The Four-Themed Precious Garland

To realize the beginningless purity and perfection of all reality as an indivisible unity of Voidness and appearance is to realize Dzog-Ch’en, the Great Completeness. The lineage of this Mahayana system of meditation traces from Shakyamuni Buddha and was taken from India to Tibet by such masters as guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra. It has been transmitted mainly through the Nying-ma Tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and its oral teachings preserved unbroken until the present day. This text by Long-ch’en Ram-jam-pa (1303-1363), one of the greatest codifiers of the Dzog-Ch’en teachings as witnessed by his trilogy Kindly Bent to Ease Us, is an exposition on the “Four Themes of Gam-popa,” the author of The Jewel Ornament of Liberation. It includes a survey of the nine vehicles to Enlightenment as traveled progressively through the sutra, tantra and Dzog-ch’en modes of approach, as well as a description of the goal. This it does primarily by expounding the techniques utilized at each of these stages for removing confusion about the abiding nature of reality. The commentary of this text was provided orally by His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche, the present head of the Nying-ma Tradition, and supplemented by Beru Khyentze Rinpoche.