Marpa Lotsāwa (1012-1097)

Marpa Chökyi Lodrö was born in the early 11th century in Lhodrak, to a prosperous family with its own fields to farm and pasture to graze cattle. Though later in life he would blaze a trail to carry Nāropa’s lineage from India to Tibet, in his youth Marpa did not appear a likely prospect for spiritual greatness. As a child, he was notably strong-willed and short-tempered. Fearing for his future if they did not find a way to curb his unruly tendencies, after he had first learned the fundamentals of reading and writing locally, Marpa’s parents opted to send him to train in the Dharma. The great Drogmi Lotsāwa Shakya Yeshe (b. 992/993 CE), who would inspire the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, had recently returned from India and was accepting students. Marpa undertook the journey across Tibet to meet the great translator, taking along with him his irascible personality, his budding interest in the Dharma and two full yak-loads of paper and other valuable gifts as offerings. Once there, he studied Sanskrit and colloquial Indian languages for three years, but Drogmi would neither give him initiations nor even lend Marpa the books he wished to read. This served to intensify Marpa’s yearning to taste the Dharma for himself at its source across the Himalayas.

Marpa’s life story would prove correct his parents’ expectations that the Dharma could positively transform even the most difficult character, like their son’s. But upon his return from his stay with Drogmi, Marpa requested his inheritance in advance to fund his trip to India, sorely testing his parents’ enthusiasm for his pursuit of Dharma. Horrified at the prospect of his exposing himself to the dangers of such a journey, his parents urged him to content himself with the teachings then available in Tibet. Marpa’s persistence here proved an asset, and his parents ultimately relented. However, the friends Marpa had planned to travel with were unable to overcome their families’ objections, and backed out of the plan at the last minute. Undeterred and extraordinarily determined, Marpa set off alone into the unknown.

Marpa’s journey in search of the Dharma would have him crossing barren plains so vast that even horses collapsed from fatigue, and mountain passes so bitterly cold that water remained frozen even during the hottest summer months. Before he had delivered the Dharma back to Tibet, Marpa would face bandits, river crossings in dilapidated ferries, corrupt toll collectors, unscrupulous companions and greedy customs officers. His family would later remind him of the traumas of these experiences in an attempt to dissuade him—unsuccessfully—from future trips.

Along the way to India, Marpa joined a fellow Tibetan named Nyö who was also making the journey in search of Dharma. In the end, Nyö would end up inflicting the greatest harm Marpa experienced on his journey. But initially, because Nyö had ample gold to fund his stay in India, he offered to cover Marpa’s travel costs if Marpa would serve as his attendant during the trip. Saving on travel expenses would allow Marpa to stay abroad longer and make larger offerings to his gurus, both of which Marpa was eager to do, and so he accepted Nyö’s proposal. Once the two had descended into the lowlands of Nepal, the debilitating heat, humidity and low altitude wrought havoc on their bodies, already worn out by the arduous journey. They spent three years acclimatizing in Nepal and advancing their knowledge of Sanskrit, before proceeding to India. During their stay in Nepal, when Marpa and Nyö heard that two direct disciples of Nāropa were active in the area, the mere sound of Nāropa’s name filled Marpa with faith. At once, he went with Nyö to meet them, but when Nyö overheard disparaging comments comparing Tibetans to animals, he turned his back in protest and refused to return later for more Dharma teachings. The incident illustrates the position of Tibetans in India at that time—as outsiders who could not count on respectful treatment or social acceptance, living utterly bereft of all that was familiar to them in a land where their own ways appeared barbaric to those surrounding them.

Yet Marpa persisted and developed a Dharma connection with the two disciples of Nāropa. When Marpa told them that he did not have much gold, they replied that Nāropa was the only guru who would teach him without expecting gold in return, and otherwise related much that kindled Marpa’s faith in Nāropa.

Furnished with a letter of introduction from the two Nepali pundits, Marpa travelled with Nyö to India, to the great monastic university of Nālandā, only to learn that Nāropa was no longer there, having renounced his academic position in Nālandā to pursue esoteric meditation. Nyö declared that he would not seek out the Dharma from such a person, so Marpa continued his quest to meet Nāropa alone.

Nāropa’s own teacher, Tilopa (988-1069), had subjected him to terrible ordeals in the course of conferring teachings on him. But after all the difficulties Marpa had undergone in travelling to India, Marpa was not confronted by further obstacles when he finally met Nāropa. Instead, Nāropa embraced Marpa fully as a heart disciple virtually from the outset, even sending a message to the disciples who were hosting Marpa telling them to bring “the Tibetan” to see him at his residence in Pullahari.

At last, the meeting for which Marpa had so long yearned took place, and Marpa met the supremely kind master who would show him the nature of his own mind, offer him unstintingly all the initiations and instructions he requested and, finally, empower him to transmit his own lineage in Tibet. Marpa offered many full-length prostrations upon first seeing Nāropa, who astonished and delighted Marpa by pronouncing that Marpa had already been prophesied as his disciple and was “welcome to assume the regency.”

During his first year under Nāropa’s guidance, Marpa received initiation and instruction in Guhyasamāja tantra, and practiced until he had clear realization of it. (Marpa’s Guhyasamāja lineage would later spread widely in Tibet, and is still practiced within the Gelugpa school that would receive it from Marpa Kagyu lamas centuries later.) Marpa next asked for the Hevajra tantra, for which Nāropa sent him to Jñānagarbha, who trained him fully in the practice. Marpa then requested transmission of the Mahāmāyā mother tantra, and for that he was sent on a terrifying journey to meet the highly unconventional mahāsiddha Kukkuripa, who likewise generously instructed him fully in that and in other practices. For Mahāmudrā instruction, Nāropa entrusted his disciple to the great Indian adept Maitrīpa (1002-1077), who guided Marpa until he had experiences and realizations. To receive instructions in the Catuḥpīṭha and a treasury of other oral instructions, Nāropa dispatched Marpa to meet a female yoginī named Jñānaḍākinī. In this case and on several other occasions, Marpa learnt afterwards that, although Nāropa himself was fully qualified to grant him the instructions, he had encouraged Marpa to drink widely of the Dharma from numerous sources. When Marpa had amassed numerous transmissions from these diverse masters, Nāropa offered him a further cycle of initiation and instruction in Cakrasaṃvara, the four special oral transmissions that Nāropa himself had united, the Six Yogas of Nāropa, and a second set of Mahāmudrā instructions.

The joy that permeated Marpa’s experiences during the years he received the Dharma under these remarkable Indian masters is conveyed in the spontaneous sacred songs, or dohās, that he offered to his teachers and vajra brothers and sisters.

In all, Marpa’s training during this first trip to India took 12 years—exactly the amount of time that the Sanskrit tradition specifies as necessary to become learned in the language. In any case, nearly all the gold Marpa had brought with him was spent, save just enough to cover his return journey to Tibet. Intending to teach for some time in Tibet and then return to review his understanding and receive other transmissions in the future, Marpa vowed to come to see Nāropa again, and departed with his guru’s blessing for Tibet.

Marpa journeyed once again in the company of Nyö, whose funds were also nearly expended. Along the way, the two had compared what they had learnt in India, and Nyö clearly perceived Marpa as a threat to his own fame and glory as a lotsāwa and Dharma teacher in Tibet. During one river crossing, Nyö urged Marpa to let a porter shoulder the bag that held all the treasured manuscripts Marpa had collected while in India. Nyö clandestinely bribed the porter to drop the bag into the water at some opportune moment, making it appear accidental. The porter did so, and Marpa was bereft of every text of instruction, every ritual manual, each and every written word he had intended to transmit and translate in Tibet. Although initially badly shaken by the incident, Marpa recalled his lama and was thus able to recover his equanimity in the face of a loss that was, for a would-be translator, an unmitigated disaster. When Nyö’s role in the incident was revealed by the porter, Nyö asked Marpa not to tell people in Tibet what he had done, offering to lend Marpa his own books to copy in Tibet—a promise he never kept. Despite the twelve long years he had spent acquiring the manuscripts with such tremendous effort, Marpa replied to Nyö’s offer, “I prefer what I have in my mind to what you have in your books.”

Indeed, Marpa continued his trip home, carrying with him in his own mind not only the words of the essential texts, but also the realization of their meaning that uniquely qualified him to guide others in Tibet. Once in Tibet, Marpa visited those who had supported him on his outbound journey. From there Marpa returned to his native village in Lhodrak, only to find that both his parents—who had so kindly set him off on his path to Dharma out of their concern for his well-being—had passed away during his long stay abroad. Disciples began to gather around him as he taught the Dharma in Lhodrak, and would accompany Marpa when he next embarked on a period of itinerant travel and teaching. Among those who came to train under Marpa during this period in Tibet was Ngok Chöku Dorje, also known as Ngoktön, one of Marpa’s most important disciples, and the recipient of his explanation lineage.

Aware of other teaching cycles he had not managed to attain during his first stay in India, and mindful of his vow to see his lama again, Marpa determined to make a second journey to India. Several of his disciples offered to serve as his attendants on the trip, but he declined their assistance and, astonishingly, faced the dangers of the road again, this time alone. Upon arrival, Marpa was received warmly by Nāropa, who lovingly granted him the further initiations and instructions he sought, and sent Marpa to his other teachers to review his knowledge and request any additional teachings he wished. Once satisfied he had received all he might need, Marpa set about producing Tibetan translations of the many Sanskrit texts he had gathered, many of which are preserved to this day in the Tibetan canon. This work complete, Marpa bid his lama farewell a second time and returned to Tibet. He was welcomed back by his deeply delighted students, grateful to see their master again, and eager to receive the fresh Dharma he had brought with him from its source in India. Once back, Marpa established a family, marrying Dagmema, farming the land and fully integrating the Dharma into his apparently ordinary life. At that time, Marpa’s activities to spread the Dharma in Tibet prospered greatly.

It was during this second interval in Tibet that Marpa met the disciple who would carry forward his practice lineage: Jetsun Milarepa. Once he had firmly established his heart son on the path to his own awakening, Marpa would return to India a third time, driven by an unbearable longing to see the master who had so kindly guided him to realization, and prompted by the discovery that he still lacked a certain teaching on the transference of consciousness that his disciple Milarepa had dreamt the ḍākinīs wished him to receive. Appalled at the thought of his undertaking such a journey at his now advanced age, Marpa’s family hid his gold to prevent his departure, yet he remained completely unswerving in his determination. Despite his advanced years, Marpa ignored their protests and completed a third trip to the land rich in the Dharma that he treasured so dearly. Upon arrival in India, Marpa underwent a heroic quest to reunite with his master Nāropa, who by all accounts had moved on to another stage in the evolution of his practice, and was nowhere to be found. In the end, Marpa was able to see his precious guru Nāropa one last time, and the two shared a brief but fruitful stay together. Explaining that earlier had not been the time to do so, Nāropa then granted Marpa numerous extremely rare teachings that brought his realization to unprecedented levels.

This was a visit of numerous experiential teachings as well. Although the mahāsiddha made clear that he did not want it, Marpa persisted in urging Nāropa to accept his offering of a large quantity of gold he had brought for the purpose from Tibet. Nāropa then accepted the gold, but then tossed it casually into the forest. Marpa felt a sense of loss, recollecting how difficult it had been for him to amass. Seeing his reaction, Nāropa instantly recovered the gold, telling Marpa, “I don’t need gold. But if I did, all the land is gold.” He then stamped his foot once, and Marpa perceived all the earth around as, indeed, gold.

On another occasion, while Marpa was asleep nearby, Nāropa manifested a display in the sky of the maṇḍala of Hevajra with the nine emanation deities. Nāropa quickly awoke Marpa, telling him, “Son… your personal deity Hevajra has arrived. Will you prostrate to him or to me?” Marpa chose to prostrate to the Hevajra maṇḍala appearing so vividly before him, rather than to the guru whom he saw each day. At that, Nāropa chided him, pointing out that the vision of the deity was merely a display coming from the guru himself. Marpa fully understood that it was only through the guru that he had the ability to perceive the deity in the first place, and that, in general, seeing the kind guru who guides one directly is far greater than seeing numberless enlightened deities. Thereupon, Marpa literally became sick with regret over his spur-of-the-moment decision to prostrate to the Hevajra maṇḍala rather than to Nāropa.

The exceptional care that Nāropa took of Marpa as his heart disciple produced an exceptional spiritual master and translator. The great Tibetan historian Jonang Tāranātha (1575-1634/35) later observed that Marpa Lotsāwa had three major qualities not shared by the other great Tibetan translators. Firstly, Marpa had trained extensively in India in the correct practice of rituals, including the drawing of maṇḍalas, making of ritual offering cakes, or tormas, and so on. Secondly, Marpa had received explanations from numerous diverse lineages, thanks to Nāropa’s directing him to many other realized teachers, enabling him to offer a wide range of readings of various passages. Thirdly, Marpa’s spiritual guides in India had not only transmitted to him the various tantric cycles that were circulating widely then in India, but also the personal instructions associated with them that were then kept far more private. This lent an incomparable depth to Marpa’s knowledge. These three qualities endowed him with the ability to do far more than translate texts, as is clear from the disciples he guided to realization.

When his time in India was completed, Nāropa bid his heart disciple a final and tender farewell, prophesying that although Marpa’s biological children would not live to carry on his family line, his spiritual children would carry his teachings forward like a wide river for as long as the Buddhadharma remained in the world. Formally declaring Marpa his regent, Nāropa further prophesied that each generation of disciples would be better than the last. Marpa passed away in 1097 CE in Tibet, at the age of 85. But, just as Nāropa predicted, the wide river of his Dharma lineage flows on, its current continually strengthened by each successive generation of spiritual heirs.

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