Dzogchen Primer * Dzogchen Essentials * Quintessential Dzogchen

Quintessential Dzogchen: Confusion Dawns as Wisdom

Quintessential Dzogchen elucidates how our confusion can dawn as wisdom. Arranged for the simple practitioner, these 42 pithy instructions, by some of the greatest masters, both past and present, as well as excerpts from the most profound scriptures, strike the heart of the Buddha’s teachings by explaining how to both acknowledge and train in your own enlightened essence.Marcia Binder Schmidt has been an editor and publisher of books on Vajrayana Buddhism for over fifteen years. With her husband, author and translator Erik Pema Kunsang, she founded and currently runs Rangjung Yeshe Publications, an independent publisher of Buddhist texts in English.

Table of Contents

 Dzogchen is a pragmatic method for getting in touch with the pure, clear awareness that is hidden under our constant flow of anxious thoughts. Quintessential Dzogchen makes available the methods to meet and utilize this rich spiritual path.
Quintessential Dzogchen includes a useful editor’s preface and, an introductory teaching by the leading meditation Master, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche as well as classical and original pieces that impart crucial explanations. Not merely for the scholar, this is a hands-on work.
For centuries Dzogchen has been a secretly held and privately transmitted teaching, which was unknown beyond the confines of Tibetan culture. But that changed in the final decades of the last century, as many Tibetans saw the long-awaited unfolding of a famous ninth-century prophecy: “When the Dark Age is rampant, the Dzogchen teachings will blaze like wildfire.”
Quintessential Dzogchen offers a joyful way to access the traditional and profound principles of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a guidebook on how to study, contemplate and meditate in a supportive and abundant environment of rich material and practices. Here is a definitive, knowledgeable map for where practitioners of this path are going and how to get there. It includes the basics for proper understanding and practice -- a source anyone on this path can turn to for guidance.
Quintessential Dzogchen combines study and practice in a program that is easy to do and comprehend. It is based on the distinctive style of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, widely known for his unique directness in introducing students to the nature of mind in a way that allows immediate experience. It draws on the teachings of some of the greatest masters of Dzogchen and is replete with pieces that are simple, direct and profound. It offers a way to acquire the correct ‘grounding’, as well as the confidence that we can become enlightened.
Both teachers and students alike can use Quintessential Dzogchen. Teachers can use it as virtual textbook for their students. Students will be able to find, in a single source, a complete outline of the advanced path as well as in-depth explanations of each part of that path, along with ways to apply these teachings to their own practice. The book adapts the presentation of the Dzogchen path for the modern student, while using traditional principles; among key topics are non-conceptual meditation and recognizing mind nature.