Somehow the notion of honesty comes with a challenge that we usually think if we’re honest and perfectly good boys and good girls that we can always pass through whatever we want. If you say I’m good, please be kind to me. I’m not trying to cheat anybody. I’ve been a very nice person the rest of my life and please help me. It’s worth helping me because I never cheat anybody.
I never kill a fly. That’s going to be the starting point. You could be so good and so perfect and so wonderful, but still, that doesn’t mean to say that your training is completely over. Your training is just about to begin at that point. Usually we think the honesty goes with the cleanliness, which goes a long way next to the godliness.
But, however, Honestly, doesn’t mean anything great deal. It simply means that you have a rather reasonable foundation. If you are completely honesty honest, or if you’re completely pure and clean, even that is very suspicious at the same time. Possibilities of being naive, possibilities of having blind spots, that your honesty carries out too far away. It doesn’t have enough room.
As far as the Milarepa’s honesty is concerned, it continued that his honesty and his genuineness in searching what he wanted to do, achieving everything what he wanted to achieve, he then, in turn, tried to seek teacher in his honesty way, a very naive way, and they look for teacher, master. Searching for all kinds of people, we don’t have to go through the details of the story particularly. Searching for all kinds of people, and then finally he found Marpa, who is a teacher of the Kagyu tradition and very learned man, hot tempered person. Basically, so to speak, quite scholarly, having taken several trips to India, that he’s quite a renowned the Tibetan Buddhist world, and he’s very mean, unkind, and he’s exceptionally warm, and and he could emanate immense, hearty, loving, warmth, a family style to anybody who studied with him. But Milarepa wasn’t getting those hearty warmth from Marpa at the time because he was so honest, so true.
And when the truth becomes that kind of behavior of a truth, trueness, truthness, truthfulness, to become completely cleaned and washed and polished stainless steel globe, not even a speck of grease can land on it. Not even a speck of water will sit on it. And it’s becoming too tough and too good, too pure somehow. There’s no room to relate it with anything that’s fundamental and really realistic. In other words, there’s no sympathetic chemistry of fundamental neurosis was showing through.
So therefore the teachings like being medicine can administrate onto the particular sickness. So there’s no mutual sympathetic relationship involved, but nevertheless underneath of a mental facade, diligence, industrious, and accomplishment, there’s a great deal of neurosis underneath that, immense lot, extraordinary lot. So Marpa is being extraordinarily skillful person, powerful person, insightful man, and he decided to cultivate Milarepa, realizing that Milarepa has lot of potentialities if he could come through. No garbage beyond the facade of superficial purity, toughness. Such honest and pure and well thought plans that existed in Milarepa’s life, and he approaches Marpa by saying, I am a great sinner from the western Tibet, and I seek teaching from you, and I would like to offer my whole being as gift to you.
I would like to receive teachings from you. Marpa being extraordinarily scrupulous and good businessmen dealing with people like that who brings interesting bargains. Which is seemingly very tempting. If somebody offers you a life and you receive teachings, there’s nothing wrong with it. But there’s a lot of things wrong with that.
And life is regarded as offered as a pawn, So when you get the teachings received, the pawn’s being drawn back. And you take your own pawn, and you go back and you achieve what you wanna achieve, so it becomes very advantageous to the person who understands. Because actually, virtually, unless you are an animal, dog or cat or something, human beings can’t offer themselves as a gift. Particularly if they want something from you. Saying I will not give myself, I will learn from you.
It doesn’t quite work that way. human beings are not really animals. As far as the Milarepa’s approach is concerned, that’s very clever. He doesn’t have to actually sacrifice anything just to give himself, and in return he will get anything he wants. It’s a good bargain.
It’s kind of a very cunning about exchange, which doesn’t mean very much. It’s purely tokenism. And Marpa says to him, I can’t do both. Either you seek teaching from me and find your life load somewhere else, or else I will give you a life load, food and shelter, and you seek teaching from elsewhere. That’s where the lines begin to draw, which is a fantastic master’s draw.
As far as the Marpa is concerned, he wasn’t caught in that particular trap anymore. He was a greater businessman than at that time. That twisted Milarepa’s mind, he had to think twice, and he has to make a choice. Would the Marpa be a good host to accommodate him while seeking teaching from elsewhere or would or would Marpa be a great teacher while seeking food and shelter elsewhere? Since he has already made up his mind, that he has to make up his mind on the spot by saying that I don’t want to seek food and shelter from you, but I want to seek teaching from you, which was a good choice.
Quite possibly otherwise, Marpa would like to charge his lodging and boarding as well if his heart heart of heart is somewhere else. At the time, Marpa was not particularly in setting up a hotel living in a hotel situation anyway. He wasn’t interested in that kind of business. He was more interested in teaching. Setting that kind of business, which is much much pure and cleaner, more realistic, more profitable for generations and generations to come.
So Milarepa has to go out and beg from local devotees of Marpa’s, trying to get supplies of food. And first traditional style is to bring a gift in order to receive teaching. He looked for the gift. Not finding anything, gets lots of barley grain, and he was about to exchange them to a copper vessel, nice copper cauldron with four handles nicely made. And bring that copper vessel back and visit Marpa by saying, this is my gift, token of gift, and I will receive teaching from you, seek food and shelter elsewhere.
Marpa was very amused. At the same time there’s something very strange about the symbolism that exists there. The Milarepa did not present his gift of copper vessel in a proper fashion. And the present is entirely empty and clean inside. Marpa beats the copper with a stick and the sound of the rings.
It says, oh, it’s a nice ring and it’s pure copper and it’s a good gift, but you never put anything inside. Our future generations of lineage is gonna be very hard up. You’re not gonna be a wealthy generation. Anyway, your gift was good. That tradition still continues up now.
We, Marpa’s, but we’re still hard up. The copper vessel may be nice and fantastic, but still it’s empty inside. Well, That since Milarepa made right choice of receiving teaching from Marpa and seeking food and shelter elsewhere, then Marpa thought twice. And he would say that you don’t have to look for food and shelter elsewhere if you work for me, free of charge, voluntary basis, if you could build me a castle, a tower, that you’d be accommodated, you’d be fed. So that he continues to build this castle that Marpa has designed.
And the first one that he built is a round shaped castle. This is traditional in Tibet in those days. If you have a big spread, a big ranch, big establishment, you have to have a tower. You can watch your herds of animals, and you can watch your fields. And also you can watch for enemies invasion from distance.
And twelve of towers, you better conquer the territory. Depends on your territory and how big. So Marpa orders Milarepa that he has to build nine story tower, which is gigantic enormous. And he began to start to build. And having accomplished the whole complete task, Marpa gets very uptight by saying I did not design this.
I didn’t think this way. I had to dismantle the whole thing. You know, when you spilt my landscape, you stones out of my ground and dig trenches around my castle. So you had to put everything back where you dug from. Well, he’s come he did that.
He said, I would like you to go another shape, and he goes another shape. After that, it goes same thing. And then finally, the fourth one, which is a triangle castle that has to build. And Milarepa continues to begin to build. At that point, Marpa is very angry.
And since you are a black magician already, you might be trying to kill me in your in your powerful black magician since you build this triangle tower, which is terribly outrageous, terrible, unheard of. And I’m gonna kick you out completely. You can’t even receive your teachings. He got extremely upset and so does Marpa’s wife, Damema, felt terribly maternal about the whole thing. That Marpa’s students usually cared about her, and she felt terrible.
But at this time, actually, my husband had gone wild, and it’s absolutely terrible to behave to this such beautiful, diligent, tough student who’s very nice and he’s doing everything what he tells you to do, but he still doesn’t receive any teachings. Again, Milarepa was again ordered to build a tower, and to begin to build a nine story tower. The final nine story tower, which is square in shape, is still actually standing in Tibet, and hopefully this days. And we do have some photographs of those things if you’re told that was purely mythical story. Having built the last fifth tower, Still, Marpa was very uptight with Milarepa and refused to give the teaching.
And then Milarepa thought that finally I have accomplished everything what he asked me to do. At this point, maybe this means that I am completely unworthy in receiving any teachings at all. Maybe I should have killed myself so I could be reborn as a more purified, worthy student study with the Marpa. As such thought was clear to him, Marpa began to send the messengers to ask him to come over and receive teachings from him that he’s begun to include him in learning the vajrayana teachings and the practice of all all these things. Starting from the basic Buddhism to Mahāyāna and vajrayana at the same time.
So that such tests seem to be necessary at this point. If there’s no any test in a person’s honesty and a moral test, one after another, without those things, there’s possibilities of a person getting too much royal treatment, too much hospitality, that the person begins to relax and in the process of relaxation, the person begins to lose the essentials on the main point of the teaching. It’s very interesting point that somehow, as we discussed already, pure, sheer honesty and cleanness doesn’t work. That that once an enlightened mind has to be burnt, beaten, shaped like a pure gold. Otherwise, it doesn’t work.
And that seems to be the basic idea for practicing meditation. And the Milarepa’s early training was not so much of a fantastic tantric practices of any kind necessarily. Just basic Buddhism, basic understanding of Buddhism. Fundamental basics of it, and still able to understand them and able to practice them, sitting practice of meditation, which usually brings out a certain point of hidden neurosis on the surface so you can get through the beyond the facade of well polished and well manifested surface. They’re able to actually feel and they’re actually able to understand them.
Continue at this point on side two.