From Secular To Sacred

Milarepa is the second founder of Kagyu Sect of Tibetan Buddhism, and the great Yogi known for the austerities. He had not built temples and not gathered samgha. He had achieved buddhahood in his current lifetime. Early he practiced the black magic for revenge by orders of his mother, so he become a murderer and committed grave sin. He deeply regretted what he had done, arising a firm resolve of questing for the true teaching. He tried his best to pass Marpa's stringent test that was called eight great austerities and eight little austerities, finally became one of Marpa's successor. Then he lived in the mountain and continued his austerities, and achieved buddhahood in his current lifetime with his current body. Later his biography became a paradigm of pure conversion in Tibetan Buddhism. Its influence can be comparable with St. Augustine of the Roman Catholic Church.At present, the studies of conversion mostly concentrated in the western social sciences, especially in the field of western psychology, domestic rarely involved, translation is also rare. The conversion process of Milarepa, the great Yogi, provides a typical conversion case for contemporary psychology of religion. In the function of creating religious consciousness and guiding religious conversion, it is by no means inferior to the exemplary role of "Saul", "Augustine" and other cases which are under the Christian tradition. And, based on Milarepa's conversion process, to a large extent, fits and validates the Louis R. Rambo's seven stages theory and Lofland's seven conditions theory, it shows the unique nature and characteristics of conversion under Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which can make up for the blind spots, on which psychology research various conversion phenomena only in the Christian tradition, especially the cross-cultural missionary tradition, which also can enrich and expand the field and paradigm of current psychology research of conversion.This study, based on The Biography of Milarepa, started from the research achievement of western psychology, especially Louis R. Rambo's seven stages theory and Lofland's seven conditions theory, combs Milarepa's religious identity definition before conversion, analyzes the Milarepa's specific conversion process and the nature and characteristics shown in the various stages, in order to explore how Milarepa can reproduce the strong vitality in the world today. His conversion process basically follows the Lewis R. Rambo's 7 stages theory:context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment and consequences. However, due to cultural differences, Milarepa's conversion has distinct characteristics which are different from the conversion in cross-cultural mission tradition of the Christian.This paper consists of introduction, body, and conclusion. Body is divided into five chapters. The first chapter introduces the main references of this paper. Need to explain two problems:the current mass of the various versions of Milarepa's biography, and the main reference books of this paper.The second chapter describes the modern research situation of conversion phenomena, mainly includes the definition of conversion of specifications of Tibetan Buddhism and western psychology's theory of conversion. Finally, I managed to analysis the differences between the two in "conversion research".The third chapter analyzes the social background and psychological preparation in front of Milarepa conversion. Focuses on the variety of background factors which promoted him to make various crimes in the secular life, in order to analyze the various factors among the context which promoted Milarepa's conversion. At the last, this paper explores the Milarepa's religious identity before his conversion.The forth chapter analyzes the specific conversion experiences of Milarepa. The first section first pointed out in the encounter stage, there are differences between the Milarepa's conversion and Rambo's conversion stage theory; then analyzes the Milarepa's conversion features which were shown in the encounter stage. The second section briefly introduces the theory of interactive encapsulation theory, and analyzes the Milarepa's conversion features which were shown in the interaction stage.The fifth chapter analyzes the characteristics of Milarepa's commitment and a variety of consequences after his conversion. Section One analyzes the characteristics of Milarepa commitment stage from decision making, rituals, surrender, testimony and motivational reformulation. Section Two analyzes the conversion of Milarepa on his personal influence and impact of social history.Conclusion presents the three stages of Milarepa flooding, and, combined with Milarepa's conversion process, carefully analyzes the causes widespread in today's world.This paper translated the biography of Milarepa in the lho-rong chos-byung into Chinese, as one of the main reference text, added the missing of sangs-rgyas rgyal-mtshan's biography of Milarepa; in the country for the first time implied Rambo and Lofland's conversion theory to analyze and explain the specific cases of religious conversion; represented a detailed analysis of the definition problems of Milarepa's religious identity before his conversion, noted the historical development of meaning of the word "rnying-ma"; raised the three history stages of Milarepa flooding, and carefully analyzed the causes widespread in today's society.