Description of The Cave
Milarepa's cave, which overlooks the entrance to the hidden valley of Lapchi Gang, is entered from the gompa's vestibule. Pilgrim's offerings of decorated stones along the path and sweet-smelling herbs and wild flowers growing all around make this a place of great peace and beauty. The cave itself is kept as a shrine by two monks, guarding a statue of Milarepa enclosed in a glass case. In the cave is an impression in the rock attributed to Milarepa's sitting meditation posture and a hand print said to have been created when Milarepa helped Rechungpa (1083/4-1161 CE), his student, use a boulder to prop up the ceiling. There are images of Milarepa, Tsongkhapa, and Shri Devi, a protectress whose mule is said to have left a footprint in the stone when she visited Milarepa in a vision.
Restoration work within the cave and the monastery was undertaken by artists and craftsmen from Nepal and was financed by the Chinese government in the 1970s.
Read more about this topic: Milarepa's Cave
Famous quotes containing the words description of the, description of, description and/or cave:
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)