Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibets Beloved Saint, Milarepa By Milarepa

review Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibets Beloved Saint, Milarepa

Jetsun Milarepa, Tibet's renowned and beloved saint, is known for his penetrating insights, wry sense of humor, and ability to render any lesson into spontaneous song. His songs and poems exhibit the bold, inspirational leader as he guided followers along the Buddhist path.

More than any other collection of his stories and songs, Drinking the Mountain Stream reveals Milarepa's humor and wisdom. Faithfully translated by Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Brian Cutillo, this rare collection—never before available in any Western language—cuts across the centuries to bring Milarepa's most inspiring verses, in all their potency, to today's reader. Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibets Beloved Saint, Milarepa

Kunga Rinpoche and Brian Cutillo render a thoughtful, accurate and insightful translation of the beautiful sonfs of the sage Jetsun Milarepa. Probably not the kind of book that would make as much sense to someone who does not practice Tibetan Buddhism, this work is the Tibetan equivalent of the beautiful writings of the great Kali Devotee, Sri Ramakrsna. Milarepa So inspiring to the practitioner on the path. Savor, love and read again and again.. Milarepa “All the water and drink you've consumed
From beginningless time until now
Has failed to satisfy your thirst or bring you contentment.
Drink therefore of this stream
Of enlightened mind, Fortunate Ones.”

– Milarepa, Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibets Beloved Saint Milarepa

Artwork: Milarepa, the One Who Harkened by Nicholas Roerich

Milarepa Enlightenment is either here and now or it's nothing, and the only way you get there is by being good.

As a Catholic, the only enlightenment I ever picked up and retained into my old age from books like this, was my simple retention of unforced ingenuousness and the Christian values I was brought up with as a kid.

They have given me Peace Like a River, and Milarepa's tough Tibetan values did the same for him.

But it's a battle field.

You know, our simple faith is now in danger of falling into a perverse desuetude. Don't let that happen to you.

For without absolutes, we all run the very real risk of losing touch with ourselves and with what really makes us tick.

Like my Dad used to say, we become like decapitated chickens - our reflexes are still there to some degree, but our brain is gone!

And we are almost all of us now missing the sense of a holistic ego - with bodies, minds, soul and emotions all one unitary self - or as Eliot says, the complete consort dancing together.

We will never be happy, until it all hangs together.

The Tibetan Buddhist sage Milarepa DID have his whole act together, as you'll see... for he was Totally Reborn.
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Milarepa, you understand, knew that if we don't have unshakeable faith - which starts out like a grain of mustard seed, and grows with steady insight - we don't have a centre to our personality (which is a combination of our many sides).

We don't have that centre so we wilt. We waver. We waffle. We're unsteady, and dead to rights before any outside higher authority.

We risk constant perdition, you see. We are deeply perplexed.

But the Gospel insists - and Milarepa agrees - that the answer is Within.
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So Milarepa meditated on the four noble truths, living exposed to the elements in the unforgiving Himalayan mountain range. His determination to be free of all suffering was adamant.

So he persevered.

Well, you can say that breaking through to inner freedom - the spontaneous peace that passes all understanding - is just another name for madness.

To you it may be just the same old, same old routine.

But if your carefree inner sparkle, the vast inner joie de vivre you knew as a kid, is now dead as a dodo, you may rightly rue your cynicism, that tough hard outer shell that shuts out every light of joy from your life.

Your tradeoff - cynicism for authenticity - is valueless.

So in the end, it's your call.

Now, like Milarepa, I dont much like the ethical relativism which, these days, flaunts its wares as if it were the freedom of Milarepa's choiceless awareness.

That amorality refuses to see its own moral net bankruptcy.

Milarepa took the high road to inner freedom...

And found Peace Like a River, the pearl of great price.

And who can now gainsay him?

To be honest, I can't.

The only richness is the richness of the Spirit...

And not our paltry postmodern bankrupt behaviour. Milarepa It is a spiritual journey and refreshing inside. Milarepa