Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa A Biography from the Tibetan being the Jetsün-Kabbum or Biographical History of Jetsün-Milarepa, According to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup's English Rendering

by Evans-Wentz, W. Y.; Lopez, Donald S.

• ISBN13: 9780195133134
• ISBN10: 0195133137
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-09-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This life story of Milarepa--the important Tibetan religious leader who lived over 800 years ago--is part of a remarkable four-volume series on Tibetan Buddhism produced by the late W.Y. Evans-Wentz, all four of which are being published by Oxford in new editions. While there are many parochial differences among the several sects of Tibetan Buddhism, each holds the Great Yogi Milarepa in the highest reverence and esteem. For exemplified in Milarepa's life, as we discover in these pages, are all of the teachings of the great yogis of India--including those of Gautama the Buddha, the greatest yogi known to history. Amid his detailed introductory and explanatory notes for this text, Evans-Wentz also reveals compelling similarities between the life and thought of Milarepa and those of Jesus, Gandhi, and "saints...in ancient China, or India, or Babylonia, or Egypt, or Rome, or in our own epoch." In composing this translation from the original Tibetan, the late L=ama Kazi Dawa-Samdup, who was Evans-Wentz's guru for many years, aimed to show Western readers "one of our great teachers as he actually lived...much of which is couched in the words of his own mouth, and the remainder in the words of his disciple Rechung, who knew him in the flesh." For this third edition, Donald S. Lopez, author of Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West , has written a critical foreword that updates and contextualizes this crucial part of Evans-Wentz's scholarship within the yoga tradition.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition	vii
Preface to the First Edition	xv
Description of Illustrations	xxiii
INTRODUCTION	1	(30)
The Importance of the Jetsun-Kahbum	1	(1)
Historical Value of the Narrative	2	(2)
Tibetan Schools of Buddhist Philosophy	4	(2)
The Kargyutpa Apostolic Succession	6	(2)
The Modern Successors of Milarepa	8	(2)
Kargyutpas Compared with Christian Gnostics	10	(2)
Dissenting Sects	12	(2)
Genealogical Tree of Lamaist Sects	14	(1)
The Defence of the Hermit Ideal	15	(5)
The Arhant Problem	20	(4)
The Text and its Translation	24	(3)
The Place of the Jetsun-Kahbum in the Literature of Tibet	27	(1)
Milarepa as one of Humanity's Heroes	28	(3)
RECHUNG'S TIBETAN INTRODUCTION	31	(274)
PART I THE PATH OF DARKNESS
The Lineage and Birth	41	(13)
The Tasting of Sorrow	54	(7)
The Practising of the Black Art	61	(23)
PART II THE PATH OF LIGHT
Introduction	83	(1)
The Seeking of the Holy Dharma	84	(9)
The Probation and Penance	93	(36)
The Initiation	129	(7)
The Personal Guidance by the Guru	136	(22)
The Parting from the Guru	158	(15)
The Renunciation	173	(9)
The Meditation in Solitude	182	(53)
The Hermitages and Service Rendered to Sentient Beings	235	(9)
The Nirvana	244	(61)
Appendix	305	(3)
Colophon	308	(2)
Index	310