Saraha

About the time or place of Saraha's birth and about his life there are many anecdotes but little certainty. Various sources place him in periods centuries apart. He probably was born in Southern India into a Brahmin family and grew up in the traditional way.
It is said that in his youth he went to a monastery and studied the Hinayana teachings and finally at one point in life decided to fully let go all tasks related to his Brahmin origin and to completely dedicate his life to Buddhist practice. This did not happen in one step – he lived a Brahmin and a Buddhist life simultaneously for a period of time before he abandoned his original views completely. Through a vision of the dakini Red Wisdom, he met King Indrabodhi and his daughter Lakshminkara who transmitted essential teachings of the Diamond Way to him. He moved to Maghada (Northern India) where he took his monk’s vows at Nalanda. He spent many years at its university as a scholar and later as its abbot. This was the time when he met Nagarjuna who became his most outstanding student.
Probably during this time Saraha received teachings of Ratnamati and Sukhanatha (= the human emanations of Wisdom Buddha and Loving Eyes) in visions. He received the Khorlo Demchog Tantra and Mahamudra from them.
When Saraha met the secret tantra teachings, he officially continued his monastic discipline for a while but quietly was already applying tantric methods.

Later when he, upon the advice of Sukhanatha, went to meet a female Mahamudra master who secretly lived as an arrow maker, he both quickly learned her profession and realized her teachings on the nature of mind. He left the monastery and followed the example of a yogic tantric life. The arrow, the bow and their handling constitute a compendium of symbols. He became her consort and lived together with her by many cremation places where they meditated, celebrated tantric feasts and practiced tantric sexual union. He started to teach Mahamudra meditation, which he had learned from her to his students. To many who followed his spiritual journey he gave an extraordinary example.

He was called “King of the Mahasiddhas”.

Much of Saraha's teaching was given as a spiritual song (skt.: doha), in verse. He gave these songs when he lived with a woman of a lower caste and they “strayed through the countryside like dogs,” as the king said. The latter even asked people to bring him back to a pure practice – the King’s, Queen’s and People’s Doha, expressing foundation, path and fruit of Mahamudra. Teaching and transmitting Mahamudra through dohas was thereafter preserved as a sacred method of instruction through subsequent generations of the Kagyü lineage. The King’s Doha, which Saraha gave, is seen as one of the deepest Mahamudra instructions.

There exist a lot of stories about Saraha’s exceptional abilities:

As a Brahmin Saraha was highly educated in the Vedas and their related fields of knowledge like astrology and grammar. After he had given a lecture on secret Vedic texts in front of 500 young Brahmins, Dakini Red Wisdom appeared in front of him as a barmaid. She invited him to drink nectar in the form of strong alcohol. Without hesitating, he drank the intoxicating drink. But he did not get drunk but experienced deep inner meditative states, and the experience of highest bliss arose in him.

For Saraha, drinking alcohol meant that he was excluded from his caste. The other Brahmins even asked King Ratnapala to banish him because he damaged the reputation of the caste. The king replied that he didn’t want to banish somebody with so much merit right away, he wanted to travel to Saraha and talk to him.

“If you are a Brahmin, it is out of order to drink wine”. Saraha answered that he hadn’t drunk any wine, and if nobody believed him, he would prove it. The other Brahmins were not content and kept on with their allegations.

So Saraha showed his magic abilities and that he has mastered the elements: He drank melted copper, which didn’t do any harm to him; he stayed above the water surface whereas all the Brahmins sank in the water; on scales, Saraha was heavier than ferrous rocks; when Saraha reached the weight of six rocks, the king said to him, “If a person with the abilities like yours wants to drink wine, then he should drink wine”.

His relations to two consorts became a core example for a yogic lifestyle: