Keith Dowman
Author of Sky Dancer: The Secret Life & Songs of the Lady Yeshe Tsogyel
About the Author
Keith Dowman has received lay ordination in the Nyingma school of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition in the lineage of Dudjom Rinpoche Jigdral Yeshe Dorje and Kanjur Rinpoche Longchen Yeshe Dorje. He is the translator of Natural Perfection, The Flight of the Garuda, and Sky Dancer among others. He show more lives in Kathmandu, Nepal. show less
Series
Works by Keith Dowman
The Flight of the Garuda: The Dzogchen Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism (1994) — Composer — 146 copies, 2 reviews
Buddhist Masters of Enchantment: The Lives and Legends of the Mahasiddhas (1988) — Translator — 69 copies, 1 review
Power Places of Kathmandu: Hindu and Buddhist Holy Sites in the Sacred Valley of Nepal (1995) — Author — 23 copies
Spaciousness: The Radical Dzogchen of the Vajra-Heart (Longchenpa's Treasury of the Dharmadhatu) (2013) 16 copies
Associated Works
Legend of the Great Stupa: Two Termas from the Nyingma Tradition (1973) — Translator, some editions — 70 copies
Eye of the Storm: Vairotsana's Five Original Transmissions (2006) — Translator, some editions — 18 copies
Legends of the Mahasiddhas: Lives of the Tantric Masters (2014) — Translator, some editions — 13 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1945
- Gender
- male
- Nationality
- UK
- Places of residence
- UK
India
Nepal - Education
- Queen's College, Sanscrit University, Varanasi, Indai
- Occupations
- Dzogchen teacher
translator
Members
Reviews
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Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 39
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 780
- Popularity
- #32,630
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 6
- ISBNs
- 58
- Languages
- 8
- Favorited
- 2
The translation was made for the benefit of students who have received transmission and oral instructions from a teacher and need clarification and elucidation from an authoritative literary source. It is meant for yogins and yoginis, adepts and practitioners.
It may not be finally authoritative, but grounded in the wisdom of the old Dzogchen lamas who were wise before they came out of Tibet, as the fruit of a lifetime’s listening, studying and contemplation it may be of some use to people who are committed to the Dzogchen yogi ethos. The urban yogis who have no connection with the traditional teaching may also appreciate access to its precepts. Most significantly, in my mind, this translation stresses the nondual aspect of Dzogchen, the radical aspect that is overlooked by conventional Buddhist Vajrayanists.
The translation attempts, wherever possible, to clarify instruction, resolve ambiguities, and turn abstruse Tibetan nuance and allusion into comprehensible English prose. Sometimes that is not possible because of an absence of English equivalents of Tibetan terms or metaphors, sometimes because of the density or obscurity of the Tibetan meaning, sometimes because an arbitrary meaning has been lost in the recent attenuation of the tradition. Certainly, this translation does not purport to reproduce the high literary quality and form of Jigme Lingpa’s Tibetan prose – which is inimitable. Nor is it a literal translation where every word is accounted for and every instance of a particular word translated by the same English equivalent.
Rigzin Jigme Lingpa, the eighteenth-century mystic-scholar who composed the Longchen Nyingthig was an incarnation of Longchenpa in the most significant sense of the expression and his Longchen Nyingtik became the seed, root and branch of a Dzogchen revival that reverberates around the entire world at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Contents
Introduction i-iv
The Yeshe Lama
Prologue 1
Part One
Chapter One: Basic Training 9
Chapter Two: Fruition in Breakthrough Nonmeditation 27
Chapter Three: Fruition in Leap-over Methods 41
Part Two
Chapter Four: The Four Bardos 101
Part Three
Chapter Five: The Fields of Natural Emanation 147
Appendixes
1. Structure of the Tibetan Text 153
2. Texts Cited 157
3. The Twelve Vajra Laughs 162
4. The Vase-Body 164
5. The Ground, Path and Fruit 167
6. List of Similes 169
Glossary 177
English – Tibetan Concordance 188
Sanskrit-English Concordance 191
Bibliography 194
Index 197… (more)