[Acting Like Godot]

Oh yeah, Milarepa did a related sort of trick, with big solid rock. He pressed his hand on it and made an imprint.

That was 800 years ago, the rock is still around. Here's a modern account from someone who went to see the rock recently:

The Science of Miracles - Gregg Braden - Heal Your Life

Bold italics below are mine.

I’d first heard about Milarepa from a Sikh mystic who became my yoga teacher in the 1980s. For years, I’d studied the mystery surrounding the yogi’s journey throughout the remote mountains of China’s Western plateau and the secrets that his devotion had revealed. In 1998, I led a group pilgrimage into Tibet following a route that would take us directly to Milarepa’s cave. Nineteen days after the trip began, I found myself in the thin air of a cave hidden 16,000 feet above sea level, standing precisely where the great yogi had stood nearly 800 years before. With my face only inches away from the wall of the cave, I was staring squarely into the mystery that he had left behind.

To demonstrate his mastery of the physical world, Milarepa had placed his open hand against the cave’s wall at shoulder level, and then continued to push his hand deep into the rock in front of him, as if the wall did not exist! When he did so, the rock beneath his palm became soft and malleable as he left the imprint of his hand embedded in the stone for all to see.

As I opened my palm and placed it into the impression of Milarepa’s hand, I could feel my fingertips cradled in the precise position that the yogi’s fingers had assumed eight centuries earlier—a feeling that was both humbling and inspiring at the same time. The fit was so perfect that any doubt I had about the authenticity of the handprint quickly disappeared. Immediately, my thoughts turned to the man himself. I wanted to know what was happening to him when the rock softened to his touch. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? What did he change within himself that allowed him to defy the “laws” telling us that two physical things—like human flesh and a rock—can’t be in the same place, at the same time?

In anticipation of my question, our Tibetan translator, Xjin-la (pronounced jen la) answered before I even spoke the words. “He has belief,” Xjin-la stated in a matter-of-fact voice. The geshe he said, (the Tibetan word for great teacher) believes that he and the rock are not separate. The rock cannot contain him. To him, this cave is not a wall, so he can move freely as if the rock does not exist.”

In the face of an event like Milarepa’s breach of physical laws, we must reconcile our direct experience with what our family, friends, and culture accept as the reality of our world. The qualities of a cave’s stone wall depend upon the way we think of them. Before Milarepa’s students witnessed the possibility that their teacher showed them, for example, they believed that the rock was a barrier to the human body. After their teacher’s demonstration, their beliefs changed. Both views are accurate. Each one depends upon the way we think of our world—it’s all about what we choose to believe.

So the question that we must ask ourselves is simply this: Could the same thing be happening in our lives today? As far-fetched as this question may sound in light of our scientific knowledge and technological advances, modern scientists now describe a similar irony. Using the language of quantum physics rather than yogic miracles, a growing number of leading-edge scientists suggest that the universe and everything in it—including the healing of our bodies—“is” what it “is” because of the force of consciousness itself. Interestingly, the more we understand the relationship between consciousness, our inner experiences, and our world, the less far-fetched this suggestion becomes.

Oh, here's Milarepa's handprint: