The Maitreya Buddha, the future Buddha who will come after the Shakyamuni Buddha, gave five lengthy teachings to Asanga in India in the fourth century CE. Asanga wrote these teachings down called the Five Treatises of Maitreya and then wrote a commentary on them. These Five Treatises of Maitreya are particularly precious because they represent the foundation of the third turning of the wheel of Dharma (with the Foundation teachings of the Buddha being the first turning and the Prajnaparamita teachings on emptiness being the second turning).

These teachings explain that we should take the Middle-way path between the extreme of externalism in which we believe that everything in our samsaric world is solid and real and the extreme of nihilism in which we believe that everything is “empty” and therefore whatever karmic actions we take whether positive or negative have no consequences.

This third turning is the basis for many Buddhist practices particularly the Shentong view of practice. In this view phenomena is indeed insubstantial or empty, but there is luminous clarity closely associated with buddha-nature that is not a voidness and is always present in sentient beings.

These nine teachings by Thrangu Rinpoche, a well-recognized meditation master and scholar, are presented exactly as they were taught at Thrangu Rinpoche’s in Crestone in 2010 with Dave Karma Choephel translating.

This set of 12 teachings on VIDEO each about an hour long and has Thrangu Rinpoche's teachings in Tibetan, a translator translating and questions and answers from the audiance.

It is available free at http://youtube.com/NamoBuddhaPublications.

Please comment on the video on YouTube so we can put more videos on.