Light of Kailash Lecture 24: New Tsangnyon Heruka’s ‘Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa

Light of Kailash Lecture 24: New Perspectives for Reading Tsangnyon Heruka’s ‘Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa

With Kristin Blancke and Etienne Bock

Part one by Kristin Blancke
Kristin Blancke will provide a brief overview of the textual corpus dealing with Milarepa’s life and songs from the 12th through the 15th centuries. Placing the different texts in the lineage context in which they were created, she will shortly elaborate on Milarepa’s main disciples and the lineages that originated from them. Then she will proceed with a short description of the Milarepa Biographical Compendia composed from the 13th century onwards, in which many new song cycles appeared which highlight the shift from a purely tantric approach to accentuating more and more elements of the Mahamudra tradition. She will then point out how Tsangnyon Heruka built his narrative, which reflects changes in attitude towards bonpos, women, monks, and the preeminence of Gampopa vs Rechungpa. To conclude she will briefly discuss a new perspective for considering Milarepa: rather than thinking of him as a 12th-century individual, he has become an iconic figure incorporating a 350-year-old evolution in lineage history, meditation practice and social attitudes. Above all, Milarepa stands out as a symbol of guru devotion and assiduity in practice, resulting in enlightenment in a single lifetime. And, equally important, he remains the source of the typical form of spiritual songs that many later meditation masters would follow.


Part Two by Etienne Bock
Alongside Kristin Blancke’s presentation, Etienne Bock will briefly summarise some aspects of his research published in “Groping in the Dark Treasury.” After a short presentation of the Bordier manuscript, he will focus on an emblematic episode that reflects the evolution of the corpus and narrative: the magical duel between Milarepa and the Bönpo Naro Bönchung.

About the Speakers
Kristin Blancke
Born in Belgium in 1950, Kristin Blancke graduated as a clinical psychologist at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. She spent most of her adult life in India, studying and practising Tibetan Buddhism, mainly at Tai Situpa’s Palpung Sherabling Monastery (Bir, Himachal Pradesh) but also in Dharamsala and Ladakh. After translating Tsangnyön Heruka’s “Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa” from Tibetan to Italian, her interest in learning more about the origin of this text led her to explore the literary corpus dealing with the life and feats of the great Buddhist master Milarepa. In her book “In Search of Mi la’s Collected Songs. Back to the Basics” she tries to answer the following questions: in the three and a half centuries elapsed between Milarepa and Tsangnyön Heruka, what changes and developments had occurred in the way of representing Jetsun Mila, his teachings, his songs, and his relationships with the disciples? The book can be freely downloaded from her website: https://kristinblancke.com/english1/i....


Etienne Bock
Etienne Bock is a Scientific and Artistic Advisor at the Tibet Museum – Fondation Alain Bordier in Gruyères, Switzerland. A former student of the INALCO in Paris, he obtained a DEA (Diplôme d’études approfondies) in 2006 with La Perception tibétaine de l’art bouddhique indien, a study of the Tibetan classifications of Indian Buddhist metal statues. He co-authored the book Buddhist Art of Tibet, In Milarepa’s Footsteps focusing on the Tibet Museum – Fondation Alain Bordier’s collection. In collaboration with Kristin Blancke, he co-edited a Special Issue of the Revue d’Études Tibétaines “New Research on the Mi la ras pa Biographical Compendia” with the article “Groping in the Dark Treasury, exploring the Mi la bZhad pa’i rdo rje Compendia in light of a most peculiar manuscript.”