Thrangu Rinpoche - A Spiritual Biography of Rechungpa
Based on "The Radiance of Wisdom: The Life & Liberation of the Ven Rechung Dorje Drak"
Translator: Peter Roberts
From the Introduction:
Just before the destruction of Buddhism in India in the twelfth century, a daring Tibetan Marpa made not one, but three trips to India to get the Dharma. While in India Marpa found Naropa, a great pandita of the predominate Buddhist college in the world. Naropa had given up the highest position at Nalanda University to go to living in the forest as a penniless hermit practicing the vajrayana teachings. From Naropa, Marpa brought back the profound vajrayana teachings and transmitted them to Tibet's greatest saint, Milarepa.
Milarepa then had two great pupils - Gampopa who went on to found the monastic branch of the Kagyu lineage and Rechungpa. Gampopa went on to write the Jewel Ornament of Liberation which is a classic textbook on how to follow the Buddhist path. From Rechungpa we have the amityus practice and other practices and a spiritual biography which is fascinating because it includes many of the trials a practitioner goes through - doubt of one's teacher, not following the guru's instructions, sexual temptation, and pride of spiritual accomplishment. Despite all of Rechungpa's failings, he was able to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime and this was evidenced by his being able to achieve what is known as "rainbow body." This practice is a high meditative practice in which one dissolves almost all of one's body after one is already dead.
Thrangu Rinpoche has suggested reading spiritual biographies when one becomes discouraged with practice.
He gave these teachings at two different times. He first gave teachings on Rechungpa in February of 1989 to the Namo Buddha Winter Seminar in Nepal with Peter Roberts translating. He later gave these teachings to Karma Dzong in Boulder, USA with John Rockwell translating. Even though Rinpoche used the same text, he emphasized many different points. We have combined these two series of teachings into one to give a much broader view of the life and practice of Rechungpa.
~ Clark Johnson, Ph. D.
Uploader's note:
This is quite different to the other upload here about Rechungpa.
http://theoccult.bz/details.php?id=6679
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search for Wheaten to see my other uploads
MsSVig