Asanga's Abhidharmasamuccaya - Paperback

by Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche (Author)

Traleg Kyabgon presents the Abhidharma system of Asanga in clear and uncomplicated language so that students of the mahayana can easily employ its insights to understand their own minds. The Yogacara view of mind provides a model for understanding our construction of reality. Its understanding of how the mind operates is a guide for how we can properly assess our lives and develop in more psychologically wholesome ways without getting bogged down by past experience. Rinpoche shows that this kind of reflection on ourselves will reveal how our whole conscious evolution has taken place and where we have mismanaged certain things. We will learn how to gradually integrate our fragmented consciousness and transform neurosis into wisdom. As Rinpoche says, It is not the fact of what we are that is keeping us in bondage; it is our mismanagement of the whole situation. What we are has nothing to do with being bound. Our wrong assessment of the situation has created our bondage. Mahayanists don't say you have to come to any kind of cessation on that level. The neuroses do not cease as much as they are seen for what they are. Not being able to see our own neuroses for what they are is what creates the the neurosis. It is not a matter of having all these neuroses as an intrinsic thing and then suffering from them.

Author Biography

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche (1955-2012) was born in Eastern Tibet and recognized at the age of two by His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwang Karmapathe head of the Karma Kagyu lineageas the ninth incarnation of the Traleg tulkus. This lineage can be traced back to the time of Saltong Shogam, a contemporary of the first Karmapa. Traleg Rinpoche was enthroned as the Abbot of Thrangu Monastery in Tibet before being taken to safety in India following the Chinese invasion of his country. There he continued the rigorous training prescribed for tulkus born with responsibilities as major lineage holders in the Tibetan tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism. This training included five years of study at Sanskrit University in Varanasi and several years at Rumtek Monastery, the main seat of the Karma Kagyu Lineage. Not only did Traleg Rinpoche receive the complete teachings of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Vajrayana Buddhism, he also became well acquainted with the practices and philosophy of the Drugpa Kagyu strand of the Kagyu lineage after spending nine years studying with the Regent of the Drugpa Kagyu, the late Dungse Rinpoche, at his monastery in Darjeeling. Traleg Rinpoche settled in Australia in 1980 to make the teachings and practices of the Kagyu tradition available there. He established Kagyu E-Vam Buddhist Institute in Melbourne in 1982, Maitripa Contemplative Center in Healesville in 1997, Nyima Tashi in Auckland, New Zealand in 1999, and Yeshe Nyima in Sydney in 2008. Rinpoche traveled and taught in the United States from 1988 to 2010 and established E-Vam Buddhist Institute in Chatham, New York in 2003. Rinpoche also traveled widely in Europe, Canada, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia giving lectures and seminars on Buddhism and related topics.