Review: Tsultrim Allione, Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict. Foreword by Jack Kornfield. London, New York, Boston: Little, Brown and Company 2008, ISBN: 9780316013130

by Frater U∴D∴

One of the secrets of the success of Buddhism in the West since it became accessible to a wider public in the 19th century has been its psychologisation, which continues to this day. This was and still is promoted by its basic non-theistic attitude, which, again in the Western cultural realm, led to the still common – though anything but unproblematic – equation “Buddhism = a philosophy, not a religion”.

Since the 1960s, the American author Joan Rousmanière Ewing, born in 1947 and now teaching as Lama Tsültrim Allione, has been working on Tibetan Buddhism. As one of the first ordained Americans ever, she received her initiation from the 16th Karmapa of the Karma Kagyu school in 1970 during one of her numerous journeys to India, Nepal and Tibet. Herself part of the Beat generation, she was in active contact with prominent Beat and New Age greats like Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) and Chögyam Trungpa.

She caused a bit of a sensation with her book, Women of Wisdom, published in 1984, in which she deals with the tradition of awakened women in Tibetan Buddhism. The guiding star of her further work, which continues to this day, is Machig [also: Macig] Labdrön, a Tibetan yogini from the 11th century, based on whose Chöd practice Allione developed the concept of “feeding demons” which she presents in this work.

The term Chöd or Chöd practice (Sanskrit chedasādhanā) literally means “cutting through”, meaning the cutting through of obstacles and obscurations, which in Tibetan Vajrayāna Buddhism also includes gods and demons as well as the ego itself. Historically (or, at least, phenomenologically) there are connections to pre-Buddhist Bon and its shamanistic practices as well as to its later iteration, Dzogchen.

In his preface, Jack Kornfield summarises the entire program of the book and the author’s core concern: 

The need for transformation of our demons is universal. We all suffer at times from our personal demons, whether those of confusion, anger, self-hatred, trauma, longing, or loss. Collectively the force of these same demons creates enormous suffering on earth, including continuing war, racism, environmental devastation, and widespread yet unnecessary hunger and illness. To alleviate these forms of suffering, we humans will have to face the demons of greed, hatred, and delusion at their root. No amount of political or scientific change will end these sufferings unless we also learn to work with our demons, individually and collectively. Here, in the straightforward teaching offered by Tsultrim Allione, is a powerful method to do so. With exquisite detail and accuracy she shows us how we can transform the energy of addiction, shame, illness, anxiety, fear, and anger into the energy of liberation. (p. ix/x)

From a Western point of view, we are again dealing with a psychologising, or more precisely: depth-psychological definition, in this instance of demons, that is rather foreign to Jewish, Christian and Islamic demonology and isn’t explicitly found in the rich literature of the late medieval and modern grimoire tradition. The author makes this immediately clear in her introduction when she writes:

Demons are our obsessions and fears, chronic illnesses, or common problems like depression, anxiety, and addiction. They are not bloodthirsty ghouls waiting for us in dark places; they are within us, the forces that we fight inside ourselves. They are inner enemies that undermine our best intentions. [...] To put it simply: our demons are what we fear. (p. 3-5)

This is not changed by the fact that in the traditional Buddhist iconography of Vajrayāna these demons are consistently depicted with great devotion, pictorial power and colouring as exactly those “bloodthirsty ghouls that lurk in dark places”. Folk Buddhism may take such pictorial and written descriptions entirely literally i.e. assume the real existence of such demonic entities, just as grimoires do in the occident – however, for the elites of the scribes and priests/lamas they are merely an expression of Māyā and thus illusory as independent entities; which, however, does not deny their fundamental existence but shifts it into the inner-psychic realm.

The author emphasises that she herself is rooted in the tradition of Chöd and its founder Machid Labdrön, but equally asserts that she is a practicing Buddhist of Tibetan coinage and wants to spread this particular brand of Buddhism in the West. However, the practices she presents in this work are not purely traditional but were developed by her specifically for a Western audience that would be overwhelmed by the complexity of the Tibetan tradition. So you don’t have to be – or want to become – a follower of Vajrayāna, and you don’t even have to understand anything about Buddhism in order to implement her practical instructions.

The main part of the book begins with a quotation from Milarepa (1052-1135), the most famous of Tibetan yogis who is also considered to be the ancestor of Tibetan magic:

The malignant male and female demons 
Who create myriad troubles and obstructions 
Seem real before one has reached enlightenment. 
But when one realizes their true nature, 
They become Protectors, 
And through their help and assistance
One attains numerous accomplishments. (p. 13)

For her practical work with demons, the author has developed a five-step plan based on the Chöd, the content of which she discusses in individual chapters. In addition to explanatory outlines, there are anecdotes and practical reports from her own life and that of other companions on the path, interwoven with quotations and axioms from the Buddhist tradition, supplemented by statements and advice from her numerous teachers. The procedure is also further illuminated by a variety of case studies. This not only makes the narrative vivid, the practice presented is at the same time integrated into Western life and underpinned with corresponding plausibility and relevance.

The five-step plan, which is the actual core of the book, is briefly summarised again in the appendix which makes it more convenient to look up in the course of practical application. Nevertheless, no reader would be well advised to merely skim over the preceding text let alone skipping it entirely: this seemingly simple practice requires a great deal of detailed understanding if it is not to remain just another superficial – and thus, ultimately ineffective – psycho-exercise as we often find them in esoteric literature. The five-step plan is structured as follows:

• As a preparation, a breathing sequence is recommended which serves to establish relaxation.

• In the first step, the demon, idol or demon idol to be worked on is determined and located in the body. This increased body sensation is also made conscious in terms of colour, texture and temperature.

• In the second step the demon is personified and then asked what he needs.

• The third step is to become a demon yourself, that is, to slip into his skin and understand him from within.

• In the fourth step, the identification with the demon is retracted again, instead the own body dissolves into “a nectar that consists of whatever the demon has told you it ultimately will feel if it gets what it needs” (p. 65). With this nectar the demon is fed and completely saturated. Now the “ally” is to be called up: either a being into which the demon has meanwhile transformed himself or one that is evoked in his place. Some questions are put to this ally, then places are switched with him and the questions are answered from his perspective. Finally, a new switching takes place and the ally is internalised.

• The fifth step is entitled “Resting in Custody”: a mental state freed from goals, which essentially corresponds to the inner “emptiness” that Buddhism invariably strives for.

Through this practice, expounds Allione, the demons are deprived of their negative power and they are transformed into useful, constructive allies. The effect, which will sometimes – though not typically – occur right after the first run, is, in her experience, an utterly different one than that of the generally condoned confrontational combating of demons as it is still common today – and not merely in Western culture either. Her form of confrontation is an entirely disparate approach to the one we are familiar with, for instance, from Catholic and charismatic evangelical exorcism, or even from the grimoire traditions. In fact, it reminds us of the concept of the “inner styles” of Asian, primarily Chinese martial arts which focus more on the motor and mental state of the attacker than on that of the defender.

Now the personification of an individual’s fears, traumas, neuroses etc. is certainly not unknown in Western psychotherapy, and the Shadow work of Jungian depth psychology follows similar procedures. Allione points this out herself, but also emphasises the difference to her own approach, as 

the five-step practice of feeding your demons takes this approach deeper. Its additional value lies in dissolving our own bodies and nurturing rather than just personifying and interacting with our inner enemies, and in the experience of nondual meditative awareness that occurs in the final step of the process. This is a state of relaxed awareness, free from our usual fixation of “self” versus “other,” which takes us beyond the place where normal psychotherapy ends. (p. 7)

One doesn’t have to take this at face value without further examination, even if there are many arguments in its favour: in the end, the value or the shortcomings of this approach will be proven by practice alone. In our cultural context it can certainly be considered innovative, and even most of today’s Buddhists in Asia are probably largely unaware of it. In this respect, perhaps even Western demon magicians of our time, who are pretty much predicated on metaphysical riot, could learn a thing or two here.

For make no mistake: Chöd is anything but a harmless placebo praxis, even in this broken-down version. As gentle and benevolent as the technique may come over; as much as it is imbued with the Buddhist concept of compassion for all creatures, the bottom line is that the primary goal of efficient hazard prevention and of coping with opposing forces remains undisputed, even if this isn’t effected via the more common path of immediate bellicose confrontation in which static build-up is set against static build-up, blow being compensated by blow, aggression countered by counter-aggression – no “eye for an eye” here. Even if the age-old image may seem rather worn by now: here it indeed becomes evident how the soft water persistently hollows the hard stone, grinds it down, reshapes and finally dissolves, in other words: eliminates it. This is reminiscent of the darker interpretations of Christianity which view the tenet of “love thy neighbour” as a comparably powerful weapon of destruction...

What’s more, the transformation of dangerous demons into allies who can provide valuable support in coping with everyday tasks and life goals from a certain stage of development of the relationship on, corresponds to the concern of most Western grimoires, admittedly without deploying existential threats, hierarchical subjugation and authoritarian commandeering. If nothing else, Allione definitely has litheness and elegance, in short: conflict economy on her side.

The author knowledgeably plays through her topic in numerous variations, not all of which can be discussed here in detail. The titles of the chapters and subsections speak for themselves, so here is a short excerpt: “Machig’s Four Demons, Gods and God-Demons”; “Hydras: Demon Complexes”; “Demons of Illness”; “Demons of Fear”; “Demons of Love”; “Demons of Addiction”; “Demons of Abuse”; “Demons of the Mind” etc. ...finally, “Demons in the Wider World.” Vividly illustrated by numerous concrete case studies over and over, her powerful portrayal gains lastingly in persuasion and substance.

A book worth reading, a book worth thinking about.