He Found the Rainbow and the Pot of Gold

“Here’s some money—half of everything I have in this world. Take it, go learn black magic, and don’t stop until you get revenge on the people who have done this to us,” the woman said to her son. “If you don’t do this, I’ll kill myself and my death will be on your hands.”

Her husband had died; his brother had stolen the inheritance money that belonged to her. Then the brother treated her and her two children cruelly, lower than dirt—like slaves. She was upset. Well, distraught.

It was one thousand years ago in Tibet when the mother spoke those words to Milarepa, her fifteen-year-old son. Many things have changed in our world since then. But the themes of pain, cruelty, loss, disappointment, hatred, revenge, betrayal, and trying to make sense of life haven’t.

Whether we throw money at our problems, medicate ourselves, go numb, withdraw, seek revenge, give up, try harder, manipulate, or learn magic—people still want to gain a sense of control over their lives. We want what we think will make us happy. We want what’s been taken from or not granted to us, including our sense of power.

We don’t want to feel the pain.

Milarepa, the young man cheated out of his inheritance, did as his mother asked. He learned black magic (another form of control). Then he successfully cast a spell that killed thirty-five members of his uncle’s family and friends. Scorpions or snakes destroyed a beam at a wedding feast, or so the story goes. The house collapsed, killing all the guests except for the uncle and his wife, Milarepa’s aunt. Milarepa wanted them to survive so they would know that he had gotten revenge. He wanted them to feel pain, too.

Just to make sure that his uncle got the message about how powerful he (Milarepa) had become, he did another spell. He sent a hailstorm to the village where the uncle lived, destroying all the crops and instilling more fear. The uncle got the message. The villagers did, too.

The war was over. Milarepa and his mother had won.

Revenge and victory tasted sweet, as they usually do. Then in an ugly moment, life twisted again. Milarepa realized what he had really done. Just as the themes of betrayal, loss, and injustice are timeless and eternal, another idea was present then that’s still around now. There’s no free lunch. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. What comes around goes around until it lands back in your lap. And it usually come back “bigger and worser than what you sent round in the first place,” wrote J. California Cooper in The Future Has a Past.

Milarepa had killed a lot of people. He had caused many others to lose their livelihoods, loved ones, food, and hope. He was doomed, his fate stamped, sealed, and about to be delivered. He had sent it to himself. He was a magician. The laws of the land wouldn’t get him, but he knew that eventually the Great Law of Cause and Effect—karma—would.

Now it was Milarepa’s turn to became distraught and obsessed—not with what had been done to him, but with what he had done to others and consequently to himself. He sought out a teacher, someone to help him turn his life around, repair some of the damage he had done, and get on a better path. Because of Milarepa’s despair over the black magic he had done, Milarepa’s former teacher decided to end his career in destruction and black magic and seek a better way, too. Eventually Milarepa found a lama, Marpa, who agreed to mentor him. Marpa was considered to be one of the highest lamas of that time. Many believed that the man who instructed Marpa’s teacher was a reincarnation of Amitabha—another word for amitofa—“Blessing” or “Boundless Light.”

In the Western World, we call it the Grace of God.

Milarepa decided to turn his life around, but his story didn’t end there. He was cheerfully expectant, only to learn that his ordeals had just begun. Marpa the monk agreed to teach Milarepa, but only after Milarepa earned the favor by constructing a tower—a home—for Marpa. Milarepa did as Marpa asked, carrying all the rocks and boulders for construction by hand. Before he finished, though, Marpa told him to tear it down and return all the boulders and stones to their original place. Milarepa complied. Then Marpa told him to build a tower in another place. Before Milarepa could finish this structure, Marpa again changed his mind. This went on for a while. Milarepa wasn’t allowed to finish anything he started. He was weak and thin, and, from all the hard labor, his body was covered with sores. He had been repeatedly plunged into abject despair. And Marpa hadn’t taught him one thing yet.

Finally Milarepa gave up. He left Marpa and sought enlightenment somewhere else. The reason I can’t move forward and this man is jerking me around is probably due to all my karma and all the people I’ve hurt, Milarepa thought. At least I’ve stopped killing and harming other people. Even if I can’t achieve enlightenment this life, maybe I won’t have to come back as a scorpion or a snake.

Marpa’s wife had encouraged Milarepa to leave Marpa; she helped him raise money and find another teacher. She felt sorry for Milarepa because Marpa was treating him so badly. After a while, Marpa brought Milarepa back to his home. That’s when Marpa explained.

“I wasn’t torturing you because I’m a jerk,” Marpa said. “You had so many negative emotions and so much negative karma from what you had done. You needed those painful experiences to clear the wreckage you caused in your past. You needed to experience that anguish in order to forgive and free yourself. It was part of a spiritual plan.

“You should have been plunged into despair nine times, but it was only eight because my wife, out of pity for you—bless her soul—interfered. But you’re clear enough anyway to receive the teachings now. You’re ready to stop looking back, go to the next level, and move forward in your life. By the way,” Marpa added, “it’s possible to achieve enlightenment in just one life. Yes, there’s a long path. But there’s a short one, too. I’ll teach it to you, if you’d like.”

Milarepa became the best student Marpa ever had. He meditated, learned the secret teachings, and practiced them in his life. Some of the ideas were simple ones still floating around today: don’t forget where you came from; treat others the way you want them to treat you. Milarepa made great strides forward the day he mastered this truth: if you want to walk through a gateway, hold the door open for others first.

Many people believe that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Milarepa’s understanding was that when the teacher appears, it’s because we’re ready to wake up and listen to the teacher inside ourselves. Milarepa’s internal teacher was awakened. So was the deeper lama within, the part in each of us that has the ability to be aware and continue to learn.

Eventually Milarepa left Marpa to return to his homeland. He lived in the caves and fields, meditating and reminding people about karma, their power to make choices, and about how important their lives and choices are.

He didn’t preach.

He sang.

He even forgave the aunt who helped steal his inheritance from him. He prayed for her enlightenment, too. “She doesn’t owe me,” Milarepa said. “I owe her everything I have. If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be who and where I am. She helped steer me onto my path.”

He realized that if he didn’t have anyone to be angry with, he couldn’t learn to forgive.

There is a reason everything happens, as our friend Milarepa learned. But sometimes it takes a long time and a series of painful, confusing experiences for us to see what that reason is.

By the time Milarepa died at age eighty-four, he was at one with the universe and himself. Some say that when he died, his physical body didn’t deteriorate: he turned into a rainbow of light. His legend still lives today. He made and role-modeled the classic journey from sinner to saint.

“His songs reached even the dogs and the deer in the field,” said a man who now lives in Tibet. “He helped the deer remember to stop being afraid and the dogs to stop chasing the deer.”

Milarepa took the short path. He reached enlightenment in just one life. Then he taught others that it didn’t have to take even that long. They could reach enlightenment by waking up, letting certain principles guide them, and making conscious choices in their lives each day.

We don’t have to become gurus or live in caves and eat nettle soup to seek enlightenment, like Milarepa did. The problems that irritate and upset us most—the ones we’re tempted to seek revenge for, throw money at, medicate, deny, go numb about, or try at all costs to avoid—aren’t just problems. They’re our mountain or cave in Tibet. They’re disguised gateways to this path.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen a lot of changes in my life and in our world. There was a time when our choices were limited. Women were housewives, or got to choose between being a schoolteacher or a secretary for a career. Men were expected to earn the living. If abuse was going on, you shut up and took it. You bit the bullet. You got old. And when you got sick, you died.

Now cures have been found for many diseases, including viruses previously untreatable. Although a quarter of a million people die an early death each year, many people are living longer and in better health. That means we not only need to choose what we’re going to do when we grow up; we may need to decide what we are going to do to earn a living again when we get old.

Information is at a premium, and choices abound. Do we use e-mail or the telephone, write a letter, or do we telepathically convey? We can communicate quickly and easily with people who are alive. Or we can visit a medium’s talk show and communicate with people who are dead.

We can get married, live together, stay single, have an alternative or traditional lifestyle, have children, adopt children—whether we are single or married—create them in test tubes, or not have children, if that’s our choice. We can get married, get divorced, then remarry again. We can get our face lifted, our cellulite lypoed. And not only can we get our hair cut off; with extensions and implants, they can now put it back on our heads.

Women can be with younger men, men can be with men, women can be with women; we can rent, buy, live in a mobile home, or walk away from it all and live in a tent. We can eat sugar or go sugar free; eat meat or not. And if we go vegetarian, we still have to choose. Are chicken, turkey, and fish considered vegetables or meat?

Options are available to us that we didn’t have before: if we become overly and uncontrollably anxious and depressed, we can now chemically change our balance by taking a pill. Other choices are available to us, too—choices about how we can behave toward other people and ourselves—choices we didn’t know about, way back when.

With all those hard calls and butterflies flapping their wings—and all the calculated and uncalculated risks—it’s still the greatest thing we’ve got going.

Free will, baby. There’s nothing else that even comes close on planet earth.

So what are you going to do?

You know the drill.

You get to choose.

From the book: Choices: Taking Control of Your Life and Making It Matter

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