One of the most renowned Buddhist saints of all time is Milarepa, the famous yogi-saint of Tibet, who lived from approximately 1050 to 1135 AD. His name in Tibetan literally meant "Mila who wears cotton", referring to his extreme asceticism in his later years, and the one piece of garment he owned during that time. What made his life so exceptional is that he started out as a very negative, destructive person, went through a profound remorse of conscience, and followed that up with a purifying ordeal at the hands of a powerful taskmaster, and later attained to full Enlightenment (a journey that was perhaps similar to Saul/Paul's in some ways). ***************************
Milarepa was born in western Tibet, near the sacred Mount Kailas. At the age of seven his father died, and his property was confiscated by greedy relatives. Milarepa's mother, feeling veangeful, sent the young boy off to study with a Bonpo sorcerer, who proceeded to train him in harmful forms of magic, which included the ability to alter weather patterns by harnessing certain destructive elemental forces.
Milarepa was a good student, and when he had grown older, he returned to the scene of the crime, carrying the dangerous mix of magical skill and impure emotions. Sure enough he sought out the greedy relatives, and unleashed a violent hailstorm that destroyed their crops and killed several of them.
However, Milarepa carried the seeds of something much greater and more noble within him. Consequently, he experienced something that most perpetrators of extreme crimes don't, and that was a burning remorse for his actions. Feeling a desire for atonement growing stronger and stronger, he desperately sought out a teacher who could guide him through the requisite purification that he would need were he to have any chance to avoid rebirth into the remedial hell realms, or as a lower life form (as he believed, consistent with Buddhist theology).
He first went back to his original teacher (Rongton), but this man recognized that he was not the one to perform this difficult task, and thus sent him on to Marpa, a Buddhist master (and farmer) who had a reputation for being extremely tough and disciplined.
Marpa lived up to this billing, and proceeded to subject Milarepa to six years of harsh and, at times, openly cruel disciplines. Milarepa, convinced of the terrible karmic debt that he needed to repay, surrendered to the treatment.
One of the main devices Marpa used was to instruct Milarepa to build a large stone tower. At the point of his nearing completion with the back-breaking job, Marpa would assess the work, and inform Milarepa that the tower was in the wrong place, and would need to be torn down and built again. He actually had him do this several times, in addition to other physical deprivations.
During the six years of harsh labour, Milarepa was not given any teachings, but functioned only as a servant. At the end of the six years he was at the point of exhaustion and seeing no hope, he made one last desperate plea to his teacher to finally be initiated. Marpa agreed, and called him to his house at an appointed time.
Milarepa was overjoyed. But when he arrived to finally begin his instructions, after six years of physical and mental torture, Marpa showed up apparently very drunk, and proceeded to verbally and physically abuse Milarepa, ending with throwing him violently out of his house and demanding that he never return.
Completely broken, Milarepa left and wandered through the country, looking for the best place to commit suicide. According to the records, Marpa's wife, who always had a tender spot for Milarepa, caught up with him and beseeched him to return to Marpa one more time to ask for the teachings. Milarepa was moved by her effort, but declined to accept, and prepared himself to end his life.
At the moment of this decision, Marpa appeared in front of him, and formally accepted him as a pupil. Because his earlier crimes had been so extreme, he needed to go over the edge in order to be deemed worthy of the gift he was pleading for. The last of Milarepa's powerful ego-based tendencies and karmic residues had been destroyed, and he was now an empty cup, ready to receive the higher knowledge that would lead to his liberation.
As might be expected, he excelled as a student, and progressed very quickly. After a while Milarepa retreated to the mountains, where he lived in deep meditation practice for nine years. He dwelt in a frigid cave, but was given the psychic technique of tummo (heat creation) which enabled him to withstand the cold. He was said to have attained to the highest Enlightenment, and many seekers of truth were drawn to him, becoming his disciples, after his nine year retreat.
One of these disciples, the physician Gampopa, in turn became the teacher of Dusum Kenpa, who was to be recognized as the first Karmapa, or "Black Hat Lama". This was the office of the continuously reincarnating master of the Karma Kargu lineage, the 19th incarnation of whom is alive today as a young boy. The Karmapa is actually an older tulku lineage than that of the Dalai Lama, the current one of whom is only the 14th (Tenzin Gyatso).
Milarepa also became a poet, and spontaneously composed over 100,000 lyric songs, the manuscript of which exists today as the "Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa". Here's one of them, illustrating the classic Buddhist realization of emptiness:
In the realm of Absolute Truth, Buddha Himself does not exist. There are no practices nor practicers, no path, no realization, and no stages, no Buddha's bodies and no Wisdom. There is then no Nirvana, for these are merely names and thoughts. Matter and beings in the universe are non-existent from the start; they have never come to be. There is no Truth, no Innate-Born Wisdom, no Karma, and no effect therefrom; The World even has no name, such is Absolute Truth.
This was a Zen-like teaching on the complete cessation of all projected conceptualizations. Milarepa is not actually saying that nothing per se exists, he is pointing to the understanding that prior to full awakening, we see everything through the filter of language and concept. We do not see Reality, but only our idea of it. When we remove the filters of projection, the world is revealed to be but a playground for the Divine -- instrinsically empty and utterly full at the same time. He once expressed it thusly:
Tonight, while the clear moon shines over the serene Earth, the five charming maidens, happy and dancing, come once more. The silk scarves round your lovely bodies sway and flutter, your jewels sparkle in the light. You have been conjured to perfection, enchanting and most beautiful. At the Goddess Leader's call, the proud angels and spirits of the Eight Worlds have come to you, filling all the sky...
Beneath the bright light in the sky, stand snow mountains to the North. Near these are the holy pasture lands, and fertile Medicine Valley. Like a golden divan is the narrow basin, round it winds the river, Earth's great blessing...
When one approaches closer, one sees a great rock towering above a meadow. As prophesied by Buddha in past ages, it is the Black Hill, the rock of Bije Mountain Range. It is the central place, north of the woodlands on the border between Tibet and India, where tigers roam freely.
The medicine trees, Tsandam and Zundru, are found here growing wild. The rock looks like a heap of glistening jewels; it is the palace where live the heavenly saints. It is the seat of hermits, blessed by the angels, and where accomplished yogis live...
When one reads his writings it is clear that Milarepa was no world-denying ascetic, but rather a deeply awakened man who was passionately in love with the vast landscapes of Earth that surrounded him, though simultaneously dwelling in non-separation consciousness that enabled him to be at One with the Divine Source of all.
Milarepa's life was particularly inspirational, owing to his painful and courageous transformation from extreme hate, bitterness, and despair to extreme clarity, wisdom, and love.
[Excerpts above from The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarapa, Shambhala Books, 1977].
Copyright 1999, by P.T. Mistlberger, All Rights Reserved
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