Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

In my Introduction and Annotations to the present work, as in those to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, I am attempting to convey to the Western World, and so place on record, certain aspects of Higher or Transcendental Mahäyänic Teachings, which have been handed on to me for that purpose by the Translator, the late Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup, my Tibetan Gur. For such defects as critics may discover in my trans- mission-and I cannot hope to have escaped all error-I alone assume full responsibility.

Apart from the greater debt which I as the pupil owe to him who was my preceptor, I acknowledge indebtedness to those Himalayan and Indian Yogis (who prefer that their names be left unmentioned) from whom I had the good fortune, during my wanderings as a research student in India, to gather, at first hand, authoritative information concerning the same ancient ideals of Asceticism and World Renunciation which Milarepa, faithful to his Chief Guru, Gautama the Buddha, has so eloquently expounded in this his Biography. These, happily, still find numerous adherents among Hindus, Buddhists, Jains, Taoists, Islamic Sufis, and even native Christians throughout Asia.

Among my teachers in the Occident, I am also greatly indebted to Dr. R. R. Marett, Reader in Social Anthropology in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Exeter College particularly for the inspiring encouragement with which he has favoured me in my rather unusual field of anthropological research, ever since I first came up to Oxford in the year 1907.