W. Y. Evans-Wentz - Tibets Great Yogi Milarepa: A Biography From the Tibetan

TIBETS GREAT YOG
MILAREPA

THE GREAT KARGYttTPA GURS
Described on pages xxiii-xxvi

A Biography from the Tibetan
Being the
Fetsn-Kahbum

OR
Biographical History of Jetsiin-Milarepa, According to the Late Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdups English Rendering

Edited with Introduction and Annotations by
W. Y. Evans-Wentz
With a new Foreword by
Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Pans So Paulo Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw

and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan

Copyright 1969, 2000 by W. Y. Evans-Wentz

First published by Oxford University Press, London, 1928
Second Edition, 1951

First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1969

New Foreword copyright 2000 by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016

Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gtsan-smyon He-ru-ka, 1452-1507.

[Mi-la-ras-pai rnam thar. English]
Tibets great yogi, Milarepa : a biography from the Tibetan ; being the Jetsn-Kahbum or biographical history of Jetsun-Milarepa, according to the late Lama Kazi Dawa Samdups English rendering ; edited with introduction and annotations by W.Y. Evans-Wentz ; with a new foreword by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-19-513313-7

1. Mi-la-ras-pa, 1040-1123. 2. LamasChinaTibetBiographyEarly works to 1800. I. Zla-ba-bsam-grub, Kazi, 1868-1922. II. Evans-Wentz, W.Y. (Walter Yeeling), 1878-1965.

BQ7950.M557 G813 2000
294.3923092dc21
[B]

00-021815

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America

I DEDICATE THIS BIOGRAPHY OF MILAREPA TO THOSE WHO CLING NOT TO BELIEF BASED UPON BOOKS AND TRADITION BUT WHO SEEK KNOWLEDGE BY REALIZATION

THE YOGIS C AR OF VICTORY

Whoso the Faith and Wisdom hath attained
His state of mind, well-harnessed, leads him on ;
Conscience the pole, and Mind the yoke thereof,
And Heedfulness the watchful charioteer:
The furnishments of Righteousness, the Car;
Rapture the axle, Energy the wheels;
And Calm, yoke-fellow of the Balanced Mind;
Desirelessness the drapery thereof.
Goodwill and Harmlessness his weapons are,
Together with Detachment of the mind.
Endurance is the armour of the Norm,
And to attain the Peace that Car rolls on.
Tis built by self, by ones own self becometh
This Chariot, incomparable, supreme;
Seated therein the Sages leave the world,
And verily they win the Victory.

The Buddha, from the Samyutta Nikdya, v, p. 6.
(F. L. Woodwards Translation.)

A certain trepidation attends the decision to accept an invitation to write a foreword to new editions, published in 2000, of the four books of W. Y. Evans-Wentz: The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Tibets Great Yogi Milarepa, Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, and The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation. The four books in their old editions are already burdened with numerous prefaces, commentaries, and introductions, causing one to wonder what another preface could possibly add. It seems inevitable that the four books of Evans-Wentz will continue to outlive yet another generation of commentators, such that anything that a scholar might add today will only serve as material for a scholar some fifty years from now, who will demonstrate the biases and misunderstandings of a preface written fifty years ago, a preface that merely offers evidence of the fin de siecle Zeitgeist of those who once called themselves postmoderns.

The four books of Evans-Wentz are surely ground-breaking works, the first to bring translations of Tibetan Buddhist texts to the English-speaking public. Evans-Wentz was equally avant garde in his method, collaborating closely with Tibetan scholars, a practice that would not become common for another four decades, after the Tibetan diaspora began in 1959. Yet, for the scholar of the present day, looking back now more than seventy years to the publication of the first volume of the series, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, in 1927, the Tibetan tetralogy of W. Y. Evans-Wentz, although a product of our century, seems to have originated in another age. All four books assume the undifferentiated dichotomy of the materialist West and the mystic East, an East that holds the secret to the Wests redemption. Few of the concerns of scholarssuch as language or culture or historyare to be found in the books. Instead, the volumes are presented as repositories of a timeless wisdom preserved by the East, a wisdom that will someday save the West, ultimately overcoming the duality of the hemispheres to culminate in the Unity of Mankind. This apparently beatific vision has since been shown to be the product of a romantic Orientalism that viewed the traditions of Asia as a natural resource to be extracted and refined for the consumption of the West; the books thus mark a moment in the history of colonialism.

Yet the four books of Evans-Wentz, especially the first, represent an important moment in that history. The products of a chance encounter between a Sikkimese school teacher and an American eccentric traveling in British India in 1919, the books have proved to be among the most durable products of the centurys romance of Tibet, radiating their influence far beyond what might be expected from such an unlikely beginning.

Walter Wentz was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1878, the son of a German immigrant and an American Quaker. The late nineteenth century was a period of great fascination with spiritualism, the belief that spirits of the dead could be contacted through seances, materialization, automatic writing, and other techniques. Walter took an early interest in the books on spiritualism in his fathers library, reading as a teen both Isis Unveiled and The Secret Doctrine by Madame Blavatsky of the Theosophical Society. These works were to have a profound effect on Walter Wentz. Indeed, it is impossible to appreciate his tetralogy without recognizing his lifelong commitment to Theosophy.

The Theosophical Society had been founded in New York in 1875 by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, a Russian migr, and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, a journalist and veteran of the Union Army during the Civil War. The goals of their Society were to diffuse among men a knowledge of the laws inherent in the universe; to promulgate the knowledge of the essential unity of all that is, and to determine that this unity is fundamental in nature; to form an active brotherhood among men; to study ancient and modern religion, science, and philosophy; and to investigate the powers innate in man. The Theosophical Society represented one of several responses to Darwins theory of evolution during the late nineteenth century. Rather than seeking a refuge from science in religion, Blavatsky and Olcott attempted to found a scientific religion, one that accepted the new discoveries in geology and archaeology while proclaiming an ancient and esoteric system of spiritual evolution more sophisticated than Darwins theory.