Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

FOREWORD BY
LAMA DRUBGYU TENZIN
Not so many years ago a generation of curious young Western
spiritual adventurers first encountered a generation of Tibetan
Buddhist masters abruptly uprooted from their mountain solitude.
Enthralled by the lamas’ powerful presence and deeply touched by their
authenticity, these spiritual adventurers were drawn to the masters and
their exotic world. Yet very little in the way of translated and published literature
informed this courtship. Among the few texts that did exist, however,
one above all became a touchstone: The Hundred Thousand Songs of
Milarepa. All Tibetans know and love this work that resonates deeply with
their natural devotion. Those encountering the world of Vajrayana Buddhism
for the first time found a text that was both informative and captivating.
The Hundred Thousand Songs owes its perennial success to both its form
and its content. The book’s content is recorded oral history: the story and
advice of an awakened master, delivered in a direct and unapologetic manner.
The life story of Milarepa reflected in the songs is an extraordinarily
human tale describing the climb from the very depths of human desolation
to the pinnacle of spiritual accomplishment in the course of a single
lifetime. Conceivably, therefore, anyone with determined commitment
could follow the path of Milarepa and achieve similar results within a comparable
time frame. In his songs, Milarepa is clearly concerned only with
truth and the spiritual well-being of his students, rather than with convention
or politeness. This resonated well with a generation disillusioned
by the artifice of social and political expediency, and thirsting for truth and
authenticity. At the time of the book’s Western publication, the hero’s
proximity to nature echoed our sensibilities and a soon-to-emerge ecological
imperative. Most important for its universal appeal, however, is the
book’s form—inspired verse, poetry. Where philosophical treatises must be
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