Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche’s training and activity unfolded at the meeting point of Nyingma Dzogchen and Kagyü Mahāmudrā, and the key texts he relied upon reflect this convergence. Within Dzogchen, he drew especially on the Longchen Nyingthig cycle, including works such as Kunzang Lamé Shyalung and Yeshe Lama, as well as other core Longchen Nyingthig instructions. These belong to the pith-instruction (men-ngak) stream of Dzogchen, emphasizing direct recognition of the nature of mind through the Mind, Space, and Instruction Series. In this context, the famous Six Vajra Verses of Garab Dorje also served as a concise touchstone for the essential view. His Dzogchen teaching consistently revolved around the experiential axes of trekchö, cutting through to primordial purity, and tögal, the direct crossing of visionary practice.

Alongside these, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche was a principal holder of the Chokling Tersar, the “New Treasures” of Chokgyur Dechen Lingpa, and much of his activity centered on these revealed cycles. This included extensive Guru Padmasambhava practice—outer, inner, secret, and innermost secret guru sādhana—together with related cycles such as Barche Lamsel and other Guru Rinpoche practices. From the same treasure tradition came numerous yidam and protector practices, including those of Avalokiteśvara, Tārā, Vajrasattva, and Vajrakīlaya. These terma cycles also contain rich bardo instructions and detailed frameworks for preliminary practices (ngöndro), which he emphasized as the indispensable foundation for the higher teachings.

From the Kagyü side, his grounding in Mahāmudrā was equally important, especially through the Karma Kagyü and Drukpa Kagyü streams. Here the focus was less on elaborate textual exegesis and more on oral pointing-out instructions that reveal the empty, luminous nature of mind. Classical Mahāmudrā themes—non-distraction, non-fabrication, and resting naturally—permeated his guidance, and he presented them in a way that harmonized seamlessly with Dzogchen’s own language of primordial purity and spontaneous presence. In both lineages, the fourfold schema of view, meditation, conduct, and fruition provided a doctrinal backbone for practice.

The living heart of all these transmissions, however, lay in his direct “pointing-out” of the nature of mind, which he regarded as the quintessence of both Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā. Many of these teachings have been preserved in his published talks, especially in As It Is (two volumes) and Rainbow Painting, where the distilled essence of the Longchen Nyingthig, Chokling Tersar, and Kagyü Mahāmudrā streams is presented in a remarkably simple yet uncompromising form. Rather than treating these texts and cycles as separate compartments, he used them as complementary doorways, all converging on the same immediate recognition of awareness. In this way, his study and teaching of key scriptures became a single, integrated path aimed at revealing what is already present within the mind itself.