(Shambhala) is a startling and wonderful foray into , an ancient Tibetan meditation practice. Chöd requires the practitioner to willingly enter “haunted grounds”—literal cemeteries, the open wild where animals roam freely, and the shadowed aspects of one’s consciousness, to name just a few examples. There, they face and engage deeply with “demons,” i.e., all that is difficult and painful. Anam Thubten was born and raised in Tibet and is now a teacher in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism in California. He details his own early childhood fascination with chöd, how it followed him into adulthood, and what was revealed to him when he entered the haunted grounds of Canyon de Chelly in Arizona
