Milarepa

Jetsun Milarepa — Jetsun meaning Venerable Lord, Mila meaning radiating warmth, repa meaning cotton-clad (named for the single cotton garment he wore through the substantial Himalayan winters of his meditation) — is the most beloved figure in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The traditional dates are c. 1052–1135, though some accounts give 1040–1123. The substantial primary source for his life is the Life of Milarepa (Mila Rangnam), composed in the late 15th century by Tsangnyön Heruka — the Madman of Tsang — and one of the most widely-read religious biographies in any tradition.

Early life and the years of black magic

Milarepa was born Töpaga (Joy-to-Hear, named for the substantial pleasure his crying as an infant brought to his mother) to a prosperous family in Kya Ngatsa in southern Tibet. His father died when Milarepa was seven, leaving the family’s substantial property and the care of Milarepa, his mother, and his sister to his paternal uncle and aunt — who immediately dispossessed the family, forcing them into substantial poverty and humiliation.

Milarepa’s mother, embittered by the substantial injustice, sent the young Milarepa to study black magic in order to revenge the family on the relatives who had wronged them. Milarepa studied under several teachers, mastered substantial dark practices, and — at his mother’s continuing urging — used them to call down a substantial hailstorm on his uncle’s house during a wedding feast, killing thirty-five people including the wedding guests. The accounts emphasize the substantial completeness of the revenge: the family enemies were destroyed; the surviving relatives fled; [[sourdough-starter|the mother]]‘s vengeance was fully satisfied.

But Milarepa, on reflection, recognized the substantial karmic burden he had taken on: by Buddhist understanding, the killing of thirty-five people through magical means would entail substantial rebirths in the hell realms before the karmic consequences could be exhausted. He resolved to find a teacher who could give him the means to liberate himself from this burden within a single lifetime.

Marpa and the trials

Milarepa traveled to find Marpa Lotsawa (1012–1097) — Marpa the Translator — the foundational Tibetan figure of the Kagyu lineage, who had traveled three times to India to receive substantial tantric transmissions from Naropa and the other great Indian mahasiddhas of the 11th century. Marpa, on Milarepa’s arrival, recognized his substantial potential but also the substantial residual pride and obstinacy that would prevent direct transmission of [[buddhism|the Dharma]]. Rather than immediately giving him teachings, Marpa subjected Milarepa to a substantial sequence of demanding ordeals.

The most famous of these: Marpa instructed Milarepa to build a stone tower for his son Darma Dode. Milarepa, working alone, completed each tower at substantial labor, only to have Marpa declare the location wrong and order it dismantled — the stones returned to where Milarepa had quarried them. [[death|The cycle]] was repeated multiple times, with Milarepa’s back substantially wounded from carrying the stones and his hope substantially exhausted. The final tower — the nine-story Sekhar Guthok at Lhodrak in southern Tibet — was finally accepted, and Marpa granted Milarepa the substantial tantric transmissions for which he had come.

The trials are not gratuitous cruelty in the tradition’s interpretation; they are read as the substantial purification of Milarepa’s negative karma, accomplished within a single lifetime through extreme ordeal, that made the subsequent direct tantric transmission effective.

The years of meditation

After receiving Marpa’s transmissions, Milarepa spent the substantial remainder of his life as a wandering yogi in the high Himalayan caves of southern Tibet and northwestern Nepal — substantially the area of the Tibetan plateau between Lapchi, Chuwar, and the borderlands with what is now Mustang and the Annapurna region.

The principal caves associated with Milarepa’s meditation:

• Dragkar Taso (White Rock Horse Tooth) — where he received the foundational early instruction.
• Drakar Taso in Mangyul Gungtang — substantial extended meditation site.
• Lapchi Gang — one of the three principal Kagyu sacred sites, on the Tibet-Nepal border south of Tingri.
• Chuwar in Drin — substantial extended meditation site in his later years.
• Kyirong — one of the foundational early meditation sites.
• Drakar Taso Choling — in Mangyul Gungtang region.

The accounts describe Milarepa as living in conditions of substantial austerity: no provisions, minimal clothing (the single cotton repa robe that gave him his name), subsisting on what could be foraged from the immediate environment. The tradition holds that for extended periods he survived primarily on nettle soup (shak-pa) — a substantial Himalayan wild green — to the extent that his skin took on a greenish tint and his body became substantially emaciated. The cave-meditator iconography of Milarepa — green-tinted, hand cupped to ear, seated in the meditation posture — has become one of the most recognizable Tibetan Buddhist images.

The Hundred Thousand Songs

Milarepa’s teaching method was substantially distinctive: rather than systematic philosophical exposition, he taught through spontaneous poetic song (mgur, Tibetan, gur; dohā in the Indian Vajrayāna tradition). His students would arrive at his cave, ask questions, and Milarepa would respond with extempore poetic compositions that integrated substantive Dharma instruction with substantial emotional and aesthetic immediacy.

These songs were collected after his death by his disciple Rechungpa and substantially expanded over subsequent generations; the standard collection — the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa (Mila Gurbum), compiled in its received form by Tsangnyön Heruka in the 15th century — is one of the most beloved religious texts in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and has been substantially translated into Western languages (the principal English translation is Garma C.C. Chang’s 1962 The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa).

The songs are remarkable for their combination of substantial spiritual depth with continuous engagement with the immediate situations of Milarepa’s life: hunters who threaten him, demons who try to interrupt his meditation, students who arrive with substantial confusion, his own continuing experiences of cold, hunger, and the substantial visionary phenomena of intensive contemplative practice.

The Kagyu lineage

Milarepa’s principal disciples — Gampopa (1079–1153, the substantial monastic-physician who systematized the Kagyu tradition into its continuing form), Rechungpa (the layman-yogi who substantially preserved Milarepa’s life-story and songs), and others — established the substantial subsequent Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. The Kagyu (Oral Lineage) emphasizes direct teacher-to-student transmission of the foundational tantric methodologies — particularly Mahāmudrā (the Great Seal contemplative tradition) and the Six Yogas of Naropa — through substantial continuing transmission lines.

The principal contemporary Kagyu sub-lineages — the Karma Kagyu (headed by the Karmapa — currently a contested succession between Ogyen Trinley Dorje and Trinley Thaye Dorje, both recognized as the 17th Karmapa by different factions), the Drikung Kagyu, the Drukpa Kagyu (the state religion of Bhutan), and several others — all trace through Gampopa to Milarepa and back to Marpa, Naropa, Tilopa, and the foundational Indian mahasiddhas.

What he gives

A continuing example — perhaps the principal Tibetan Buddhist example — of a substantial yogic life lived outside the monastic framework, demonstrating that [[buddhism|the Dharma]] is not the property of institutions but is available to anyone willing to undertake substantial contemplative practice. A body of spontaneous poetic teaching that has remained beloved across nine centuries and continues to be read, recited, and sung across the Tibetan Buddhist world. And, through the Kagyu lineage and its continuing tantric transmission, one of the most distinctive contemplative traditions in the broader Buddhist world.

See also

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• Parallels: [[padmasambhava]]
• Member of: [[person]]
• Part of: [[vajrayana]]