Jetsun Milarepa is a fascinating person of early Tibetan History

Bellow is the brief story of Milarepa with special emphasis on selecting a spiritual teacher.
We often teach what we want to know about. So in this sense many teachers take up teaching in search for the truth themselves. How much you would learn from them depends on you and your attitude.

We often seek out the smartest, best teacher but ignore the most important criteria of learning; our own attitude.

This is a story of Milarepa the famous Tibetan sage and founder of Lamaism. The story goes that Milarepa had a teacher before he met his Guru Marpa. He accepted the tutelage of Milarepa but his other disciples were jealous of Milarepa for his magnetic personality. So they went to the Guru and said, Master, ask for total obedience from this man as he thinks he is bigger than even you. Test him.

So the story goes that the Master told Milarepa to jump off the mountain and before the Guru could finish the sentence Milarepa jumped. Sure that he was dead the disciples went down and searched for his body, but they found Milarepa under a tree happy as a clam. They could not understand how this happened, and asked him; he just said;

I did not do anything it must have been the Master that saved me. I do not know what happened.
The master was equally flabbergasted and had no idea what happened.

The jealous disciples pushed on and asked for another test. The next test was to have Milarepa go into a burning building and stay there until the whole building is burnt to crisp. Milarepa complied without any hesitation and as the building turned into ashes the disciples found him under a pile of ash but alive and unharmed.

He still could not account for the miracle. He just smiled and went on. Later the disciples pushed for a third test. This was near a deep, mountain lake in Tibet. The Guru told Milarepa to walk onto the lake and fetch the boat that was anchored there away from the shores.

He started to walk towards the boat, and to the amazement of all, he walked on the water. The master was hysterical, he, for all his knowledge had no idea how Milarepa could do all these tricks.

He swallowed his pride asked him while the two were sitting alone in the boat Milarepa fetched. Tell me Milarepa how could you walk on the lake? Milarepa said; Master I just did it without thinking of it or the danger. I kept saying your name and had total faith that I will be protected somehow.

So the Master said to himself if this is the trick I can do this too. So he stepped out of the boat and headed to the shore while repeating his own name. Naturally, he could not walk on water and he drowned.

You see, it is not the quality of the teacher that matters but the dedication and striving of the pupil.
The good teacher is the one who simply shows you how to reach within yourself and do it, by empowering you. The bad teacher is the one who suggest to you that you will be always in need of him. (The above is an excerpt from my book "The Evidence of God's Existence", dowloadable here for free)