Songs of Experience – These newly translated teachings on meditation were given by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Tibet, before he was 19. These meditation teachings are very personal words of advice, given directly by the teacher to the student, known as pith instructions. This tried and true method of transmission is to wake up the student to their own experience—as it is, on the spot.

Songs of Experience is a collection of three texts that are a small yet profound part of the Collected Tibetan Works of Chögyam Trungpa, a corpus of 175 surviving texts that he wrote in Tibet before his daring escape in 1959.

Years later, Chögyam Trungpa’s nephew, Surmang Rinpoche, spent nearly 20 years seeking out, gathering, and receiving instructions on these from over 90 of Chögyam Trungpa’s direct students in Tibet. In 2001, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche made his first journey to Tibet. There he met his cousin, Surmang Rinpoche, who gave him an edition of many of these texts at the Dorje Khyung Dzong retreat center of Surmang Dütsi Tel.

Since that time, the Nalanda Translation Committee has been working with Surmang Rinpoche to translate, transmit, and publish these teachings. In our recent work with him, we have begun to focus on 100 shorter texts for the public, which do not require special authorization from a teacher to receive them.

Songs of Experience is our first offering of three of these shorter works of Chögyam Trungpa. The book contains the original Tibetan, English translation, and commentaries from Surmang Rinpoche on these texts. We plan to continue publishing small collections of these texts in order to make them more readily available to a wider audience.