What’s A Nyensa Anyway?

I was chatting with a dharma practitioner the other day, and she mentioned that she and her friends regularly met on the internet to do Chöd together, via Skype. I immediately said “What does that do to the Nyensa?” She replied: “What’s a Nyensa?”  I wanted to say, “A Nyensa is the thing you really need to know about before you do Chöd on the internet!” But I decided to blog about it instead.

A Nyensa by Any Other Name

Because Nyensa is, in all cases, an essential understanding of Chöd. Chöd is the most “location-oriented” of any dharma practice. Actually, it is meant to be done in the wild, outside one’s know territory, one’ comfort zone, one’s normal parameters. In the traditional Tibetan literature of Chöd, whole texts are devoted to the characteristics of the Nyensa. Those kinds of details are fully discussed in the context of the School of Tibetan Healing Chö (www.tibetancho.com), and in my forthcoming book (Tibetan Chö: Cutting Through to Freedom). But here, the core point is that a progressive training is needed.

Stranger in a Strange Land

One goes to a peaceful, non-threatening, safe place—like one’s home, dharma center, or in a group setting. Here one practices only the White Feast, offering to the Higher Guests. Once the student becomes more mature in their practice, with various meditative experiences and small realizations under their belt, they progress towards less comfortable sites. Even then, it is suggested that one go “semi-wrathful,” before taking it to the ultimate level of the wrathful Nyensa.

Enter the Nyensa

This is a haunted area, whose vibe is threatening, spooky, and downright scary. It is unpleasant and malevolent; We have a natural revulsion to even sitting there. Traditionally, this might be an abandoned house, under a solitary tree, near the water’s edge, or anywhere that seems anomalous and distorted. Many urban landscapes come to mind, as well as parks, areas of human excavation and disruption. In fact, it is hard to go a block anywhere, without seeing somewhere that is not a little sketchy. Here real demons, disembodied spirits, and our own deepest fears and rigidity lives. The practitioner engages in the Red Feast, with its vivid and violent meditations. Uprising come about, that must be processed—processed in the crucible of the yogi’s grasp of the fundamental nature of self and other.

Electric Lady Land

So what about the internet? What lives there? Are we safe from “cosmic spam?” Or is this the greatest repository of demonic forces, malicious entities, human madness, emotional toxins, pain and excess, confused ideas, psychospiritual impurities, karmic stains and evil spirits this world has ever seen? It may well be. And so Chöpas everywhere, rejoice! No more going to haunted cemeteries and places of sickness and death. No more trudging through the cold night with the thin sliver of the moon the only light to keep the demons at bay. We can just stay home on the wifi, open up Facebook, Google, Skype and Hotmail, and off we go, kangling in hand.

To Everything a Season

But friends, maybe before one embarks on such a journey, caution is necessary. Before we say “come and eat me, release all karma, you vicious demons, rolling like a red fog up the side of my desktop,” we might want to be prepared for what we call up. As Shenpen Dawa Rinpoche said, “Chöd is not for the faint-hearted.” Well, on further reflection, maybe I will just stick to chatting and making friends over the invisible airwaves, instead of leaving the doors wide open all night, waiting to see who shows up next morning. Until I am ready.
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