27/09/2025
All the water and drink you’ve consumed
From beginningless time until now
Has failed to satisfy your thirst or bring you contentment.
Drink therefore of this stream of enlightened mind,
O fortunate ones.
— Milarepa
Life of Milarepa
With great power, you destroyed your enemies.
With great hardship, you pleased your guru.
With great diligence, you raised the victory banner of practice.
I supplicate the great yogi Milarepa.
The second verse of the prayer summarizes the activity of Milarepa what he did in the early part of his life, the qualities he developed, and how he brought benefit to all sentient beings.
There was one occasion when Milarepa’s students gathered around and asked him, “Please tell us your life story so that we can develop faith and devotion. Tell us how you entered the gate of the Dharma, and how you practiced, and what qualities you developed.” And so, Milarepa told his life story. At the end of the story his students said, “You must not have been an ordinary person. You must have been an emanation of a buddha or a bodhisattva, so please tell us which buddha or bodhisattva’s emanation you are so we can increase our faith and devotion.” And Milarepa replied, “You are thinking that I am an emanation of a buddha or bodhisattva. It is fine that you have a pure perception of me and that you have faith and devotion, but this is not beneficial. The reason it is not of any benefit is that, in terms of the Dharma, it is actually a wrong view because I am not the emanation of a buddha or bodhisattva. I was a very wicked person and did very evil deeds. I was an ordinary person, but because I was very diligent practicing the Dharma and had such strong faith and devotion in the Dharma, I was able to practice and achieve a good result. And so, if you think that I must have been the emanation of a buddha or bodhisattva, that is a sign that you have the wrong view of believing that the Dharma doesn’t have the power to bring an ordinary person to enlightenment.”
In the first part of his life Milarepa experienced many difficulties and many problems. When he was a very little boy, his family was wealthy. But when his father passed away, his family lost all of their
possessions and wealth to greedy relatives. He and his mother and sister were left destitute and experienced many difficulties and hardships. Finally, his mother told him that he must go and learn
sorcery so that he could wreak revenge on their enemies. So, Milarepa went and learned sorcery and developed great powers. As it says in the first line of the verse, “With great powers you destroyed
your enemies.”
Milarepa’s sorcery was very powerful and later he felt great regret about killing over a dozen of his relatives. He thought to himself that he had done an extremely evil action and that he needed to
serve a guru to purify his misdeeds. Because of previous karmic connections and his aspirations, he felt great faith in Marpa the Translator and went to serve him.
At first Milarepa thought that because he had mastered sorcery and become extremely powerful in a very short time that Dharma practice would be really easy for him to learn. So, to help Milarepa overcome this false belief, Marpa was not gentle with him. In fact, he was very harsh and very strict with him. Marpa gave Milarepa many tasks and put him through a lot of hardships. He made him build a nine-story tower for Marpa’s son. In fact, he made Milarepa start building several different houses and then made him tear them all down and rebuild them. Eventually, Milarepa did build the nine- story tower. And through all of this suffering, Milarepa continued to have great faith and devotion in Marpa. His great hope was that he would receive Dharma instructions, and yet Marpa did not give him the instructions until he had really developed complete renunciation, a thorough weariness with the world.
And yet, throughout the entire experience, Milarepa never had a negative view of his guru and never resented Marpa’s harshness. This is what is meant by the second line, “Through great hardship he pleased his guru.” He underwent great hardships and underwent many trials. In the end he had carried earth back and forth and worked so hard that he developed sores and wounds all over his back. Yet, he felt no regret for this. The reason he went through all of these hardships was to please the guru.
The reason Milarepa was able to please his guru was that he had such strong faith and devotion and belief in the Dharma. Understanding this, Marpa gave Milarepa the instructions. After he received all of Marpa’s instructions, Milarepa went to a cave in the mountains near to where Marpa lived at Lhodrag (in the southern part of Tibet). He spent eighteen months there meditating with a lamp on top of his head the entire time. One night he had a dream where he saw that his own home was destroyed, that his mother had died, and that circumstances were very sad. When Milarepa asked Marpa for permission to return home, Marpa replied that the impermanence and sadness that he would encounter would be a great aid to his practice. Indeed, when Milarepa returned to his home, he found that his mother had died, that the house had fallen down, and that his sister had gone wandering as a beggar. This made him feel extremely sad. These disheartening circumstances and evidence of impermanence caused Milarepa to think that there is no benefit in trying to achieve anything worldly, and he resolved to put all of his effort and diligence into the practice of the Dharma.
At that time, Milarepa sang a spiritual song describing his home in ruins, saying that it looked like a donkey’s ears and that the beams in the house looked like the upper jaw of a lion. When I (Thrangu Rinpoche) first read this song, I thought, “This is a very strange analogy that Milarepa used. Why does he say the house looks like a donkey’s ears?” Later, when I returned to Tibet after being away for over forty years and saw the ruined temples and houses there the lower story of the house had crumbled and fallen away while the upper story with the beams were jutting out looking just like the ears of a donkey. I was very impressed and thought, “Milarepa used an excellent analogy for a ruined house.”
Milarepa’s living situation was very meager. He practiced as hard as he could, not caring about his worldly livelihood until he achieved the result. For many years all he had to eat were nettles and nettle soup. When his sister finally found him, she said “Well, I’ll cook you soup. What shall I put in your soup?” He said, “All I have is nettles.” She said, “Don’t you have any salt? Don’t you have any meat or vegetables to put in the soup?” He said, “For many years I have subsisted entirely on nettles. So, if you want salt, put in more nettles. If you want meat and vegetables, just put in more nettles.” So, this the way that he spent many years practicing and with great diligence he raised the banner of accomplishment.
After raising the banner of accomplishment, the fourth line of the verse reads, “I prostrate at the feet of the great cotton-clad yogi.” Through his practice of Subtle Heat (Tib. tummo) he was able to stay warm, no matter what the weather outside was like, he was able to practice wearing only a cotton cloth. The high Himalayas are extremely cold, and most people would not be able to bear it without wearing heavy clothes. And yet, Milarepa spent many years in these high mountains due to the strength of his practice. Whether it was summer or winter, he was able to practice. He was called the great cotton-clad yogi (Tib. repa) which was a sign of his great accomplishment. This four-line supplication to him describes the great activity he was able to do.
Milarepa knew that practicing the instructions he had received was more important than any worldly activities. So Milarepa lived in caves even if it meant that he had to go without food or clothes, and he practiced with diligence until he achieved enlightenment. He then passed on his realization in Dharma teachings to many students, thus raising the victory banner of practice. The next verse is a prayer to his student Gampopa:
The Great Vehicle awakened your heritage.
Due to the Mahamudra your realization manifested itself.
Your great activity extended as far as space extends.
I prostrate to the great meditator from Nyel.
It has been nearly a thousand years since Milarepa gave his instructions, but these instructions still flourish. This is because of Milarepa’s students — particularly the two who were like the sun, Gampopa, and like the moon, Rechungpa, — continued to practice and to teach others. Milarepa had a dream of Vajrayogini who prophesied that Gampopa would come to him and be his student. For that reason, I would like to give you a brief biography of Gampopa.
The first line of this verse describes Gampopa developing realization in the Great Vehicle or the Mahayana. One of the reasons Gampopa was such an exceptional practitioner was that he had completely awakened his potential in the Mahayana. He had practiced the Mahayana and because Milarepa gave him the opportunity to practice the instructions of Mahamudra and the Six Dharmas of Naropa, he was also able to master the Vajrayana which completely awakened his potential.
Now there are several reasons why Gampopa was able to completely awaken his potential. First of all, Gampopa was a householder and a very skilled physician. He had a wife, a son, and a daughter.
But, due to an illness that he could not cure, his two children and wife died. Because of that, he felt great revulsion for samsara and developed a strong wish for liberation, so he entered the practice
of the Dharma. Because of this tragedy, he was able to practice the Dharma to its ultimate result and his activity spread throughout the world. So, the cause for him to completely awaken his potential
was developing a revulsion for samsara.
Following that, Gampopa became ordained as a monk and received instructions from lamas of the Kadampa tradition and practiced those instructions. One day Gampopa overheard a conversation about Milarepa from some beggars and the moment he heard Milarepa’s name, he felt great faith in him. He then went to his Kadampa master and asked, “Can I go to see Milarepa?” His lama said to him, “As long as you do not give up your robes and your monastic practice, you may go and receive instructions from Milarepa.” And so, he went to visit Milarepa.
Gampopa found Milarepa, received the instructions from him, and practiced them. Gampopa was a perfect vessel, capable of receiving the instructions of the practice of Mahamudra and the Six Dharmas of Naropa. Through diligently practicing these instruction, he developed the realization of Mahamudra, and that was another cause for him to completely awaken his potential. The second line says, “Due to the Mahamudra your realization manifested itself.” So, this is the second quality, the realization of Mahamudra.
The third quality is described as, “His great activity spread throughout space.” After Gampopa received the instructions, practiced them, and developed experience and realization, he then engaged in the vast activity of spreading these teachings. Milarepa foresaw this in a dream where he saw that there was a vulture that landed on a mountain. Then there came a single goose that landed near the vulture. And slowly, another goose came, and then more geese. Then each goose was surrounded by a hundred geese, creating a crowd of more and more geese until the entire ground was filled with geese. Milarepa interpreted this dream to mean that the “Teacher from Ü” (a province in central Tibet), referring to Gampopa, will benefit many sentient beings. So, this is the prophecy that Milarepa made.
Just as the prophesy indicated, Gampopa received the instructions and then he taught the instructions of the Kadampa lineage to his ordinary disciples and taught the Vajrayana instructions — the Six Dharmas of Naropa and Mahamudra — to his exceptional disciples.
In this way many great masters received instructions from him. These were the masters of the four greater and eight lesser Kagyu lineages and many of their many students. Gampopa had a great number of disciples and then they had a great number of disciples. Because of this, the teachings flourished and are available to this day. So, in this way, “the Mahamudra realization became manifest and great activity spread throughout space.”
The three great forefathers we have discussed have different qualities and types of activity. Marpa’s activity was that of a translator. Milarepa’s activity was receiving meditation instructions and practicing them. He was able to become the great cotton-clad yogi who taught the instructions on Subtle Heat, and this was his particular quality. Gampopa’s particular quality is mentioned in the fourth line of the verse was, “I prostrate at the feet of the great meditator from Nyel.” Gampopa’s strength was that he was the great meditator from Nyel, the name of his homeland. He was a great meditator because he had superior samadhi and meditation, and was able to join the Kadampa and Mahamudra traditions. Because of this, he was able to teach the common preliminaries, the special preliminaries, the instructions on Mind Training, and other methods to develop bodhichitta. He was able to teach the instructions on Mahamudra that descended from Tilopa and Naropa so that students could also realize the nature of their own mind.
Gampopa himself received the instructions; he practiced them until he reached the ultimate result; and then he taught these instructions to many others so his activity spread throughout space. These are his particular qualities. Gampopa was an exceptional practitioner who had been prophesied by the Shakyamuni Buddha. Gampopa then achieved the ultimate realization of Mahamudra and passed on the transmission of his teachings through four great practitioners: Dusum Khyenpa (the first Karmapa), Tsultrim Nyingpo, Barom Dharma Wangchuk, and Pagmo Drupa, forming the four primary and eight secondary Kagyu lineages. These teachings on Mahamudra meditation and other Vajrayana practices have literally spread around the world, so the instructions of Marpa, Milarepa, and Gampopa have thus continued uninterrupted due to the extensive activity of Gampopa
~Excerpt from the book: MILAREPA’S WISDOM Three Teachings from The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa/Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche
Hand-Painted Milarepa Thangka by Enlightenment Thangka
