KHENPO SHERAP PHÜNTSOK, MICHELE MARTIN : THE KARMAPAS AND THEIR MAHAMUDRA FOREFATHERS An Illustrated Guide

“I believe the life a lama lives is the greatest instruction to the students who follow him or her. It is an instruction we can actually see. The lama’s deeds display the Dharma in action for us. They can instruct our hearts with the fullness of lived experience. In the lama’s actions we can observe how the mind turns to Dharma, and how that Dharma becomes a path. We can watch how the path eliminates confusion, and how confusion arises as wisdom.”– H.H. the Seventeenth Karmapa

The Karmapas and Their Mahamudra Forefathers collects fascinating accounts of the lives of the Karmapas and of their forefathers in the Mahamudra practice lineage. Each story is accompanied by a beautiful, full-color illustration of its subject in the lineage, as depicted in a traditional style of Eastern Tibet used at the renowned Thrangu Tashi Yangtse Monastery in Nepal. 

• Paperback
• 344 pages, 6.50 x 7.50 inches
• ISBN 9781614292807

Khenpo Sherap Phüntsok met Kyabjé Thrangu Rinpoche as a young boy and became a monk at Thrangu Rinpoche’s monastery. There he studied all aspects of ritual practice at the monastery and became a chant master. At the age of sixteen he entered Thrangu Rinpoche’s monastic college in Namo Buddha, Nepal, where he studied the curriculum of the Kagyü tradition. At the age of twenty-one, he was made an assistant teacher in 2001 by Kyabjé Thrangu Rinpoche and was awarded the title of Khenpo in 2003. In 2005, the Seventeenth Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje appointed Khenpo Sherap junior chant master for the Great Kagyü Mönlam, a position he has kept until now.
Image courtesy of Vajra Vidya Institute.

Michele Martin has been a Buddhist practitioner for over forty years and has spent the last thirty of those based in Nepal and India studying with Tibetan lamas and working as a translator of oral and written Tibetan. With two graduate degrees from Yale, she also had a long career in publishing and is a founding board member of the Tibetan Buddhist Research Center. Among numerous translations from Tibetan texts on philosophy, meditation, and history, her books include Music in the Sky: The Life, Art, and Teachings of the Seventeenth Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje (author and translator) and Gaining Certainty in the View (translator). In cooperation with others, she has edited and translated Song for the King: Saraha on Mahamudra Meditation; The Karmapas and Their Mahāmudrā Forefathers: An Illustrated Guide; The First Karmapa: The Life and Teachings of Dusum Khyenpa; and Traveling the Path of Compassion: A Commentary on the Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva.

Other books by Michele Martin:
A Song for the King