Mahamudra Lineage Prayer: A Guide to Practice

Description

The only book in English on a popular Tibetan Buddhist lineage prayer that explains how it can be used as a guide to practice. In 29 lines, the "Mahamudra Lineage Prayer" lists the great adepts of the Karma Kagyu lineage, reviews the common and special preliminaries, provides instructions for calm abiding and special insight meditation, sets forth the essentials of Mahamudra meditation, and finally makes an aspiration to achieve enlightenment. It thus summarizes the key elements of the path to enlightenment. Khenchen Thrangu's oral teachings on this prayer have been collected and edited to form a complete commentary on the prayer that emphasizes Mahamudra meditation as especially suitable for Western practitioners who complain of having little time for practice. Many chapters include questions from the audience and his replies, which give the book an intimate feeling. Appendices that give details on related topics and the explanatory endnotes make this an invaluable resource for Mahamudra practitioners.

Khenchen Thrangu is an eminent teacher of the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He was appointed by the Dalai Lama to be the personal tutor for His Holiness the Seventeenth Karmapa and has authored many books, includingPointing Out the Dharmakaya,Everyday Consciousness and Primordial Awareness, andVivid Awareness.

"Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche is a great scholar, a great practitioner, and contemporary Karma Kagyu master, who has dedicated his whole life to the service of the Dharma. . . . He has given many teachings on the practice of Mahamudra and classical Mahamudra texts. I, therefore, welcome the publication of this compilation of his teachings on The Mahamudra Lineage Prayer, which extend over nearly forty years."-from the foreword by the Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje