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Rechungpa Dorje Drakpa Biography
Rechungpa. Line Drawing by Robert Beer.Dorje Drakpa (Vajra Fame) was born in 1084 in Rala, near Gungthang. When he was about eight years old his father died, and he remained in care of his mother and paternal uncle.
From an early age Dorje Drakpa was able to read very well and received gifts from people who listened when he recited the scriptures. With the gifts received he was supporting his family.
In 1094, Milarepa was in Gungtang, at the Silk Cave near Goat (Rela) Pass, after a nine-year solitary retreat. He was singing a song of realization, when Dorje Takpa came by while tending to his cattle.
Seeing and hearing Milarepa, he was entranced and remained with Milarepa, while his cattle returned home.
Next day his mother and uncle came looking for him and forced him back home, but he kept returning to Milarepa, giving him the gifts received from reading the scriptures. He learned the practice of mystic heat (Tib. tummo Skt. caṇḍālī) and received the name Rechungpa (i.e. Little Repa, or Junior Repa).1
Rechungpa was put to work the fields by his mother and uncle and became ill with a skin disease. When five Indian yogis came through the region on a pilgrimage to Mount Wutaishan in China2, they met Rechungpa and he shared with them the little food he had.
One of the yogis noticed his skin bleeding sores and said “You have mdze.3 You are being harmed by nāgas!4” One of the yogis decided to postpone his pilgrimage and offered to take Rechungpa to their guru, Varacandra (Excellent Moon),5 in Mithila, India, who knew how to treat that illness.
After obtaining permission from Milarepa, Rechungpa went to Varacandra’s hermitage, where he received the sādhana on “Winged Garuḍa of Fierce Vajrapāṇi” which he practiced and was cured of his illness. 6
On his way back to Tibet, Rechungpa asked along people about Milarepa, but no one had heard about him recently. He went to the Silk Cave, afraid that his Guru had died, but he found Milarepa meditating and overjoyed requested again to be accepted and receive teachings.7 At that time Rechungpa was eighteen or nineteen years old.
Feeling that he did not reward Varachandra properly, Rechungpa requested Milarepa to let him go back to India and offer Varachandra some gold. Milarepa agreed, and Rechungpa went around asking for alms. He also received his share of land inheritance from his mother and sold it for gold. Then he left for India with two other Tibetans, Ra Lotsawa, a lama, and Kyitön, a Nyingma master.
Rechungpa arrived in Nepal and stayed there for some time to adapt to the warmer climate, then went to meet Varachandra. He offered him the gold and Varachandra asked him who his teacher was. When learning that Milarepa was a disciple of Marpa and Marpa a disciple of Naropa, Varachadra told him about Tipupa, another disciple of Naropa, and advised Rechungpa to meet Tipupa and ask for teachings.
Rechungpa eventually found Tipupa and received the “Teachings of the Bodiless Ḍākinī” (ḍāka-niṣkāya-dharma). 8
Later, Milarepa was challenged to a debate on Buddhist doctrines by monks from Nyanang monastery, to make local people to lose faith in him and ultimately determine his departure from the region.
During the debate, the monks became aggressive and Rechungpa wanted to retaliate and beat the monks. But Milarepa restrained him.
Still angry, Rechungpa pleaded with Milarepa to allow him to go to India again, this time to learn logic and defeat the monks in debate.9 Milarepa told him that “The desire to answer with bad words is the arising of Māra […] Life is very short, no one can tell when death will fall upon him. Therefore please forget everything else, and concentrate on your meditation,” and didn't want him to go to India; but after Rechungpa insisted, he finally gave him permission, not to learn logic and debate, but to receive the remaining “Teachings of the Bodiless Ḍākinī.”
Marpa had received four of them from Naropa and prophesied that a student of the Kagyu lineage would bring the remaining five to Tibet. To fulfill these prophecies, Milarepa approved Rechungpa’s trip to India.
Rechungpa departed for India accompanied by a group of people. Later he described the dangerous “journey over swaying rope bridges, through bandit-infested forests and a plague-ridden Kathmandu valley, where corpses were piled in heaps as if they were compost.”
In Nepal he stayed for the winter and met Bharima, a female disciple of Tipupa; then he went to Mithila, met Varacandra and stayed with him to receive teachings on Vajrapāni, complementary to what he had received in previous meeting.
Then, he went and met Tipupa and had to rely on two interpreters to translate the teachings. Tipupa transmitted to Rechungpa the Maitripa lineage of Cakrasaṃvara and Vajravārāhī, which includes the Bodiless Ḍākinī teachings.
While being with Tipupa, Rechung was sent to a local festival and met a yogi named Amoghavajra who remarked: “you are a handsome young Tibetan, but it is a shame you have only seven days to live.”
Frightened, Rechungpa returned to Tipupa who sent him to yoginī Siddharājñī to learn practice the Amitāyus10. She asked him his age and he said he was forty-two. She told him “your teacher Milarepa is eighty-three and is going to live until his eighty-four year, so you can do the same.”11 Then he practiced the long-life teachings of Amitāyus.
Rechungpa returned to Nepal12 where he met again Bharima and showed her his texts. She pointed out that Rechungpa’s lack of knowledge of the language is a major shortcoming, for the translators have omitted every single important instruction. She edited the text, making the necessary corrections.
Then, against his Guru advice, Rechungpa met a sorcerer who gave him teachings on how to harm others.13 He then left for Tibet.
Milarepa anticipated that Rechungpa was returning to Tibet and went to greet him. Rechungpa was feeling proud of his accomplishments and after prostrating to Milarepa, expected that he would prostrate to him also, but Milarepa did not, and he felt frustration.
Then Rechungpa inquired of his welfare, and Milarepa sang him a song about the meditation practices that made him happy. When he asked Rechungpa how his trip was, he gave Milarepa the bundle of texts he had acquired in Nepal and India. Then they went to the cave where Milarepa was staying.
While Rechungpa was away to fetch some water, Milarepa separated the “Teachings of the Bodiless Ḍākinī“ texts from the rest and burned the later. When Rechungpa returned to find that Milarepa had burned his books, he felt deeply hurt and lost faith in Milarepa.14
Milarepa explained to him that the books were of no use, that the only thing that really mattered was practice and the knowledge of the nature of the mind, and warned him of the dangers of discord between “father and son.”15 Then Rechungpa’s faith and devotion were restored. Rechungpa stayed with his teacher, served him and continued to practice with him in the solitude of the mountains.
In 1109 Sönam Rinchen (Gampopa) came to Milarepa. To find out who would be the lineage holder, Milarepa asked his senior disciples to pay attention to their dreams and report them next day. Rechungpa dreamed being at the junction of three valleys making a great noise. Milarepa interpretation of the dream was that Rechungpa, because of having disobeyed him three times, will be reborn three more times in three different valleys, and will be a famous scholar in each of those lifetimes.
While living with Milarepa and others of his disciples in the Stomach-like Cave in Nyanam, Rechungpa had a dream in which he was suggested to ask Milarepa to recount his biography for the benefit of later generations. Then, in response to Rechungpa’s supplication, Milarepa told his life story.
Later, people started to have higher opinion of Rechungpa, because he has been three times to India. To Rechungpa they made superior food offerings than to Milarepa, and Rechungpa felt embarrassed and wanted to leave to another place. He asked Milarepa for permission to go to central Tibet (Ü).
Initially Milarepa rejected his request, saying that until his experience and realization are perfected, he should stay on his guru side. But as Rechungpa fervently insisted, Milarepa agreed to let him go and upon his departure said to him: ‘… if a child stays by his mother’s side, he grows up well. If an egg is warmed by the hen’s heat, it will easily come to hatch. If meditators stay with their gurus, then they will not deviate. Although you are leaving without heeding what I say, I will never forsake my love for you, and you should continually supplicate me.” Weeping, Rechungpa said “… until attaining buddhahood myself, I place my hopes in no one but the Jestsun. After this life, in the bardo, too, please be my refuge and guide.” Rechungpa touched the crown of his head to Jetsun’s feet and left for Ü. Then Milarepa returned to his cave and felt very sad.
During his travel Rechungpa met a young man, named Rinchen Drak (Ra Shernang), who became his disciple. Together they went to Lhasa were Lama Pakpo, a Nepalse teacher, taught them the dohas of Saraha16 and Mahāmudrā.
Together with his disciple, Rechungpa travels to Yarlung valley where he takes as consort and wife Lhachik Dembu, the daughter of the local ruler. But their marriage is unhappy one, as Lhachik is short tempered and Rechungpa complains of his meditation getting worse due to dullness and agitation. When Lhachik mistreats Rechungpa by giving him bad food, he takes it as a sign to leave.
After three years of marriage, Rechungpa returned to Milarepa confessing that he had wished for bodily comfort and material possessions, admitting his fault. He stayed with Milarepa for some time to receive additional teachings and abhisheka.17
Then Milarepa told him, “Rechungpa, in the past when I told you to stay, you wanted to go. But now you should go to the sacred site of Jarpo Forest at Shampo Snow Mountain. Benefit sentient beings there[…].” And “Son, in the year of the female wood-rabbit, on the fourteenth day of the horse month, you should return here. It is very important that you do.”18 Rechungpa took the feet of his guru to the crown of his head and then departed.
As he had foreseen, Milarepa was poisoned in the autumn of the wood-tiger year (1134) and passed away in wood-rabbit year (1135). At that time Rechungpa was at Lorodol monastery when he had a dream being urged to go and meet Milarepa for the last time.
The thought that Milarepa had died flashed through his mind and feeling an irrepressible yearning, he departed for Chuwar. Upon arriving there he finds Milarepa disciples trying to cremate his body, but the fire blazed up only when Rechungpa approached the funeral pyre.
Rechungpa had many male and female disciples. Sumtön (Sumpa), Yang-gönpa and Gyalwa Lo were his principal pupils. To Khyungtsangpa, who was a monk, he secretly gave the complete transmission of the Nyengyu.19
Rechungpa died at the age of 77, in 1161 (iron-bird year) 20 at the hermitage of Tsekong in the Loro area. The evening before his death, or rather disappearance, he told his disciples that he would not leave a body behind and asked them to go and meditate and not come to his cave for any reason, until dawn. When they finally went to his cave, what they found were only his clothes and his cushion.
Sources
• The Biographies of Rechungpa, by Peter Alan Roberts
• The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa, by Tsangnyön Heruka, translations by Garma C.C. Chang, C. Stagg
• Rechungpa - A biography of Milarepa's Disciple, by Thrangu Rinpoche
• Tibet’s Great Yogi Milarepa, by Rechung Dorje Drakpa, edited by W. Y. Evans Wentz
• https://commons.tsadra.org/index.php/Ras_chung_pa#/media/File:Rechungpa_(R._Beer).jpg
Footnotes
1. Other biographic sources indicate that Rechungpa learned tummo after returning from India.
2. One of the Four Sacred Mountains in Chinese Buddhism
3. The Tibetan name mdze, could mean leprosy, vitiligo, ringworm.
4. Naga, (Skt: “serpent”) in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, a member of a class of mythical semidivine beings.
5. Varacandra’s historical existence is attested by several texts that he helped to translate into Tibetan.
6. In Möntsepa’s “The Life of Rechung Dorje Drak” and other biographies, it is mentioned that Varacandra’s wife learning that Rechungpa’s guru belongs to the lineage of Naropa, sends him to visit Tipupa, another pupil of Naropa.
7. According to other sources, Rechungpa walled Milarepa in the Silk Cave before leaving for India and although he didn’t expect so, he was overjoyed to find Milarepa meditating in the same place.
8. In other biographical sources, Rechungpa met Tipupa during his first trip to India, contradicting each other if he received these teachings in part, in full or not at all at that time or later.
9. Other biographies mention that he also wanted to learn sorcery to be able to punish the monks.
10. In Thrangu Rinpoche’s biography, Rechungpa received the transmission, empowerment and instructions on Red Chenrezig, and the name of the female teacher was Machik Drupai Gyalmo.
11. Subsequent events in Rechungpa's life do not support the statement that Milarepa would live only one more year.
12. In Lhatsun Rinchen Namgyal and Götsang Repa versions of Rechungpa biographies, he spends additional time in India to receive more of Tipupa’s teachings, including the Naropa’s ‘Six Teachings of Equal Taste’ that he was told that should be concealed as terma for three generations.
13. Other sources do not mention sorcery, but only works of scholarship and logic.
14. Though the lapse was brief, such a deviation is normally considered the gravest fault in a vajrayāna practitioner.
15. Several biographies mention that afterwards Milarepa performed a series of miracles to restore Rechungpa’s faith in him. Initially Rechungpa dismisses the miracles are worthless, but when Milarepa left, he is deeply remorseful and depressed and wants to die, believing that Milarepa has left this world to a pure realm that he will not be able to reach and meet his teacher again. However, he decides it is wrong to commit suicide by jumping to his death. Instead, he prays to die accidentally and climbs the cliff to provide the opportunity for an accident. Near the top, he comes across a cave in which there are three Milarepas, who in a song ask him to repent his conduct. Then magically Rechungpa finds himself sitting by Milarepa next to the ashes of the texts.
16. Saraha was an Indian mahāsiddha and is known for his celebrated songs of realization (Skt. dohā). He was also one of Nagarjuna's teachers.
17. In tantric Buddhism the abhiseka rite is a prelude for initiation into mystical teaching. There are four classes of abhiseka, each being associated with one of the four Tantras. They are master consecration, secret consecration, knowledge of prajňa, and the fourth consecration.
18. Milarepa was anticipating his own death.
19. The Rechung Nyengyu is a lineage of the Kagyu tradition that is traced to Rechungpa. The lineage draws heavily from the Cakrasaṃvara Tantra and includes liturgies, ritual manuals and tantric commentaries.
20. Other accounts state the year of death 1171, to match the Siddharājñī story.
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