Milarepa is remembered above all for attaining realization within a single lifetime through intense solitary practice, meditating for years in remote mountain caves, clad only in thin cotton, the source of the name of his tradition of repa, cotton-clad yogis, and living so austerely that he is said to have turned greenish from a diet of nettles. His spontaneous Hundred Thousand Songs, verses of instruction and realization, remain a treasured body of Tibetan religious poetry. He is counted among the founding masters of the Kagyu school, standing between his teacher Marpa and his own chief disciple Gampopa, and his story is cherished across Tibetan Buddhism as proof that even a person guilty of grave wrongs can, through effort and a teacher's guidance, reach awakening.
Tsangnyon Heruka, who gave the songs their lasting literary form, printed them from carved woodblocks and distributed copies to religious and political leaders across Tibet, a deliberate act of popularisation that did much to fix Milarepa's story in the form still read today, centuries after the events themselves. His most famous disciple, Gampopa, went on to found the first fully monastic Kagyu institutions, so the line running from Marpa through Milarepa to Gampopa marks the transition of the Kagyu tradition from a lineage of individual wandering yogis to an organised monastic school.