ABSTRACT
Padmasambhava (T: Padma-’byun-gnas, also known as Guru Rinpoche [Precious Guru] and Padmakara) is one of the most renowned and revered figures in the religious history of Tibet: one of his many honorific titles is no less than ‘Second Buddha’, and it is party as a result of his influence that Tantric Buddhism took so firm a hold in that country. He is said to have founded the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet (bSam-yas), and his followers formed a school of Buddhism which has endured to the present, the rNying ma pa (the Old Ones), more popularly called the Red Hats. The members of this school hold that Padmasambhava and other masters buried sacred texts in secret locations, these buried texts (T: gter-ma) to be found by ‘takers-out of the treasures’ (T: gter-ston, pron. ter-ton) when they are needed to help the world towards enlightenment. (A taker-out is always a person of the highest spiritual attainments, and never more than one incarnates at a given time.) Again, the rNying ma pa have preserved the doctrine of the bardo , i.e. the experience a person undergoes between death and the next reincarnation. The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Bardo Thodol), on which Padmasambhava wrote a commentary, contains a detailed description of the experiences of the individual on the bardo plane. In the present context, however, the principal concern will be the Mahayanist metaphysics and associated yogas set out in Padmasambhava's work The Yoga of Knowing the Mind, called Self- Liberation, a subsection of the work The Profound Doctrine of Self- Liberation by Meditation Upon the Peaceful and Wrathful Deities (T: Zab chos zhi khro dgongs pa rang grol), together with recommendations for practice set out in certain gter-ma texts. 1
