) commit negative deeds because they can’t fully comprehend the negative effects of their actions due to overwhelming ecocentricity.

Machig says, “You must understand that good and bad, help and harm, joy and suffering, high and low, love and hate, cyclic existence and its transcendence, and so on - this whole boundless, indescribably, unthinkable mass of manifold karma -  comes from the accumulation of the various virtuous and unvirtuous actions of each individual sentient being. If you don’t want all the harm and unhappiness and unpleasantness, forsake all unvirtuous action.” 

However, in placing this within the vast scope of absolute reality, she also explicitly advises against clinging to our proverbial karmic shackles as intrinsically real. She says, “Know that the defining characteristic of having karma is that it has no truth or permanence.” We do not transcend cause and effect simply by accumulating a more palatable flavor of karma. We transcend it by severing our egocentricity. So while these so-called gods and demons have a relative impact on our experience, this can and should be severed through the ultimate practice of severance (Chöd). 

The Ultimate, Absolute God and Demon (མཐར་ཐུག་དོན་གྱི་ལྷ་འདྲེ)

This final category digs down to the most essential root of so-called good and evil. Machig tells us, “Genuine, complete awakening that transcends cyclic existence is the ultimate refuge place of those who want to be free. Whatever can offer that refuge from cyclic suffering is called ‘god,’” and likewise, “The ultimate demon is the place of cyclic existence (samsara).” So the ultimate, absolute god and demon are no different from nirvana and samsara themselves. 

As she states at the very beginning of her discourse to Gangpa Muksang, “A devil is anything that obstructs the achievement of freedom.” This is the only veritable classification of evil, not temporary subjective experiences of discomfort. And in particular, it is unreasonable to think that sentient beings themselves would be absolute gods and demons. We are all just trapped in a cyclic wheel of confusion devised by our our self-clinging. If we want to be free from this ultimate evil, we need to sever our egocentricity.

In particular, Machig warns against rebirth in the lower realms of existence (the loci of animals, pretas, and hell beings). These realms are no more real or illusory than our temporary human experience, but they lack the immediate potential for liberation. Our ‘human dream’ includes within it the potential for awakening, and to waste that opportunity would have grave consequences. And for very pragmatic reasons, it is advantageous for us to make use of this illusory existence in order to transcend the habitual cycle of karma and attain enlightenment. 

Conclusion

Machig concludes her paradigmatic analysis with the following summary:

“In the ground of all (kun gzhi; alaya), the essence of the awakening mind is the god of reflexive awareness. And your own sordid behavior [under the influence] of the five poisons of afflictive emotion (mental states) devoid of awareness is a demon. Called ‘gods and demons’... there is but one singular substance. There is only a difference in awareness and [its absence], ignorance. Therefore, from the point of view of the absolute [don dam], those matters that were explained above are without even a hair’s tip of true reality. In the authentic, absolute truth, there are no gods and demons. You should know the view of inherently pure dimension of reality unblemished by stains of ripening karma.”

When all dualistic fixation is removed, gods and demons are of the same “substance.” The only difference is whether we ourselves engage in wisdom or ignorance, and whether or not we are obscured by the veil of ego-fixation.

Machig’s description of daemonological paradigms is illuminating for a number of reasons. As those who follow her teachings would rightly expect, she effortlessly slices through misconceptions surrounding gods and demons, but she also provides a helpful clarification regarding the relative existence of unseen spirits. These beings are certainly real, she explains, but they are not definite in their characterizations as intrinsically good or evil. “Whether they are gods or demons, know that they are your mothers and fathers. Hold them with the hook of love and compassion,” she says, instructing us to actively engage with them as beings in need of nourishing, not as personifications of evil. 

Machig’s doctrine of feeding our demons/daemons instead of fighting them has broad implications in medical practice. As provocation disorders have both inner and outer causative factors, it’s important to remember that whether the root is our own psychological trauma or the afflictions of other sentient beings, the best remedy is always rooted in compassion. We cannot fight against our own body and psyche and expect to be victorious. Nor can we continuously oppress and alienate entire factions of our society that we don’t understand or relate to, or who challenge our conceptions about what’s pure or impure, and expect to have a healthy community. Perhaps most importantly, we can’t fight against the natural energetic ecology of the natural world without provoking harm. In the vast majority of cases, it seems abundantly clear that it is we who are the provocateurs, not the spirits with whom we share our world. Perhaps if we can find a new (or old) narrative for understanding the dynamics of our inner and outer realities, we will discover new and effective ways to truly heal as individuals, as a society, and as a planet. 

Source Text

Harding, Sarah. Machik’s Complete Explanation: Clarifying the Meaning of Chöd (1st ed.). Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2003. pg. 123-133

Phung Po gZan sKyur Gyi rNam bShad gCod Kyi Don gSal Byed. In gCod Kyi Chos sKor, TBRC W00EGS1016278. New Delhi: Tibet House, 1974. http://tbrc.org/link?RID=O1GS46471|O1GS464711GS46473$W00EGS1016278. pg. 92-112