This introduction to Buddhist psychology supplies essential instructions for successful meditation practice. It sets forth the nature of mind and human potential and presents meditation practices that can powerfully influence and ultimately transform the mind into the purified mind of a buddha. Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche clearly describes how consciousnesses operate in everyday perception and how at the time of Buddhahood, these same consciousnesses express the five primordial wisdoms of the five Buddha families.

In the summer of 1957, the revered Buddhist teacher and scholar Khenpo Gangshar foresaw the difficulties that would soon fall upon Tibet and began teaching in a startling new way that enabled all those who heard him to use the coming difficulties as the path of Dharma practice. The teaching consisted of the essential points of mahamudra and dzogchen, both view and practice, presented in a way that made them easy for anyone to use, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche was one of the grateful recipients of these teachings, which he regards as among the most important he has ever been given. He transmits them here, for the benefit of all of us who strive to practice in challenging times. They include contemplations on the ephemeral nature of both joy and suffering, meditations for resting the mind, and guidance for cultivating equanimity in any situation.

A Buddhist Classic
A practical manual for both teacher and student alike, Clarifying the Natural State covers the path from mindfulness to complete enlightenment, simply and methodically. Presenting the profound and ultimate instructions of Mahamudra, it embodies the realization of India and Tibet's greatest masters.
The words of Dakpo Tashi Namgyal are unique. Adorned with plenty of pithy advice out of his personal experience, practitioners are greatly benefited by his instructions on how to remove hindrances and progress further. His methods for practicing Mahamudra are preeminent. This book is indispensable as it focuses exclusively on practice.
-Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche
Elevate your experience and remain wide open like the sky. Expand your mindfulness and remain pervasive like the earth. Steady your attention and remain unshakable like a mountain. Brighten your awareness and remain shining like a flame. Clear your thought free wakefulness and remain lucid like a crystal.
- Dakpo Tashi Namgyal
16th Century

Crystal Clear, by the learned and realized Tibetan Master Thrangu Rinpoche, is a companion volume to the classic medi¬tation manual--Clarifying the Natural State. In his straightfor¬ward and lucid style Rinpoche gives us an indis¬pen¬sable guidebook for insight practice (vipashyana). For people who want more than just theory, this is a handbook that begins with watch¬ing the breath and leads practitioners through stages of realization, all the way to complete enlightenment.

"In Mahamudra, as one takes the path of direct percep¬tion, a per¬son can obtain true and complete enlightenment within the same body and lifetime. Whatever the situation, Mahamudra provides appropriate methods and techniques. So, whether one is able to undertake a lot of hardship or not, whether one is very diligent or not, whichever type of person you might be there is always great benefit in practic¬ing Mahamudra. The practice can be done in the solitude of retreat or while involved in the daily complexities of mod¬ern life. Mahamudra training is always applicable in any situation, at any moment of life."
--Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche

The Ocean of Definitive Meaning by the Ninth Karmapa (1556-1603) is the most profound and famous text on Mahamudra ever written and is of vital importance in the living Kagyu tradition. It offers a detailed, uniquely comprehensive presentation of instruction on both the view and the practice. In the teachings contained in this book, Thrangu Rinpoche has distilled the essence of the Ninth Karmapa's massive text into manageable proportions and has given pointed guidance on the implementation of its instruction. According to Thrangu Rinpoche, Mahamudra practice is especially appropriate for Westerners and contemporary practitioners because it can be realized in the context of virtually any lifestyle. Mahamudra dissolves the artificial separation between phenomena and emptiness, revealing the radiant display of mind. The Ninth Karmapa's text has traditionally been available only to advanced students. However, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche has kindly consented to the publication of these core teachings on the text, which he gave in the context of a retreat he led in 2001 in the mountains of British Columbia for 140 Western students. His compelling presentation provides teachers and students with a systematic approach to some of the highest practices in the Kagyu tradition. Thrangu Rinpoche's extraordinary wisdom and insight make this new commentary a peerless jewel in the canons of spiritual literature.

"Essential Practice" is an accessible and authoritative portrait of a bodhisattva's view, meditation, and conduct by one of the foremost masters of the Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism and the tutor of H.H. the Seventeenth Karmapa. Teaching on Kamalashila's treatises outlining the stages of meditation, Thrangu Rinpoche explains the need for compassion and the way to develop it, the necessity for a bodhisattva's vast and durable altruism, as well as the means to generate, stabilize, and fortify it and the elements key to the meditative practices of calm abiding and insight. An engaging element of "Essential Practice" is the lively interaction of Thrangu Rinpoche with students and members of the faculty of Naropa University as he unfolds the text for them.
With exceptional generosity, Thrangu Rinpoche took delight in fielding basic and knotty questions that were put to him by relative newcomers and relatively seasoned practitioner/scholars. This record of a masterful teacher's instructions will help students old and new to determine what is essential to the practice of Buddhism and thereby bring the Buddha's teachings into their own experience. "Essential Practice" presents an incomparable wisdom on the methodology and means of meditation, as well as the ways in which to bring oneself to the transcendence of selfless behavior.

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 Thrangu's teachings encompass the entire path of Mahamudra, including the preliminaries, the main practice, removing obstacles, and attaining the result of buddhahood--with detailed instruction in tranquility and insight meditation. This is the only available volume that presents Khenchen Thrangu's detailed commentary on this entire text.

According to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, human beings' true nature, or buddha essence, is the foundation from which all wisdom develops. In order to discover our buddha essence, the meditator needs to know how to meditate correctly and must properly understand the reasons for practicing meditation. We also need training in how the philosophy and practice come together in the development of insight.
In this book--with clarity, warmth, and humor--renowned Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Khenchen Thrangu explains buddha essence and how to discover it in ourselves by drawing on a classical text of the Kagyu lineage by Rangjung Dorje (the third Karmapa). "On Buddha Essence "will be of interest to practitioners of all schools of Tibetan Buddhism.