The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa

by Tsangnyon Heruka

  The work known by English speakers as The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa is called in Tibetan by the abbreviated title Mila Gurbum.*8 While Milarepa sang perhaps many thousands of songs during his lifetime, this work (along with the few songs in the shorter Life of Milarepa) contains 382 songs, 62 of which were sung by other figures, leaving only 322 actually by Milarepa himself.*9

  The last syllable of the Tibetan title, bum, alone, can mean one hundred thousand, but when preceded by another word, it figuratively means “collection.” Collected works of Tibetan authors are called “soong boom” (gsung ’bum), or “collected teachings.” Thus, “The Collected Songs of Milarepa” is a more accurate translation of the title. However, as in the case of the Tibetan Book of the Dead (which is actually titled Liberation upon Hearing in the Bardo), it was felt that Chang’s more familiar title would give the volume wider recognition, so The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa: A New Translation was chosen as the title for this book.

  HISTORY OF MILAREPA BIOGRAPHIES

  Many early biographical works of Milarepa’s life preceded Tsangnyön’s version. Likely the first was a short sketch dictated by Milarepa’s main disciple, Gampopa. Although only several pages long, it outlines the major points of Milarepa’s life later used in the more extensive versions. Gampopa’s work does not record Milarepa’s songs verbatim; however, reference is made to several of the songs that appear in later versions of his biography.*10 Andrew Quintman has done extensive research on the history and development of Milarepa’s biography. He has surveyed works attributed to Ngendzong Repa and Rechungpa, both direct students of Milarepa, along with a number of shorter biographies appearing alongside those of other lineage masters in the collections of biographies that are each called the Golden Rosary. In these, Quintman observes a gradual evolution of the narrative details of Milarepa’s life, which become more and more fleshed out, with actual songs appearing often in truncated form, but sometimes in full.*11

  Perhaps the first biography to include multiple cycles of Milarepa’s songs of realization as well as a full account of his life was The Twelve Great Sons.*12 It appeared sometime between the mid-twelfth century and the mid-thirteenth century, and is attributed to Milarepa’s twelve closest disciples, with a prominent role credited to Ngendzong Repa, renowned for his perfect memory of Milarepa’s spontaneous utterances. A later compilation, The Black Treasury,*13 is attributed to the Third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje (1284–1339). It likely drew from The Twelve Great Sons as a major source, including virtually all of the songs while adding additional material, thus making it the largest biographical work on Milarepa we have today. It was only in the late fifteenth century, more than three hundred years after Milarepa’s death, that Tsangnyön Heruka, relying in great part on these previous works, masterfully edited and compiled what is today the most popular and widely known version of Milarepa’s life and songs.

  TSANGNYÖN HERUKA

  Much of what we know about Tsangnyön Heruka comes from hagiographical accounts written by three of his direct disciples: Götsang Repa, Lhatsün Rinchen Namgyal, and Ngödrup Pembar.*14 According to his students, Tsangnyön was born in the village of Kharkha in the western region of Central Tibet called Tsang.*15 At age eight, he received novice ordination with the monastic name Sangyé Gyaltsen, and throughout his time as a monk he is said to have kept the monastic discipline rigorously, engaging diligently in the traditional ten activities of dharma.*16 Even from this very early time in his life, he is portrayed as having felt a strong connection with the figure of Milarepa. In one account, Tsangnyön was urged by the dakinis*17 to practice meditation in Lachi, one of the sacred places associated with Milarepa. Knowing that his parents would never allow such a journey, he left secretly; but early on in his journey his distraught mother found him and brought him back home.

  At age fourteen Tsangnyön met his primary guru, Shara Rabjam Sangyé Sengé (Sharawa) (1427–1470), a holder of all the important whispered lineage instructions of the Kagyu. Sharawa gradually transmitted those instructions to Tsangnyön, and against Tsangnyön’s own predilections, Sharawa urged him to take Hevajra (also called Heruka) as his primary yidam*18 practice. Tsangnyön studied the Hevajra Tantra extensively at the monastic institute of Palkhor Chödé of Gyantsé, subsequently receiving the abhisheka of Hevajra from his guru. At around age twenty-one, Tsangnyön left the monastery and began to engage in yogic practices extensively. Spending years in solitary mountain retreats, Tsangnyön is said to have attained the highest level of accomplishment around the age of twenty-three.*19 Coinciding with this stabilization of his practice, Tsangnyön began outwardly displaying behaviors indicative of the “conduct of yogic discipline.” Such conduct, only appropriate for true yogic adepts, serves the dual function of benefiting others and enhancing the yogi’s own practice by transcending conventional concepts of culture and decorum. The practice of the “conduct of yogic discipline” can take the form of unconventional or even outrageous behavior that at times may come across as offensive or obscene to those who witness it.*20 Götsang Repa portrays an early episode of Tsangnyön’s yogic conduct:

  Having thought extensively about how to benefit the Buddhist doctrine and living beings, he went to a very great gathering in Tsari. His body was naked, soiled with ashes from corpses, spotted with blood, and smeared with fat. He made a necklace and ornaments for his feet and hands [using] the intestines of a dead man’s body. He cut off the fingers and toes, tied them together with a thread of muscle fibers and bound his hair with it. A person offered him an incomplete set of thin bone ornaments which he wore on his body. Sometimes he laughed and sometimes he cried. In particular, he carried out various kinds of outrageous behavior in the market place. Even though the conduct of the people of Tsari was very rough, [Tsangnyön’s] compassion brought them under his control, and they were subdued by his power. They revered him very much and agreed to call him Madman of Tsang. Then he became as famous as the sun and the moon in all directions.*21

  A number of similar accounts are mentioned describing this phase of Tsangnyön’s life, as he traveled widely throughout southern Tibet and into Nepal. Because of such displays, he was given additional names of a crazy-wisdom flavor, such as Traktung Gyalpo*22 (“Blood-Drinking King”) and Tsariwa Rupé Gyenchen*23 (“Man of Tsari Dressed in Bone Ornaments”).*24 Though reactions to Tsangnyön’s behavior often evoked great anger (his life was threatened on numerous occasions), it was through these actions that he also made auspicious connections with a number of kings and dignitaries who are said to have offered assistance that enabled him to act effectively for the sake of beings and the Buddhist teachings.*25

  Later, Tsangnyön began to teach and write, at which point such radical behavior is mentioned much less frequently in his biographies.*26 At thirty-eight, Tsangnyön went to Lachi where he began compiling and printing the life story and collected songs of his great role model, Milarepa. According to his biographers, Tsangnyön’s inspiration for compiling Milarepa’s life story and songs came from a visionary encounter with Naropa, one of the great forefathers of the Kagyu lineage. In the vision, Tsangnyön was instructed to compose the work and was assured that he would receive the proper resources to do so.*27 According to Götsang Repa, Tsangnyön developed great resolve to carry out the task with the specific aim of making Milarepa’s story and teachings an inspiration for people of all walks of life:

  Rather than stirring up bubbles of technical jargon, [such a biography] would be a wish-fulfilling gem, an exceptional means for leading them to buddhahood in one lifetime. It would thus awaken the inner potential for virtue in arrogant geshes*28 who are on the verge of becoming non-Buddhists…For those who doubt the possibility of attaining buddhahood in one lifetime or say they have no time for meditation on the profound, it would serve as a perfect example of those very things…Once this printing is finished it will benefit limitless beings.*29

  This intention to disseminate Milarepa’s life story widely and promote it for a po
pular readership was a new notion. Previous versions of the biography and collected songs were merely that, collections, consisting of isolated episodes without great attention paid to an overall narrative. Furthermore, the two largest precedent collections, The Twelve Great Sons and The Black Treasury, “concluded with strict commands of secrecy.”*30 A warning illustrating this appears at the end of the third story of the Tashi Tseringma cycle, which seems to be the oldest fully intact section of the work:

  “Until one gives practice instruction and examines

  Meditators in the future, yet to come,

  You should withhold the instruction and not show the writings.”

  Thus my lord guru commanded me.

  If you should transgress this command,

  You will incur the punishment of the dakinis.

  Thus, please do not propagate it, but keep it hidden.

  Since in his vision Tsangnyön was presumably informed directly by Naropa that he should disseminate Milarepa’s story and teachings, it seems Tsangnyön felt such restrictions were lifted.

  In some accounts, Tsangnyön is described as having undergone great difficulty in acquiring all the texts and scattered sayings of Milarepa as well as retaining the wood-block cutters, scribes, and printers needed to produce the work. He assembled them all at Crystal Cave, one of Milarepa’s famed meditation sites, where the wood-blocks were carved.*31 The Life and Songs were finally completed in 1488 and Tsangnyön distributed them widely throughout Central Tibet, sending many copies to Ngari, Lho, Chang, and to all the officials in the region around Mount Tsari.*32 Following the biography’s initial dissemination, Tsangnyön also took a multimedia approach to promoting the story by commissioning a set of three large thangka paintings portraying the episodes of Milarepa’s life as Tsangnyön himself had described them in his writings.*33

  Though it is Milarepa’s biography that Tsangnyön became most well known for, his activity supporting the teachings and practitioners was far-reaching. Later in life he worked assiduously to renovate the famed Swayambhu stupa*34 located in the western part of present-day Kathmandu. All of this work earned the praise of the Seventh Gyalwang Karmapa, Chödrak Gyatso, whose letter to Tsangnyön was recorded in one of Tsangnyön’s works:

  I, the one widely known as Karmapa, have the following to say: I have gradually heard about the actions for spreading the Kagyü teachings carried out by the mighty and holy yogin Tsangnyön. I have heard how he has printed the life story and song collection of the glorious laughing vajra (Milarepa), how he has established hermitages at the three holy mountains,*35 and so forth. I too feel happy and rejoice when I hear about it. In addition to that, the restorations of the Venerable All Trees (Swayambhu) and of the hermitages of Drin and Chuwar and so forth make the burden you are carrying for the Buddhist teachings huge. I will also assist you in whatever way I can; don’t give up! May the world be adorned with the blazing glory of auspiciousness!*36

  STRUCTURE AND CONTENTS OF THE WORK

  Before the production of Tsangnyön’s Life and Songs, Milarepa’s life stories and collected songs were generally published as mixed collections. As mentioned above, Tsangnyön divided the life and songs into separate texts, streamlining the narrative of major points of Milarepa’s life story into a smaller “coherent and integrated story” and separating the extensive collection of songs and accounts dealing primarily with his life as a teacher (though the two works are often now joined in a single volume in modern printings of the Tibetan).*37 Arranging them in this way, Tsangnyön elevated the Life to a place of prominence and placed the Songs in a supporting role. Although these texts were published separately, it is by reading both the Life and the Songs that Milarepa’s life and work can be best appreciated.*38 As Döndrup Gyal states in a contemporary survey of the history of dharma songs in Tibet, “If one studies Milarepa’s Life without the Songs, one is unable to gain a deep understanding; and likewise, if one doesn’t know about the Life while reading Milarepa’s Songs, one is unable to understand the background for the stories of the songs.”*39

  The Collected Songs of Milarepa is organized into three major cycles. The first deals primarily with Milarepa’s various encounters with nonhuman spirits, the second describes his first meetings with his most important and well-known disciples, and the third cycle is a series of miscellaneous stories and episodes from Milarepa’s teaching career. While in previous versions of the Life and Songs, stories were presented discretely as isolated events, in Tsangnyön’s version, most of the episodes are presented in chronological fashion. In the eighth chapter of the comparatively short Life of Milarepa, a rough summary tells of each place to which Milarepa traveled following his own personal spiritual attainment and of the beings he benefited, presumably in the order they occurred in his life. That summary is fleshed out fully in the Collected Songs with care given to tying the narrative together, often by explaining where Milarepa traveled subsequent to a particular episode at the end or beginning of each chapter. Although the Collected Songs lacks a clear overall arc in terms of plot, this linear narrative gives the story an overriding momentum, making it a more compelling read.

  Students and practitioners of Milarepa’s tradition revere the Collected Songs not only for its primary narrative but also for the light it sheds on his teaching. Milarepa’s main mode of instruction is the singing of “songs of realization,” or dohas, a tradition brought to Tibet by the lineage of mahasiddhas, great unconventional realized masters of India. In this tradition, masters sing spontaneously from their own immediate experience about what they have realized directly, often giving instruction on how others may come to have the same understanding. In Milarepa’s particular style, colloquial, idiomatic language and commonplace examples are employed, making the teaching accessible and relatable for individuals who may not have engaged in any formal study of Buddhist philosophy. This direct, experiential approach to teaching inevitably helps the students portrayed in the stories establish a connection with the teaching in a personal way.

  Milarepa pointedly avoids elaborations on philosophical topics, yet throughout the Collected Songs, he touches on all of the major topics related to dharma practice. For beginners and those who have little experience with dharma, he emphasizes renunciation, faith, karma, cause and effect, and the six paramitas. For his meditator-disciples, he sings about the many profound topics of the Vajrayana tradition: the practices of the creation and completion stages,*40 illusory body, transference (phowa), bardo,*41 recognizing the nature of mind, and sustaining that experience throughout formal meditation and daily activity. Milarepa rarely fleshes out the mechanical details of the practices, leaving most of those instructions to be given behind the scenes; but those with some familiarity with what he teaches will be able to pick up on the key points as a support for their own practice.

  Like traditional treatises and practice manuals providing information organized by topic, the Collected Songs can also be considered as a sort of practice manual, one that presents topics organically, in real-life situations. Each song can, in effect, stand alone as an instruction presenting key points of the teachings in a brief and easy-to-remember format, albeit one that requires the reader to unpack their meaning fully. To this day, Buddhist teachers from this tradition regularly give oral teachings expounding on the meaning of selected songs of Milarepa.

  One notable contemporary commentator of Milarepa’s songs is the great scholar and yogic master Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche. Throughout his life’s teaching, Khenpo Rinpoche has used Milarepa’s songs as a basis for presenting the dharma to students worldwide. While training a new generation of translators, Khenpo Rinpoche has guided Western students in the study of many of Milarepa’s songs in their native languages and Western melodies. Khenpo Rinpoche relates:

  These chapters [of Milarepa’s Collected Songs] are all wonderful aids for our practice. These days, people like to study and to meditate, but they also need teachings that are concise. The great thing about these chapter
s is that they each tell the complete story of Milarepa and one particular disciple or group of disciples. They give the whole path from beginning to end, from when the students first meet Milarepa, describing what their encounter is like, to what happens as they practice and as Milarepa gives them more and more instructions. So in each chapter there is a complete path. And the songs are so profound.*42

  All of the English translations of Milarepa’s songs found in this work that are known to have been developed under Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche’s guidance have been listed in appendix 4.*43

  In addition to the songs, the narrative itself, describing Milarepa’s actions and relationships with students, serves as an important teaching. There are a number of traditional treatises and practice texts written in the Vajrayana context that describe how an appropriate relationship between guru and disciple should play out. But Milarepa’s Life and Songs gives a firsthand view of how such a relationship can unfold. Further, throughout the Collected Songs, Milarepa interacts with a wide variety of individuals with differing backgrounds and levels of experience, demonstrating how he guided monks, laypeople, yogis like himself, and even spirits. Teachers of Vajrayana Buddhism often state that if one wishes to understand how to relate to a Vajrayana guru and how the Vajrayana path works on a practical level, one should read the Life and Songs of Milarepa. There seems to be a certain way of how things are carried on in his tradition, and this translator has personally observed while working with the text how uncannily familiar certain descriptions seem when in the presence of masters of Milarepa’s lineage. It can be attested that Milarepa’s lineage is truly still alive even in today’s modern world.

  FAITH IN THE BUDDHIST TRADITION