This book is the first to trace the history of Chöd practice in Tibet’s indigenous Bön tradition. Chöd (“cutting through”) is a meditative practice in which the practitioner imagines offering his or her body in sacrifice through elaborate contemplative visualization. Although a meditative practice, Chöd is not done sitting comfortably on a cushion in a shrine room, but instead is often practiced in terrifying places like cemeteries or charnal grounds. The feelings of fear that result are used by the Chöd practitioner to “cut through” his or her own ego. Chöd contains elements of early shamanism, of sutra and tantra teachings also found in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, and of the Tibetan highest school of Dzogchen.