Shentong and Rangtong: Two Views of Emptiness

by Khenchen Thrangu

The Mahayana path of Buddhism requires the development of wast loving-kindness and compassion. The foundation for developing impartial compassion for all sentient beings is based on understanding the emptiness of self and the emptiness of phenomena. In Shentong and Rangtong Thrangu Rinpoche begins with a lucid description of the four major schools of Buddhism and their tenents. Each school had its own view of reality and Rinpoche describes the similarities and differences of these views. The Middle-way path had two important schools in the Shentong and the Rangtong. In the discussion of the Rangtong, Rinpoche shows how important it is to understand the emptiness of persons and of phenomena because this understanding helps develop an accurate view of the world and thus how to proceed in one's practice. In the discussion of Shentong, Rinpoche describes the empty, luminous clarity of mind and how this is developed in meditation. This clarity is also closely related to understanding Buddha-nature and meditation in the Vajrayana. Thrangu Rinpoche bases this discussion on Jamgon Kongtrul's encyclopedic text The Treasury of Knowledge. If you liked Khenpo Tsultrim's Progressive Stages of Meditation you will like this book because it is the same topic but in much, much more detail and tied more to how this topic relates to one's practice.

Genres: Buddhism, Philosophy

167 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

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.