Dudjom Lingpa (1835-1904) was one of the foremost tantric masters of nineteenth-century Tibet, and his powerful voice resonates strongly among Buddhist practitioners today. The Vajra Essence is Dudjom Lingpa's most extended meditation on the path of Great Perfection, in many senses a commentary on all his other Dzogchen works. Dzogchen, the pinnacle of practice in the Nyingma school, is a radical revelation of the pure nature of consciousness that is delivered from master to disciple and perfected in a meditation that permeates every moment of our experience.

Revealed to Dudjom Lingpa as a visionary "treasure" text in 1862, the Vajra Essence takes the reader through seven stages of progressively deeper practice, from "taking the impure mind as the path" up to the practice of "direct crossing over" (togal). The longest of Dudjom Lingpa's five visionary works on Dzogchen, readers will find this a rich and masterful evocation of the enlightened experience. This is the first translation of this seminal work in any Western language, and B. Alan Wallace, with his forty-five-plus years of extensive learning and deep meditative experience, is one of the most accomplished translators of Tibetan texts into English.

Vajra Essence: Dudjom Lingpa's Visions of the Great Perfection, Allan B. Wallace (Translator) Wisdom Publications, Paperback, 323 pp, $19.95

Dynamic lecturer, progressive scholar, and one of the most prolific writers and translators of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, B. Alan Wallace continually seeks innovative ways to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices with Western science to advance the study of the mind. A scholar and practitioner of Buddhism since 1970, Dr. Wallace has taught Buddhist theory and meditation worldwide since 1976. Having devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama, he went on to earn an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford. He is the founder and president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. He is the author of Stilling the Mind and The Attention Revolution. Wallace lives in Santa Barbara, CA."

Contents: The Vajra Essence
Foreword by Sogyal Rinpoche	ix
Preface	xxiii
Introduction	1
THE VAJRA ESSENCE	3
Introduction	5
Phase 1: Taking the impure mind as the path	15
Identifying the creator of all phenomena as the mind	15
Establishing the mind as baseless and rootless	16
How individuals with specific faculties may enter the path	19
How meditative experiences and realizations arise	21
Why we should practice meditation	17
Phase 2: Revealing your own face as the sharp vajra of vipasyana	31
The path pristine awareness, free of conceptual elaboration	31
Phase 3: Revealing the ground dharmakaya	33
Determining the identitylessness of subjective persons	33
Determining the identitylessness of objective persons	33
Coarse and suble considerations for determining emptiness	38
How all phenomena arise and appear	39
The point of realizing the emptiness of phenomena	47
Combating the faults of benefit and harm	49
Collapsing the false cave of hopes and fears	55
The ground for the arising of the appearances of all phenomena	57
The manifestation of space as primordial consciousness that is pristine awareness	60
The ground of samsara and of all delusive appearances and mindsets	67
The profound practice of the severance of Maras	85
Phase 4; Determing the characteristics and qualities of the ground	91
Emptiness as the universal foundation of all yanas	91
The nature of the kayas and facets of primordial consciousness	98
The purpose and nature of the teachings	101
How to practice the teachings	112
The synthesis and names of the great perfection	161
Phase 5: Determining secret dualistic grasping and revealing the way of natural liberation	173
The process of delusion in impure samsara	173
How to follow the path of the great perfection	175
Liberation by taking primordial consciousness, pristine awareness as the path	187
Phase 6: Teachings on the essential points of practice and their key distinctions	197
Phase 7: How to follow the path of the great clear light,
Direct crossing over	215
The path of direct crossing over to spontaneous actualization	215
The special preliminary practices	220
How to engage in the main practice	231
How the four visions gradually arise	237
The essentials of practice in the transitional phases	255
The reasons whty this tantra was revealed	274
The colophon	276
Table of fives	281
Bibliography	283
Index	285
About the translator	325