Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche - An Ocean of the Ultimate Meaning: Teachings on Mahamudra

A practical handbook for advanced meditators that discusses the subtleties of shamatha and vipashyana meditation, particularly their stages and the methods for working with obstacles.

Buddhadharma

ABOUT THE BOOK

In this new book, Khenchen Thrangu provides an exhaustive commentary on the longest and most comprehensive of the three classic treatises on Mahamudra composed by the sixteenth-century scholar Wangchuk Dorje, the Ninth Karmapa. Khenchen Thrangus teachings encompass the entire path of Mahamudra, including the preliminaries, the main practice, removing obstacles, and attaining the result of buddhahoodwith detailed instruction in tranquility and insight meditation. This is the only available volume that presents Khenchen Thrangus detailed commentary on this entire text.

KHENCHEN THRANGU was born in Tibet in 1933. He has founded numerous monasteries and nunneries, schools for Tibetan children, and medical clinics. He has taught extensively throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States, and is the abbot of Gampo Abbey. He was appointed by the Dalai Lama to be the personal tutor for the Seventeenth Karmapa.

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An Ocean of the Ultimate Meaning

TEACHINGS ON MAHAMUDRA

A commentary on Wangchuk Dorjes Ngedn Gyamtso

Khenchen Thrangu

TRANSLATED BY PETER ALAN ROBERTS

Shambhala

BOSTON & LONDON

2013

Shambhala Publications, Inc.

Horticultural Hall

300 Massachusetts Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

www.shambhala.com

2004 by Khenchen Thrangu

Cover art : Detail from The Great Adept Ghantapada , an eighteenth-century Tibetan thangka painting. Image #514, courtesy of the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, http://www.himalayanart.org.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Thrangu, Rinpoche, 1933

An ocean of the ultimate meaning: teachings on Mahamudra/ by Khenchen Thrangu; translated by Peter Alan Roberts.

p. cm.

Includes index.

eISBN 978-0-8348-2928-2

ISBN 1-59030-055-6 (alk. paper)

1. Mahmudr (Tantric rite) 2. amatha (Buddhism) 3. Vipayan (Buddhism) 4. MeditationBka-rgyud-pa (Sect) 5. BuddhismChinaTibetDoctrines.

I. Roberts, Peter Alan. II. Title.

BQ7699.M34T47 2004

294.34435dc21

2003013548

Contents

The Karma Kagyu tradition, which has monasteries throughout the populated areas of Tibet, dates back to the first Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa (111093), who founded three monasteries in his later years. Among these was Tsurphu near Lhasa, which was to be the seat for all future Karmapas. From that small beginning, the Karma Kagyu grew into one of the major religious traditions of Tibet. Karma Pakshi, the second Karmapa (120683), was the first incidence of a recognized rebirth of a lama inheriting his predecessors authority, and this succession of Karmapa incarnations has continued to the present day. In 1475 the seventh Karmapa, Chdrak Gyamtso, established Thrangu Monastery in eastern Tibet from the ruins of a Drigung Kagyu monastery. Its first abbot, Sherab Gyaltsen, was the first Thrangu Rinpoche.

Khenchen Thrangu, the ninth Thrangu Rinpoche, whose personal name is Karma Lodr Ringluk Marwe Sengge, was born in the region of Gawa in the east of the Tibetan plateau in 1933. At about the age of four he was recognized as the rebirth of the eighth Thrangu, Karma Tendzin Trinle Namgyal, by the twelve-year-old sixteenth Karmapa, Rigpe Dorje, and the eleventh Taisitupa, Pema Wangchuk Gyalpo.

From an early age, Thrangu Rinpoche showed great aptitude in scholarship, studying at the Thrangu monastic college under Khenpo Lodr Rabsal from 1948 to 1953. In the late fifties, the Communist suppression of Tibetan monasteries caused him to flee to India in a large group of refugees. Surviving an intense military attack, he reached India via Bhutan in 1959. After demonstrating his scholarship by obtaining the scholastic degree of Geshe Rabjam at an examination in West Bengalthe highest degree awarded within the Gelugpa tradition of the Dalai Lama, which emphasizes scholastic studiesin 1968 Thrangu Rinpoche became the khenpo (professor) of the new Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India, and the tutor for the principal tulkus of the Karma Kagyu tradition.

Since the late 1970s, Thrangu Rinpoche has traveled extensively, spending most of each year teaching at centers in the Far East and the West. In 2000 the seventeenth Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje (born 1985), was recognized by the Dalai Lama and the twelfth Taisitupa in accordance with the prediction letter written by the sixteenth Karmapa, escaped from Tibet, where he was born and had undergone his early training at Tsurphu Monastery. The Karmapa currently resides in Dharamsala, India, and Thrangu Rinpoche has been appointed his official tutor.

Since 1996 Thrangu Rinpoche has taught at an annual retreat in Maine, and this book is derived from the teachings he gave there in the summers of 1998 and 1999.

The subject of this book is Mahamudra, a teaching on the practice of directly realizing the nature of the mind. The principal sources of this teaching are the meditation instructions and songs of Indian masters such as Saraha (tenth century), Tilopa (circa 9281009), and Naropa (circa 9561040). The greatest Mahamudra masters in the eleventh century were Maitripa and his students, in particular Vajrapani.

The Kagyu tradition itself has its source in Marpa Chkyi Lodr (circa 101095), who studied under Naropa and Maitripa. This lineage, in addition to the higher tantra practices of deities such as Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi, and the yogic practices such as chandali, stressed the subtle practice of Mahamudra meditation. The lineage continued to be enriched by the Mahamudra teachings of Maitripa obtained via other teachers, such as Milarepas pupil Rechungpa (10841161), who studied with a pupil of Vajrapani.

The most significant transmission of Marpas lineage came through his famous yogin pupil Milarepa (10401123) to Milarepas monk pupil Gampopa (10791153). Gampopa, also known as Dakpo Lharje, established the first Kagyu monastery by blending the Mahamudra and Vajrayana teachings derived from Naropa and Maitripa with the scholastic, monastic, and gradualist approach of the Kadampa school founded in the eleventh century by Atisha Dipankara and his pupil Dromtn Gyalwa Jungne. A number of Kagyu traditions descend from Gampopa, collectively known as the Dakpo Kagyu, including the Karma Kagyu founded by the first Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa.

The Mahamudra was primarily a tradition of oral instruction. Two short but significant Karma Kagyu texts on Mahamudra were written by the third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje (12841339): The Single Word Heart Teaching ( Nying tam tsig chig ) and in particular The Mahamudra Prayer ( Chag chen mnlam ), which is still frequently used as the basis for Mahamudra teaching.

However, the most important Mahamudra instruction texts within the Karma Kagyu were written by the ninth Karmapa, Wangchuk Dorje (15551603), who presented a progressive, gradualist approach of meditation through various stages, starting with preliminary practices, going through general shamatha techniques, and passing through ever-subtler levels until the practitioner reaches the meditationless state of Mahamudra.