The Biographies of Rechungpa: The Evolution of a Tibetan ...

5
RECHUNGPA’S STRANGE
ILLNESS AND CURE
In this chapter, we shall examine a major event in Rechungpa’s life following his meeting
with Milarepa, although it appears only in Gyadangpa and the texts that follow his
narrative lead. Rechungpa falls ill and goes to Mithila, just south of Nepal, in order to
receive healing instructions from a teacher named Varacandra.
The absence of this passage in primary sources
Rechungpa’s sickness and cure are absent from Donmo Ripa, The Kagyu Garland of
Wish-fulfilling Jewels, Khachö Wangpo’s (1350–1405) Clouds of Blessings, The Life and
Songs of Shepay Dorje, as well as such later works as A River of Blessings and Talung
Ngawang Namgyal (1571–1626).
In Donmo Ripa, Milarepa and Rechungpa immediately leave Rechungpa’s home area,
Milarepa carries Rechungpa across the Palthang (dPal-thang) plain, and then they stay in
a succession of specified remote locations. 1
In The Life and Songs of Shepay Dorje, after the initial meeting, 2 Milarepa takes
Rechungpa, in spite of his reluctance, to a remote forested area in Lhomön (lHo-mon)
(which refers to an area within present-day Nepalese territory). 3 There then follows an
account of many years spent in such locations 4 until the conflict and debate with
Kadampa monks 5 that precipitates Rechungpa’s journey to India in search of the
(sNyan-rgyud) instructions. 6
The Essence of a Wonderful Jewel, a twelfth-century text by Rechungpa’s pupils, is
now lost, but its colophon was preserved by Götsang Repa. 7 It indicates that the lost
biography contained a description of Rechungpa’s visit to India to study under Tipupa,
but has no indication that it included an earlier visit to be cured of an illness by
Varacandra. It is unlikely that Götsang Repa’s own description of Rechungpa’s sickness
and cure was repeated verbatim from that primary source, for it is evidently composite
and has less narrative consistency and clarity than Gyadangpa’s thirteenth-century
version.