He went from being the worst kind of malevolent sorcerer to a devoted and ascetic Buddhist practitioner to a completely enlightened being all in a single lifetime . . . The story of Milarepa (1040–1123) is a tale of such extreme and powerful transformation that it might be thought not to have much direct application to our own less dramatic lives—but Chögyam Trungpa shows otherwise.
This collection of his teachings on the life and songs of the great Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint reveals how Milarepa’s difficulties can be a source of guidance and inspiration for anyone. His struggles, his awakening, and the teachings from his remarkable songs provide precious wisdom for all us practitioners and show what devoted and diligent practice can achieve.
He went from being the worst kind of malevolent sorcerer to a devoted and ascetic Buddhist practitioner to a completely enlightened being all in a single lifetime . . . The story of Milarepa (1040–1123) is a tale of such extreme and powerful transformation that it might be thought not to have much direct application to our own less dramatic lives—but Chögyam Trungpa shows otherwise.
This collection of his teachings on the life and songs of the great Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint reveals how Milarepa’s difficulties can be a source of guidance and inspiration for anyone. His struggles, his awakening, and the teachings from his remarkable songs provide precious wisdom for all us practitioners and show what devoted and diligent practice can achieve.
Milarepa: Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet's Great Yogi
304
Milarepa: Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet's Great Yogi
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Overview
He went from being the worst kind of malevolent sorcerer to a devoted and ascetic Buddhist practitioner to a completely enlightened being all in a single lifetime . . . The story of Milarepa (1040–1123) is a tale of such extreme and powerful transformation that it might be thought not to have much direct application to our own less dramatic lives—but Chögyam Trungpa shows otherwise.
This collection of his teachings on the life and songs of the great Tibetan Buddhist poet-saint reveals how Milarepa’s difficulties can be a source of guidance and inspiration for anyone. His struggles, his awakening, and the teachings from his remarkable songs provide precious wisdom for all us practitioners and show what devoted and diligent practice can achieve.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781611802092 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Shambhala |
| Publication date: | 03/28/2017 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Milarepa
Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet's Great Yogi
By Chögyam Trungpa, Judith L. Lief
Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Copyright © 2017 Diana J. MukpoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61180-209-2
CHAPTER 1
The Mahamudra Lineage
The study of Milarepa's life is a very profound and penetrating experience. It is inspiring. Such inspiration is valuable, whether it is based on someone who lived in the eleventh century or in the twentieth century, since the pattern of life is always the same. So the study of Milarepa's life is a way of learning the meaning of life altogether.
The teachings of Milarepa have been transmitted through the Kagyü tradition, from one person to another — down to myself, at this point — and each of these people has had a full experience of the practicing lineage. I am now the holder and exponent of that particular tradition, the holder of the Kagyü fort in the United States of America and, quite possibly, the rest of the world, so we will have a delightful feast together in discussing these teachings, and how Milarepa's experience, his work with students, and his state of mind evolved through his discipline.
The Kagyü Lineage
In order to understand Milarepa's life and his teachings, we also have to understand the lineage that Milarepa belonged to: the Kagyü lineage, the lineage of devotion. We need to look into the origins of the Kagyü lineage, as well as its application and its approach toward its goal. Kagyüpas, practitioners of this tradition, are especially gifted in developing devotion for their teacher. Through their devotion, they unify the teacher, or guru, with their own being, and having done so, they see their guru within every other life and within every aspect of life. Therefore, I think it would be worthwhile to take a look at this tradition.
It is very important to realize what the term Kagyü means. Ka means "sacred word," and gyü means "lineage" so Kagyü means "lineage of the sacred word." It is also referred to as the "practicing lineage," or Drupgyü. The Kagyü tradition often recommends that its students' energy be entirely devoted to the sitting practice of meditation, whether with members of the sangha or without members of the sangha, as in solitary retreat and so forth. Its whole inspiration comes from exertion in the sitting practice of meditation alone, nothing but that. Altogether, the teachings of the Kagyü lineage are known as mahamudra, which literally means "great symbol."
Within the Kagyü tradition, Milarepa was brought up with the teachings of Buddhist yoga, including such yogic practices as the six yogas of Naropa. Like any other yoga training, these practices deal with one's physical being as well as being a reflection of one's state of mind. In other words, they are based on trying to see the symbolism within life. The deep meaning of yoga is "union." In yoga, one is uniting with one's own outer reflection as well as with one's whole being. That is precisely the practice of meditation and devotion to the guru in the Kagyü lineage.
In the Kagyü devotional tradition, we begin by developing a basic understanding of the nature of ego, and having realized that, we develop renunciation. The inspiration for renunciation is based on how the previous teachers and masters in the lineage handled their egos and developed renunciation. Inspired by their examples, we begin to develop devotion. And because we are going through tremendous neurosis, pain, and dissatisfaction, the ways in which those teachers handled neurosis and ego become extraordinarily fantastic lessons for us. We learn that neurosis is synonymous with pain, and that we do not throw away our neurosis or dwell on it, but we try to work with it.
Renunciation takes different forms throughout the lineage of Milarepa, in accordance with the different personalities involved with the lineage. Prior to Milarepa, we had Tilopa, Naropa, and Marpa.
Tilopa the Fisherman
Tilopa was a great Indian sage, or siddha. He was a person who did not have to seek for teachings: he found the teachings in himself. He just exposed the teachings within himself.
Tilopa was born the son of a farmer, and in childhood he became a herdsman and looked after his parents' cows. While doing so, a message or teaching came to his mind in the form of a vision of an old lady approaching him. The old woman said these four lines:
If you look at these clouds of discursive mind,
You will know that intuitive knowledge must be found within
yourself,
And having found it within yourself,
You will be nourished by the milk, or amrita, of spiritual energy.
It was very strange for the child to hear these words of poetry in his mind, and Tilopa reflected very much on them. They were a source of inspiration. But like Tilopa, we too could see that our life and whatever we do in our life has an association with a deeper meaning or spiritual aspect. In other words, such an experience could occur to anyone; it need not be Tilopa, Naropa, or some great sage. Anyone, even an eight- or ten-year-old child, could hear such an analogy. It is very beautiful that, somehow, the child Tilopa made a connection with life and with the symbolism of mahamudra. Mahamudra teachings make us see life, including the work of herding cows, in a deeper sense.
This example is very worthwhile for us as we live our own particular lives. In Tilopa's case, having heard these teachings, he decided to search for their meaning, so he went to see the great teacher Vajradhara, the dharmakaya buddha. According to the story, at this point Tilopa had no human teachers. His teachers were of higher states of being: they were dharmakaya and sambhogakaya buddhas. This story gives us hope that we could receive teachings from doing something like cow herding. In looking after a cow and enjoying its milk, there could be an instinct or discovery of the teacher principle manifesting in your life, which is very beautiful and interesting. I am sure that many of you may have had this kind of experience already.
Tilopa went on to practice the teaching he received from Vajradhara, who, as the dharmakaya buddha, was the unborn, unoriginated, and unadulterated state of mind or being that Tilopa discovered within himself. Of course, Tilopa also went on to receive traditional teachings and meditation instructions from various Buddhist teachers and organizations. But that discovery of wisdom within himself seems to have been his first direct lineage.
Eventually, Tilopa decided to leave his family and all his belongings behind and lead the life of a mendicant or tramp. He managed to establish himself in a fishing village, where he lived on the food that was being thrown away by the fishermen. So Tilopa became known as "Tilopa, the great tramp" or "Tilopa, the fisherman." Probably, if you had met him, you would have found him shocking but not particularly extraordinary; he would have appeared to be just an ordinary Indian poor man or beggar living in a fishing village, that's all.
Naropa the Scholar
The next Kagyü lineage holder was Naropa. Naropa was one of the four main scholars of Nalanda University, the Buddhist monastery and college, but he decided to leave his post as a professor and seek to further his practice and spirituality rather than continuing to rely on philosophical speculation alone. Although Naropa was a great Indian scholar who had comprehended the hinayana and mahayana teachings of Buddhism, become expert at them, and taught other people, he found that his understanding was not quite complete, not quite full. For this reason, Naropa began to search for great masters in order to further his experience and understanding. He felt he needed to look for inspiration.
Naropa was looking for a way of stripping away ego's mask, and the conventional hinayana and mahayana teachings did not seem to be based on doing that kind of stripping. So you could say that achievement — whether it is intellectual, psychological, physical, or materialistic — can breed dissatisfaction. It can lead to the inspiration to try to eliminate the conventionality of satisfaction with your achievement. The whole point about devotion — not blind faith or blind devotion but complete devotion, one-hundred-percent devotion — is that ego cannot take part in it.
Naropa took tremendously to the teachings, but he had to work hard at it and undergo twelve years ofpunishment, so to speak, and disciplines of all kinds. To begin with, with some amount of coincidence, Naropa decided to search for a great teacher he had heard of, called Tilopa. Naropa traveled long distances trying to find Tilopa, but each time he thought he had found him, he heard another story about how Tilopa had just recently left. So Naropa had to continue his journey all the way to a little fishing village in Bengal.
When he arrived at the village, Naropa asked a fisherman about Tilopa, and the fisherman replied, "I do not know about a great teacher, but I do know a tramp called Tilopa who is living in the village." Naropa then went down to the village, and Tilopa received him. Naropa tried to discuss the dharma, and he requested to receive teachings from Tilopa.
At that stage, being a scholar, Naropa was quite traditional. He had been born in a royal family, and being from a very high-class Indian family, he may have had preconceived ideas about great siddhas, or tantric adepts. But in the process of searching for this great teacher, Naropa had to wear out all those expectations. He had to give up everything and just devote himself to searching for the person he would like to meet without any preconceived ideas or expectations, which is very beautiful. And this seems to be what we all need to do. If the journey is too easy and too comfortable, our memories and expectations will reinforce the ego aspect of meeting such a great person and having success with the journey.
In Naropa's case, the journey was not successful at all! It was failing all the way along until he managed, just by coincidence, to meet his teacher, Tilopa. Moreover, it was a very long time before Naropa received actual instructions. Naropa followed Tilopa to different places all the time, and he went through beatings and other austerity practices. Traditionally, it is said that he went through what are called the "twelve austerities." For example, Tilopa asked Naropa to stretch out across a stream that Tilopa found difficult to cross and make his body into a bridge. Afterward, Naropa found millions of leaches stuck on his body, and because of his physical weakness, Naropa found it very difficult to get up and follow his teacher and he fell unconscious. A few days later, Tilopa came back, woke him up, and took Naropa along with him. Such things happened to Naropa continuously.
I think this example is very beautiful. The search for spiritual practice should not be too easy. If everything is ideal, that seems to be a problem. It is where a lot of disciples go wrong and are unable to learn anything from their teachers. So a certain amount of difficulty is very necessary and important. It is a particular point in the Kagyü tradition that the meeting of your teacher must not be an easy matter. You must go through a process of painful searching, a wearing out of your expectations. If you have found a great teacher, that teacher could become a part of your entertainment or your glorification. It could confirm that you are a clever person to have found such a teacher without any difficulties. So it seems to be very important to have continual problems or difficulties in finding a spiritual teacher.
This same pattern happens again and again, and it is illustrated in the life stories of the great teachers of the Kagyü order. The idea is that those who are able to break down their expectations at the beginning will not have very much to pay back at the end. They will not have to go through disappointments and all sorts of haphazard problems. But those who have had a very easy journey at the beginning will automatically at some point need to come through the difficulty of wearing out their expectations. This is so because the very fact that meeting the right teacher in the right situation came very easily for you, coinciding magically, reaffirms your ego journey of trying to be better or trying to be an enlightened person. So you have to pay back certain things at the end, because teachers are not all that stupid. They know your cunning tricks! Because of that, you have to go through a painful and shocking, revolting, and disgraceful life process. Whether it is disgraceful on the part of the teacher or on the part of yourself, whatever it may be, you have to go through it. That is an ideal process or operation for the ego to go through, but it is a very painful, monotonous, and uneasy matter to achieve such a thing.
The last time Naropa received teaching from Tilopa was after Naropa had finished the twelve austerities demonstrating his devotion. At that time, Tilopa took off his sandal and gave a very effective big slap on Naropa's face, and at that very moment, all of Naropa's remaining expectations wore out completely, and he attained the state of realization.
Nowadays, lineages have developed more genteel ways of dealing with students. They have created their own churches, their own monasteries, their own followers, and so on, which I think is a shame. If this earlier practice could have continued, it would have been ideal. With that approach, instead of needing to make up your own mind as to whether you are doing the right thing or not, situations make up your mind. It is a very easy sorting process for you as well as for the teacher.
So I think that kind of harsh approach is necessary. It is not a question of trying to convert people in the missionary sense. I do not regard myself as the same kind of person as Milarepa, Naropa, or Tilopa, but I think that kind of approach is definitely necessary. In dealing with my own students, this sorting process has already started in many cases, because fundamentally, if people feel that a certain lineage does not fit their picture, either they leave or they just discontinue. However, I personally do not like to put students through that kind of very painful process, like making them build buildings or beating them with a stick. Probably if I did so, I would be arrested by the police, and that might be a teaching in itself! I think students are really confused, and it is not fair to go to the extreme approach of being cruel to them, because that might just confirm their confusion. At the same time, in order to sort out their confusion, it is necessary to try to proceed in such a way that you do not tune in to their preconceived ideas. That is very much necessary.
Marpa the Translator
After Naropa, the third Kagyü lineage holder was Marpa. Marpa was an ambitious scholar who was trying to find a means oflivelihood and acceptance in Tibetan society. He went for teaching as though he was acquiring new property, and instead he found he had to give himself up completely.
Marpa's journey was similar to Naropa's, but it was not so in the beginning. In order to find teachings, Marpa prepared to go to India. Doing so was quite fashionable in Tibet in those days. Ambitious people would go to India to get doctrines or teachings and bring them back to Tibet to translate. They would then present these teachings and make themselves important persons. There were a lot of great translators who studied the Sanskrit language for that reason. It was quite a well-known practice.
In the case of Marpa, because he was planning a similar kind of trip, he first went to his relatives and his friends, trying to collect as much gold as possible. He prepared himself by studying the Sanskrit language in order to speak it as well as to translate it. It took Marpa about three years to complete his studies, and having accomplished that, he went to India, traveling with a colleague who was also a translator.
Marpa's journey was similar to that of Westerners who go to India and hire a Land Rover or Jeep to drive across the land trying to find the most renowned teachers in India or among the Tibetan refugees. On the way to India, Marpa stopped in Nepal. He asked various people about a teacher he had heard about through gossip, called Naropa, who was said to be a great teacher and a great siddha. Then Marpa searched for Naropa with a competitive attitude. On this journey, Marpa stayed with his companion until they got to India. They then split up and each of them went to look for their own ideal teacher. In Marpa's case, since he had heard that Naropa was a great teacher, he decided to search for him, and Marpa found Naropa without much difficulty.
When Marpa asked Naropa to admit him as his disciple, Naropa immediately asked Marpa, "Have you got enough gold to offer?" because Marpa's journey had been too easy, too smooth. So Marpa offered a certain amount of his gold to Naropa. But Naropa said, "That's not enough!" and he asked for gold again. He said, "Show me your whole supply of gold!" According to the story, Marpa had doubts as to whether Naropa was a charlatan teaching purely to collect gold. Nonetheless, Marpa gave Naropa his entire supply of gold, with a tremendous feeling of meaningfulness. He hoped that by giving all his gold to this teacher, in return he would receive valuable teachings from him — and to his surprise, Naropa picked up the gold and threw it into the air! Naropa then touched the ground and said, "This whole earth is gold! There is no need to search for any more gold." However, once Marpa had made that offering, Naropa accepted him as a student and taught him continuously, and Marpa tried to understand the teachings he was receiving.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Milarepa by Chögyam Trungpa, Judith L. Lief. Copyright © 2017 Diana J. Mukpo. Excerpted by permission of Shambhala Publications, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Editors Introduction vii
Part 1 Milarepa and the Mahamudra Tradition
1 The Mahamudra Lineage 3
2 The Student-Teacher Relationship 13
3 The Importance of Devotion 20
4 One-Upmanship 26
5 Disillusionment, Renunciation, and the Search for a Teacher 30
6 Milarepa's Genuineness and Honesty 35
7 Encountering Marpa 38
8 Marpa's Construction Projects 45
9 Destroying Materialism 49
10 Straightforward Discipline 57
11 Exposing Ego's Dirty Trick 62
12 Spiritual Romanticism 69
13 Loneliness, Exertion, and the Delight in Practice 74
14 Breakthrough 82
15 Fear, Mockery, and the Dawning of Mahamudra 89
16 Four Yogas of Mahamudra: One-Pointedness and Simplicity 96
17 Four Yogas of Mahamudra: One Taste and Nonmeditation 103
18 Milarepa's Love and Compassion 108
19 Milarepa's Buddha Activity 113
Part 2 Songs and Commentaries
20 Conversations in Verse 119
21 Milarepa's Challenge from a Wise Demoness 121
22 The Song of Realization 133
23 A Woman's Role in the Dharma 149
24 The Challenge from the Logicians 166
25 The Realization of Megom Repa 184
26 Sale Ö and Her Understanding 196
27 The Story of the Yak Horn 206
28 Rethungpa's Repentance 222
29 The Holy Gampopa 233
30 The Conversion of the Scholar Lotön 248
31 The Beer Drinking Song 261
32 Farewell to Holy Gampopa 268
Acknowledgments 274
Sources 276
Index 279