Legends

There are lots of legends filled with miracles about ancient spiritual characters. That is always the result when writers don't share the same realization as who they write about. Many people, believers, take these legends literally and will get entangled by web of fantasy - and so religions are born. Lots of filtering is needed when reading these stories but somewhere there, under mud and weed always lies a great story. One spiritual character from who there are lots of legends is Tilopa.

Tilopa was a tantric practioner in India over thousand years ago and he is regarded as founder of one lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. There are two story versions how did his spiritual search began. In first version he was living monastic life (he was born into a brahmin caste) and one day heard a voice from female spirit, Dakini, who told him to throw away his monk's robes and become wanderer. In second version he was meditating when he received a vision which transmitted entire Mahamudra (direct introduction to the nature of Mind) to him. I don't think I need to say which version of the story seems valid to me. Tilopa did same kind of wandering as Siddhartha Gautama did, going from guru to guru learning as much as he could. Finally he declared that he had no other gurus than the source of all the manifestations of enlightenment.

His most closest disciple was Naropa and for this disciple he created advices in many forms. For example "Song of Mahamudra" is really wonderful text about the ultimate experience. Another famous one was "6 words of advice" (original sanskrit or bengali text only had six words in it but that text is not available anymore so English translation was made from Tibetan translation) - I should say that I don't favour any form of structural spiritual teaching but these are really solid advices:

1 Don't recall - Let go of what has passed
2 Don't imagine - Let go of what may come
3 Don't think - Let go of what is happening now
4 Don't examine - Don't try to figure anything out
5 Don't control - Don't try to make anything happen
6 Rest - Relax, right now, and rest