Milarepa is Tibet's most beloved saint, and his appeal lies in the completeness of his transformation. His life, as told in the famous biography, is a drama of guilt and redemption. Cheated of his family's inheritance by a cruel uncle and aunt, the young Milarepa learned black magic and used it to take revenge, killing many people with a magical hailstorm. Overwhelmed by the karmic horror of what he had done, he sought out the teacher Marpa the Translator, who subjected him to years of brutal trials, most famously, ordering him to build and demolish stone towers over and over, to purify his terrible karma before granting him instruction.
Milarepa then withdrew to solitary caves in the Himalaya, practising the yogas of the Kagyu lineage with such intensity that, subsisting on nettles until his body turned green, he is said to have attained full enlightenment in a single lifetime, the proof, for his tradition, that even the gravest sinner can awaken through effort and devotion. He taught in spontaneous songs of realization, the mgur, which remain classics of Tibetan literature. His life is the tradition's great parable that no karma is beyond purification.