Wangpo, as an incarnation of Marpa the Translator, the patriarchal yogin. Milarepa’s talent in composing and singing mystical songs extempore was shared by Shabkar, and so was his propensity for the anchorite’s life. But the yogin from Rebkong in Amdo was also a wanderer, roaming on pilgrimage throughout the Tibetan heartland and beyond. Punctuating his pilgrimage with retreats in caves and hermitages, he visited Amnye Machen, Amdo’s sacred mountain; he performed the Tsari Rongkhor (the long circumambulation of the Tsari mountain); and he spent a year at Kang Rinpoche, on Mount Kailash. On his pilgrimage to Labchi, to the west of Mount Everest, it was said of him that wherever he traveled he left the people established in the Dharma, and wherever he stepped he converted “black:’ ortarnished, worldlings into “white,” or refined, practitioners. Thus he gained his sobriquet Shabkar (White Foot). During his pilgrimage, between retreats, he would continue his instruction at the feet of lamas of every school, particularly the Drugpa Kagyu, with which his own heterogenous brand of yogin-monk mix had a strong affinity. However he was also interested in the Kadampas (the school founded by Jowo Atisa and assimilated by the Gelugpas), and Je Tsongkhapa himself, whose great work, The Stages of tile Pat/i, received sustained attention from Shabkar.

Shabkar’s study and practice bore fruit in his own writing. He had the gift of speed writing. It was said that he could write a hundred pages daily. If so, he could have spent only a month or so to produce his thirteen