Sunday, March 16th, 2025
In Ocean’s Main Shrine Room
Two sessions: 1:00 and 3:45 pm Eastern,
with a 30-minute break at 3:15.
All the texts being read will be displayed on your screen, or follow along with your own Rain of Wisdom text.
Milarepa was an 11th-century Tibetan siddha and key member of the Kagyu lineage. A murderer turned yogi and spiritual poet, Milarepa’s tumultuous life story has inspired generations of practitioners overwhelmed by their circumstances and past actions.
The Rain of Wisdom is a collection of devotional songs composed spontaneously by Milarepa and many other Kagyu teachers over the centuries. On Milarepa day we gather and read aloud from this collection.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche read these lineage poems as part of his practice starting at eight years old. In his foreword to the translation he directed, he says, “From my childhood until the present day, each time I open The Rain of Wisdom and read a few passages it makes me appreciate the hardships that our forefathers endured for the sake of future generations such as ourselves.”
In a time when many of us feel fearful about the state of the world, and the potential hardships to come, gathering to read stories from these brave, kind, and flawed practitioners of the past feels vital.
“Reading these songs or even glancing at a paragraph of this literature always brings timely messages of how to conduct oneself, how to discipline oneself, and how to reach accomplishment. Furthermore, these songs are very pithy and direct. Their wisdom is both old and new. It is old because it is a tradition of twenty-five hundred years; it is new because it directs itself to one’s very moment of mind, at this very second.” -Chogyam Trungpa
