Songs of Naropa: Commentaries on Songs of Realization

by Khenchen Thrangu

This translation contains subtle and penetrating wisdom expressed through the age-old tradition of spiritual songs. Two songs by the great Indian master Naropa are explained in detail by Thrangu Rinpoche, a realized Tibetan Buddhist teacher of the present time. His approach is traditional, but his style is conversational and pragmatic. He includes refutations and limitations of other approaches, a comparison of Mahamudra vs. regular Shamatha, 5 wisdoms, as well as the 6 paramitas. Reading this book, one realizes that Mahamudra ultimately encourages turning the eye on the "I."

Genres: Poetry, Buddhism

200 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2004

About the author

Very Venerable Ninth Khenchen Thrangu Tulku, Karma Lodrö Lungrik Maway Senge (Tibetan: ཁྲ་འགུ་, Wylie: khra 'gu) is a prominent tulku (reincarnate lama) in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.

At the age of four he was formally recognized by His Holiness the Sixteenth Karmapa and Eleventh Tai Situpa as the ninth incarnation of the great Thrangu tulku, the abbot of Thrangu Monastery, whose root incarnation was Shüpu Palgyi Sengé, one of the twenty-five disciples of Guru Rinpoche. Forced to flee to India in 1959, he went to Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, where the Karmapa had his seat in exile. Thrangu Rinpoche then served as the main teacher of the four principal Karma Kagyü tulkus of that time—the four regents of the Karmapa (Shamar Rinpoche, Tai Situ Rinpoche, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche, and Gyaltsab Rinpoche). In 1976 he began to teach in the West and became the abbot of Gampo Abbey—a Buddhist monastery in Nova Scotia, Canada—as well as to take charge of the three-year retreat centre at Samyé Ling in Scotland.

He is also the author of the widely studied The Practice of Tranquility and Insight, a commentary on the eighth chapter of Jamgön Kongtrul's Treasury of Knowledge, on shamatha and vipashyana.