The film "Milarepa" depicts the humble beginnings of the man who was to become Tibet's greatest saint. Based on ancient oral traditions, a youthful Milarepa is propelled into a world of sorrow and betrayal after his father's death. Destitute and hopeless, he sets out to learn black magic -- to exact revenge on his enemies -- encountering magicians, demons, an enigmatic teacher, and unexpected mystical power along the way. But it is in confronting the consequences of his anger that he learns the most. Photographed in the stunning Lahaul-Spiti region of Northern India, "Milarepa" offers a provocative parallel to the cycle of violence and retribution we see consuming today's world (Duke University).Mad Geniuses
Jane McGrath (HowStuffWorks.com)
Is insanity the secret companion to
genius? Though we can't very well perform psychological examinations on those who are long dead, that hasn't stopped historians from speculating about the mental conditions of deceased geniuses by interpreting their personal letters, their works, and others' accounts.
.
It turns out some of the world's greatest geniuses were quite mad. In fact, some scientists claim that a far greater percentage of creative types (poets, painters, musicians, and the like) have been afflicted with bipolar disorder than the general
population. Some of the world's most renowned creative minds -- including writers Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway; composers Irving Berlin and Sergey Rachmaninoff; and painters Paul Gauguin and Jackson Pollock -- are believed to have suffered from the illness (source:
Patient Health International).
H. Armstrong Roberts/Getty Images (Brain Image Gallery). Though we may not know what a high IQ has to do with mental illness, brilliant people often strike us as more than a bit nutty. You don't have to look far to find examples of the mad genius in history. See more brain pictures. Despite evidence of a link between genius and madness, no one has proved that such a link exists. However, scientists at the University of Toronto have discovered that creative people possess little to no "latent inhibition," the unconscious ability to reject unimportant or irrelevant stimuli. As University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson puts it, "This means that creative individuals remain in contact with the extra information constantly streaming in from the environment. The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it, even though that object is much more complex and interesting than he or she thinks. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities [source: University of Toronto]."
Let's take a look at these mad geniuses -- the famous thinkers and artists who may have experienced mental illness. First, we'll inspect the modern case of John Nash, whose schizophrenia has been sensationalized by Hollywood.
MILAREPA the MAHASIDDHA YOGIEdited from Wikipedia.comJetsun Milarepa (c.
1052-c.
1135 CE) is one of
Tibet's most famous
yogis and poets, a student of Marpa Lotsawa, and a major figure in the history of the
Kagyu school of
Tibetan Buddhism.
As soon as he saw Milarepa, an ineffable experience of concentrated bliss (Samadhi) arose in him, and for a moment he stood transfixed in ecstasy. Afterwards, he became a "Heart-Son" of Milarepa (rimpoche.co).The essence of Milarepa lies in his writings rather than the many legends that have grown up around him. The writings, often referred to as the
One Hundred Thousands Songs of Milarepa, are canonical Mahayana Buddhist texts [or at least of the
Vajrayana branch of Mahayana Buddhism] that emphasize the temporary nature of the physical body and the need for non-attachment.
In contrast, the legends (and 2006
movie) of Milarepa's life are full of references to magic and wizardry and lack the same sense of devout non-attachment. They became popular through a romanticized and historically questionable biography (
Mi-la-rnam-thar) sometime between 1452 and 1507.
According to the book by French explorer
Alexandra David-Néel Magic and Mystery in Tibet, Milarepa boasted of having “crossed in a few days, a distance which, before his training [in ‘black magic’], had taken him more than a month. He ascribes his gift to the clever control of ‘internal air.’” David-Néel comments “that at the house of the lama who taught him black magic there lived a
trapa [monk] who was fleeter than a horse” using the same skill.
[2]This esoteric skill, which in Tibet is known as
Lung-gom-pa (“Wind Meditation,” lung = “wind,
[3] gom-pa = “meditation”
[4]), allows a practitioner to run at an extraordinary speed for days without stopping. This technique could be compared to that practiced by the Kaihigyo Monks of
Mt. Hiei in
Kyoto,
Japan.
[5] His
cave is revered to this day.
