Milarepa is famous for having attained perfect awakened Buddhahood in a single lifetime through decades of solitary meditations in mountain caves, dressed only in white cotton robes. His example as a spiritual practitioner has been the inspiration for countless generations of lamas, from the eleventh century until today.

Milarepa's guru was Marpa the Translator, who spent seventeen years studying and meditating in India and brought the Mahamudra (Great Symbol) teachings to Tibet; Milarepa's own disciple was Gampopa. Gampopa sought out Milarepa after being blessed by a vision of a green yogi who flicked spit in his face.

Another source adds:

. . . 11th century Tibetan saint, Jetsun Milarepa. A poet, musician, and meditation master, Milarepa was the first common Tibetan to attain enlightenment in only one lifetime, exemplifying the great human potential for transformation.

" . . . Was not Milarepa continually building and tearing down houses? For Marpa, his Guru, demanded excellence and ultimately exacted from Milarepa that excellence. When Marpa accepted Milarepa as a pupil, he warned him: 'If I impart to thee the Truth, it will entirely depend upon thine own perseverance and energy whether thou attainest Liberation in one lifetime or not.'

"Over time Marpa asked Milarepa to build four houses, each time directing him, after the house was well under construction, to fully or partially tear it down. When Milarepa brought to Marpa’s attention his cracked and bruised hands and legs and the large oozing sores on his back, Marpa said: ' . . . If thou art really in search of the Truth, do not boast so about thy services, but continue waiting patiently and working steadily till thy building task is entirely finished.'

"Milarepa said of this incident, 'Considering within myself that such was the wish of my Guru, I felt that I must go on and do as commanded. I therefore took up my loads and carried them in front of me now, and thus went about the work.' He later realized, 'It was because of my having committed such terribly wicked deeds in the earlier part of my life that now I had to suffer such excruciating and indescribable tortures at the very outset of my search for a Faith and Doctrine to emancipate me.'

"When Milarepa had passed his initiations, Marpa explained to him: 'My son, I knew thee to be a worthy shishya [disciple] from the very first . . . And it was with a view to cleansing thee from thy sins that I had thee to work so hard upon the four houses. The houses themselves symbolize . . . the four types of action, each house representing one of the four, namely, the peaceful, the powerful, the fascinating, and the stern, respectively.

" 'I purposely wanted to fill thy heart with bitter repentance and sorrow, verging on despair, by turning thee out ignominiously. And thou, for having borne all those trials with patience and meekness, without the least change in thy faith in me, shalt have, as the result, disciples full of faith, energy, intelligence, and kind compassion, endowed from the first with the qualifications essential to worthy shishyas.'

"Be reminded of the yogi, beloved. Be reminded that if you desire enough to get out of the cage of self, you will get out of it and you will transcend yourself!

"Did not Milarepa sit in a cave in obedience to his Guru? Did he not become green from eating nettles and yet would not budge from his cave until he received the key to his victory? When you want something enough, beloved, you will have it.

"Therefore, Padma Sambhava and I come to you. And we remind you of the teaching that your call compels our answer. If your call is a weak little call, halfhearted, you will get a weak little answer, halfhearted.

"But if, with all the fervor of your heart and mind and being, you cry out to God and to the Great White Brotherhood on behalf of those who are suffering in the earth and you offer powerful invocations as you walk up and down in the night, beloved—if you do this daily with the intensity that you would offer to God if, for instance, you held your dying child in your arms and were pleading for his life, you will establish such a tie with the heart of the Godhead that no lawful prayer you offer for the rest of your life will be denied you!"

* W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed., Tibet’s Great Yogi Milarepa: A Biography from the Tibetan, trans. Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, 2d ed. (1951; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, Galaxy Books, 1976), p. 91. (Available through Summit University Press, $12.95 plus $2.50 postage and handling, <#>696P.) The passages quoted from this book in this Pearl are in Milarepa’s own words, recorded by his disciple Rechung-Dorje-Tagpa. See also “The Path of the Bodhisattva: The Guru-Chela Relationship—Marpa and Milarepa,” a lecture by Elizabeth Clare Prophet, available on audiocassette (3 cassettes, total 4 hr. 30 min., $21.95 plus $3.50 postage and handling, A88142P.)

"Remember Milarepa, the great yogi, and his life story. Indeed it is better to be a gatekeeper in the house of God than to be a prince of darkness, for darkness will cease; and all who follow it, all who pursue it in its many ramifications that lead from the narrow isthmus of self to the colossal conspiracy of the legions of the night will be ultimately dragged down by their own debauchery.

"We are concerned, then, with the building of an impregnable tower, a spiritual fortress that shall be forever a rock of the ages. Standing on the promontory of time that juts out from the eternal shores, this tower of faith must first be builded within yourselves. All must create a healthy vision of spiritual possibilities not only for their own lives per se, but also for the humanity of this earth; for the heart-pangs of the race are multiplied by worldly entanglements, by wars, by the density of human deceit, and by the network of human greed that would make merchandise of men.

"Replace all of this by light! Seek peace and pursue it, but understand that the price is high. Understand that your freedom must be maintained together with your faith. We have secured many a grant from the Karmic Lords for and on behalf of freedom to mankind this year. The invisible workers are mightily aiding in the fight against inequity, shadow, and shame which are being used to hide the light of the Christ on a world scale. And the need for all to rally to the cause of the light is pinpointed by the rise of darkness and by its proliferation."

" . . . Blessed ones, make no mistake, the Guru El Morya, who does represent me to yourselves in this Community by his additional sponsorship, has given you a true assignment of chelaship. You must look at it as the assignment of Marpa to Milarepa * and be done with it. You must take [your preparedness] as an initiation on the path of your own Bodhisattvahood and cease the delay and cease being confounded as to the reasons why[, according] to your own private analysis of the world situation, [the prophecies will or will not come to pass]."

* For the Messenger’s teaching on Milarepa, his assignments and initiations from his guru, Marpa, see Elizabeth Clare Prophet, November 6, 1988, “The Path of the Bodhisattva: The Guru-Chela Relationship: Marpa and Milarepa,” on three 90-min. audiocassettes, A88142. See also W. Y. Evans-Wentz, ed., Tibet’s Great Yogi, Milarepa: A Biography from the Tibetan, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), available through Summit University Press.

"Chela is a term meaning student or disciple of a religious teacher. It is derived from the Hindi cela, which is taken from the Sanskrit ceta, meaning slave. In the Eastern tradition of chelaship, recognized for thousands of years as the way of self-mastery and enlightenment, one desiring to have the mysteries of universal law imparted to him applies to the Teacher, known as the Guru, considered to be a Master (through the ages the real gurus have included both ascended and unascended Masters) to serve that Teacher until he is found worthy to receive the keys to his own inner reality.

"The great yogi Milarepa endured many hardships on the path, including the unlearning of the false teachings of the dark ones who imparted to him a knowledge of the manipulation of energy. Thus he had to overcome the practice of black magic and to balance the karma of his misdeeds whereby he had wreaked vengeance upon his neighbors who had deprived him of his patrimony, first causing the death of many and then a hailstorm which destroyed their fields of barley ripe for the harvest. When he finally earned the right to be the chela of a true Master, his pride had been broken and in humility he walked the way of attainment.

"In the Eastern tradition, the chela is the slave of his Master for a good reason—not for the loss of his true identity, but for the replacement of the pseudoimage with the Real Image of selfhood. The chela, by submission, day by day is weaving into consciousness the threads of the garment of his Master. The Master’s garment (as the much sought-after robe of the Christ) is synonymous with the Master’s consciousness."

"It is altogether fitting, then, that chelas of the Ascended Masters rejoice that in their movement and in this dispensation for the turning of the cycle of the century, there is one who will have the open door to the Ascended Masters and the unascended masters. Whether you appeal to me or to Milarepa or to Yogananda or to any of the great saints of the Western Church, you will find that if you seek the initiation and the discipline of that particular teacher or sage or saint, it will be forthcoming to you through the discipline of the Mother.

"Therefore, wonder not at the various ways in which the Mother deals with her children and with the chelas of the Ascended Masters. For, for each one there is the special path. Your relationship as chela to the Ascended Masters remains intact; your relationship as chela to the unascended masters remains intact. You [will] find that compatible with this relationship is your devotion as a chela of the Mother."

"I AM at the head of the armies of the elementals—fire, air, water, and earth. And I AM with the mighty archangels! And therefore, if you see me seated in the mighty blue lotus and if you see me as the flying Buddha, as my disciple Milarepa, understand that we Buddhas also know where we stand on the line of peace, where peace itself is a fiery flame that swallows up war and where we thrust the light, whereby it is not necessary to fire a shot.

"For the power of love is sufficient to the consuming of all hate and hate creation. And at every level of manifestation, individuals must bear that which is necessary to hold the line of love and bind the forces of hatred unleashed. Think in your own heart, beloved ones, how you will do this. I trust you will know it is by the science of the spoken Word and all other necessary precautions that are lawful and expedient for the individual, the family, and the nation to take."

"I assure you that if one devotee such as Milarepa—tutored in the black arts, who became a practitioner of black magic and then recognized the error of his ways and sought and found the great guru in the Hierarchy and lineage of the Lords of the World and the Buddhas of the East—if such a one could attain to such mastery, can you not also attain, O ye of little faith? I have come to give you the faith of the Lord of the World—faith in the Cosmic Virgin, faith in Hierarchy, faith in the love that heals, faith in unseen voices and seen manifestations of Life and Light from other octaves and other spheres."

"Blessed hearts, do you not remember how many times Milarepa built and how many times Marpa made him tear down? I should say that you as initiates have not had so many trials as did Milarepa. And yet for his trials [and because he had profound] remorse [for his past] practices of the black arts, this one became the flying yogi and had great attainment.

"We have not so much spoken of your practice of the black arts. But you must be reminded that in the strictest sense of the word engaging in any human creation on any line of the Clock is engaging in black magic. Any resentment or mild dislike, any conceit or disobedience [to the laws of God], any self-pity—[any or] all of it you can roll up in one ball of black magic. And therefore, begin to understand that on a world scale the producing of cataclysm and volcanic eruption and tidal wave and torrent, tornado, et cetera, all of this is the result of the practice of black magic."

"Therefore, if you must tear down the entire structure, as Milarepa had to do again and again, then tear it down! I say, build firm foundations, build firm foundations! And do not attempt to rise on the path of chelaship beyond the level of your attainment.

"These foundations make all the difference when you reach the levels of initiation that are the toughest that anyone in human form can face: the confrontations with the false hierarchies of the fallen angels. Yes, beloved, these are fierce foes! To vanquish them you must have all of your 'molecules' together. You must have a smooth pyramid. You must have the chambers of the heart filled with Light."

"Have you ever remained silent in the silence of the forest to listen for the soundless sound until your [outer] ear and inner ear does so expand, does so become one with the ear of Milarepa, with the listening Buddha, with the listening Mary and you hear that inner sound?

"Beware, then, of perpetual noise. Even all of the music of this world, as great as it is, beloved, cannot compare to the higher frequencies of your Causal Body, to the inner sound of God. And if you perpetually play music and play it also for your children, except in those times when it is planned for a certain given purpose, you will not be allowing the [space or time for your] child or yourself to commune with octaves beyond this physical spectrum.

"Know, then, that silence is important. Communion is important. True meditation is important. But so many are unable to contact even their Holy Christ Self that we do admonish you to decree until you attain that [soul] fusion [with the heart of the living Christ]."

"Well, beloved hearts, when you yourselves are duplicated on tape (as you already have been many times), it is not long before that Presence of yourself in West Germany, in Sweden, in places you have never been where these tapes are played—it is not long before the very Electronic Presence of yourself magnetizes the full Spirit of your being.

"And therefore, more and more as you grow, the flame of your heart endows the videotape and pulls upon your I AM Presence. And this is the beginning of actual bilocation. First you bilocate at the etheric level, then the mental, then the astral. And finally, physically, you will be as Milarepa—here and there—and other saints who have appeared and been seen, as in the case of Padre Pio.

"He was seen here and he was seen there, not always physical but very physical to the eye. He may have been seen kneeling in prayer from across the room. It may therefore be the etheric body that is seen, and by and by it is stronger and stronger until you, too, can say with Lanello before your ascension, 'Lo, I AM everywhere in the consciousness of God!' "

"And without warning it seems that everything in your life comes tumbling down and you must begin again, like Milarepa, to build from the ground up on a more solid foundation. Sometimes your Holy Christ Self will require you to build from scratch again and again and again if you are responsive to him and do not rebel against his stated goal for you: to come up higher. You cannot remain where you are, in a static condition, a self-satisfied condition, and truly be a vessel of the light of Maitreya in his Mystery School.

"Fear not the challenge, but remember the words of Krishna: It is your dharma that you must fulfill and not another’s. If you were a pianist and that was your dharma, would you be content to play the same piece over and over again all day long? I trust you would not, beloved, even though it be a complex piece you had mastered. The newness of life is the daily challenge."