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:
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“In such an armor he may rise and raid
The dark cave after midnight, unafraid....”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)