The Spiritual Biography of Marpa, the translator

In this book Thrangu Rinpoche relates how the fearless marpa left Tibet three times and traveled the perilous journey to India to receive the authentic vajrayana teachings.

Not only does Rinpoche relate the story of Marpa's interesting life, but he also relates Marpa's relationship with his guru Tilopa and his relationship with his own students. Given are also description of the practices and a detailed explanation of the Twelve Instructions of Maitripa on Mahamudra meditation.

Marpa was instrumental in bringing the tantric meditation instructions to Tibet. Under the guidance of Tilopa, Marpa was able to visit the greatest siddhas of India and to receive these teachings. Not only did Marpa copy down these trantric practices, but he translated them from Sanskrit into Tibetan and spend years practicing them until he had thoroughly mastered them. This was fortunate because soon afterwards there was the Moslem invasion of India and most of these teachings were destroyed in India. These teaching from marpa continue to be practices in Tibet to this day.

This book is part of a series of teachings on the kagyu lineage holders by Thrangu Rinpoche. In previous books of this series, he has given the life and teachings of Tilopa and naropa the first two lineage holder. Marpa is the third lineage holder and Rinpoche has also given the teachings and life of Milarepa, Rechungpa, Gampopa, and the Karmapas.

Thrangu Rinpoche has said that the study of the biographies of the lineage holders is valuable especially when one is discouraged with one's practice or faced with doubt about one's spiritual practice. For this reason he has given us these inspiring spiritual biographies.