Milarepa’s Wisdom
Milarepa was Tibet's most famous saint who renounced dark magic and with Buddhist practice was able to become realized in one lifetime. Practicing in the high Himalayan mountains, wearing only a cotton robe, he taught the Dharma through beautiful, imagery-filled spiritual songs making them very accessible to the reader.
Milarepa's Wisdom begins with a retelling ten different songs which Milarepa actually spontaneously sang to his human students and also non-human beings which have a tune a certain number of syllables (but don’t rhyme). Using common objects and events he was able to teach a wide variety of profound realizations and his intense devotion and insight to the path to enlightenment.
In the second section of the book, Rinpoche gives a thorough commentary on the Thirty Instructions that Milarepa received from his guru, Marpa, and then sang them as instructions to his heart-son Gampopa. If we were to carefully follow these instructions and understand them as given in the Rinpoche's commentary, we would become an outstanding practitioner.
In the third section of Milarepa's Wisdom Rinpoche presents Milarepa's Song on the Middle Way to demonstrate that Milarepa was not just an unschooled yogi in the mountains, but that had a profound understanding of Buddhist philosophy. After all, Milarepa studied for about a dozen years under Marpa who as an outstanding scholar and translator. In this song Rinpoche points out that the Shentong view of emptiness was known by Milarepa many years before the Shentong view was recognized by Tibetan scholars.
