Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Ivan M. Granger March 24th, 2008

The Song of Perfect Assurance (to the Demons)
by Milarepa

English version by Garma C. C. Chang

Obeisance to the perfect Marpa.

When in one’s own mind one ponders
On the original state of Mind,
Illusory thoughts of themselves dissolve
Into the Realm of Dharmadhatu.
Neither afflicter nor afflicted can be seen.
Exhaustive study of the Sutras
Teaches us no more than this.

— from The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa: The Life-Story and Teachings of the Greatest Poet-Saint Ever to Appear in the History of Buddhism, Translated by Garma C. C. Chang

/ Photo by mckaysavage /

To honor the Tibetan struggle to be free from occupation, I thought we should have a song of enlightenment from the great Tibetan yogi, Milarepa.

There is so much we can contemplate in this poem, but there is one area I want to focus on.

For those of us who were raised in the Christian or Jewish traditions, recall Cain’s question to God: Am I my brother’s keeper? Every wisdom tradition answers firmly, Yes!

Milarepa puts it this way–

every sentient being is one’s kinsman.

One of the fundamental truths the mystic discovers is that we all share the same ground of Being. The senses seem to say that my body ends here and your body begins over there, and so we are separate and whatever happens to you does not affect me. But that is eventually seen to be merely part of the “shadow-show… the phantasmal world.”

When “By looking inward into the mind” we finally perceive “Mind-nature”, we come to the stunning realization that the mind is spacious beyond comprehension. The mind is “without substance, intrinsically void.” Things — whether thoughts or material objects — float in that spaciousness, without limiting the expanse. The mind itself is not a ‘thing’ with a beginning or end point. It is simply wide open, like the clear horizon. We, in fact, are “great as all Space.”

Every tradition has its own language to describe this truth, but it leads to an unavoidable conclusion: Pure mind (or spirit) has no boundaries. And we are that open sense of being. That being isn’t limited to the body. We come to a vision of many bodies, many objects, many thoughts, many experiences… but just one all-encompassing Being.

We participate in each other. We pour into each other. What affects another affects me. Every one and everything is my kinsman. If I turn a blind eye to the suffering of another, I automatically bring suffering to myself… and I become a little more blind. Yes, I am my brother’s keeper.

Have a beautiful day, in a spacious world filled with family!

Milarepa Tibet (1052 - 1135) Timeline Buddhist : Tibetan

Milarepa (often referred to as Jetsun Milarepa, meaning Milarepa the Revered One) is the central figure of early Tibetan Buddhism. He was a Buddhist saint, a yogi, a sorceror, a trickster, a wanderer, and a poet. He is both folk hero and cultural preceptor, the embodiment of the ideal in Tibetan Buddhism.

The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, an extensive collection of stories and poetry from the life of Milarepa, is a central text of popular Tibetan Buddhism, comparable to the Bhagavad Gita in Hinduism and the New Testament within Christianity. His life stories and poetry are read devoutly even today to inspire determination in meditation and spiritual pracitce.

Milarepa’s father died when he was still a boy, and the land that should have passed to him was seized by relatives who treated the young Milarepa and his mother and sister as slaves. After several years of this cruelty and hard labor, Milarepa’s mother convinced the teenaged boy to study magic with a local sorceror in order to take revenge on their relatives. Milarepa was so successful in this purpose that, it is said, a great hailstorm occured, destorying the house during a wedding ceremony, killing several members of the family. In the aftermath of this incident, Milarepa felt such guilt for his actions that he vowed to cleanse himself of the evil karma he had accumulated.

In his search for a pure spiritual teacher, Milarepa eventually met his guru, the Buddhist yogi and translator, Marpa, who was himself a disciple of the famous Indian Buddhist master Naropa. Marpa, seeing Milarepa’s great potential mixed with dark karma, put Milarepa through many years of severe trials and tests before he would formally accept Milarepa as a student.

Milarepa then spent several years meditating in seclusion in remote mountain caves, struggling, at times, against the demonic forces of the mind, until he achieved the ultimate enlightenment.

Rejecting the formalism of religious position and the endless squabbles of theological discourse, he adopted the life of a mendicant, travelling from village to village, speaking directly with the people he met, singing spontaneous songs of enlightenment and wisdom.

More poetry by Milarepa

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