A new book exploring the life and teachings of Milarepa 
By Francis V. Tiso
Hardcover, 14*20,6cm
410 pp. -copyright 2010
20,00 € / $ 30,00
ftiso1013@gmail.com
Contrada Colle Croce,86
86170 Isernis (IS), ITALY
The life of Milerapa (?1050-1123?) continues to inspire Buddhist practitionaries in the Himalayas to the present day. Thanks to several translations into Western languages, "Tibet's Great yogi" and tantric poet has also become well-known to readers of English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and other modern languages. Less well known, however, is the actual history of this late fifteenth century biography and the accompanying collections of songs and narratives. Moreover, the handful of precious "oral teachings" of Milarepa that can be found in rare blcok print and manuscript sources have not drawn the scholarly attention they deserve. Liberation in One Lifetime presents an interpretation of the history and spirituality of the bKa' brgyud lineage in relationship to the narratives and teachings attributed to Milarepa by studying some of the earliest versions of these materials. The research was enhanced by fieldwork in Nepal, India, and Tibet over the past 24 years. The history and meaning of these medieval texts has been elucidated by examining the way the several branches of the bKa' brgyud Order continue to put them into practice in solitary retreat, public ritual, and iconography. Liberation in One Lifetime is the first scholarly foray into the history of one of the world's spiritual classics, The Life of Milarepa, which was compiled from a rich reservoir of Tibetan tantric teachings in the bKa' brgyud tradition. The ongoing literary process that we observe in successive biographies of Milarepa discloses the dynamism at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana. In the bKa' brgud pa, whose very name signifies the transmission of sacred word and precept (bKa'), historical circumstances provoked and conditioned the singing of new tales, and new problems gave rise to new `answers` that came in the form of hagiographical models. By means of an ongoing dialectic between oral and written narrative , the essential values embodied in Milarepa resurfaced in each generation of sacred transmission (brgyud) and stimulated reforms such as that of the mad yogins (smyon pa). The biographical tradition, studied alongside the songs and oral teachings, proves useful for tracing these historical dynamics in that the subject remains the same: Milarepa the poet, yogin, siddha, and saint.
Father Francis V. Tiso was Associate Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious affairs of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops from 2004 to 2009, where he served as liaison to Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Sikhs, and Traditional religions as well as the Reformed confessions. A New York native, Father Tiso holds the A.B. in midieval Studies from Cornell University. He earned a Master of Divinity degree (cum laude) at Harvard University and holds a doctorate from Colunbia University where his specialization was Buddhist studies. He has led research expeditions in South Asia, Tibet and the Far East, and his teaching interests include Christian theology, history of religions, spirituality, ecumenism and interreligious dialogue. Father Tiso is a priest of the Diocese of Isernia-Venafro, Italy, where he now serves as pastor of the parish of St. Michael in Fornelli (IS).
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