Milarepa is likely the most beloved Story of Tibetans even though it is quite surprising for people in the western world likely. I was trying to explain the affection Bhutanese have for Drukpa Kunley who lived in the 1400s and 1500s and I mentioned to my friend about Milarepa. They are both such amazing and unusual masters of the Dharma. I was also trying to explain the Tibetan Sense of Humor which if I were to describe would go something like "It is better to laugh at death and strangeness and weird stuff than to have a stroke or heart attack from getting so bent out of shape from something".
I think that might be the best way to say it. The Tibetans and Lamas and Monks are laughing all the time.
It's also true that American Soldiers are known for their dark humor or death humor around the world too. If you can't deal with something you make a joke about it. when you live at 8000 to 15,000 feet you better make a joke of death because because you are going to see it literally every day living at that altitude. Even when I was in India and Nepal death was always around me on the streets (and no ambulances came to pick up the dead either they just laid there and rotted then in the 1980s too. Maybe some rich places that wasn't true in India but common people places seeing a dead person being eaten by birds or rodents or other animals wasn't unusual at all then.
So, the point I'm trying to make is: "Sometimes laughing at death is the only way to stay alive when things are difficult or you are going to die too".
The way one person describes Milarepa is "He was a mass murderer who became a saint after feeling bad from being a sorcerer who brought a hailstorm down on a wedding and killed 25 people." Then he became a saint in remorse to expiate his karma by becoming one of the most endearing Saints of the Tibetan people. But, how could you properly explain that to someone in the western Christian World? So, he went from that to spending most of his life in caves and levitating up to 100 feet or more while singing spontaneous songs of the Dharma in front of hundreds or thousands of people and he lived until the 1100s in Tibet!
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