Guru Pema is Padmasambhava, the wandering tantric yogin from Orgyen who became Tibet�s Great Guru. To his disciples he was the Lotus Born and, later, to his followers, he became Guru Rimpoche, the precious guru-buddha who resides in our heart center. Identical to the nature of mind, he emanates tulkus to demonstrate Dzogchen, the Great Perfection. In this ground-breaking work Keith Dowman brings the guru-myths and the means of invoking Guru Pema together with an analysis provides immediate contemporary meaning. Some readers will consider the mythic truths revealed in the lives of Guru Rimpoche described in the Zanglingma, a treasure-text of Nyangrel Nyima Wozer, as the core of the book. Others will look at The Seven Line Prayer as the essence because Mipham Namgyel�s commentary provides the secret means to personal attainment of union with Guru Rimpoche. In a similar way that Mipham elucidates the hidden meanings of The Seven Line Prayer, exposing the treasures that have lain hidden in a common prayer that everyone knows and hitherto has taken at face value, so the extensive introduction written in Keith Dowman�s inimitable style and perspective, brings Padmasambhava into the twenty-first century and actually verbalizes what we have hitherto only surmized. The guru-myths are presented as code describing the manner in which Guru Pema�s enlightenment works for us and how his activity works for the sake of others. The stories of the Guru�s life are thus paradigmatic, exemplary models, to be emulated by his yogin-followers and a source of inspiration and faith for his devotees. At the same time the narrative of the Zanglingma describes the events in Padmasambhava�s life that comprise the early history of Buddhist Tibet but this is secondary to the main theme � an exposition of Dzogchen vision, meditation and action. The book is illustrated by reproductions of the Eighth Khamtrul Rinpoche�s exceptional blockprints of the �Eight Names of the Guru�, extensive appendixes provide historical background, and glossaries and an annotated index serves instead of notes.

Keith Dowman is a translator and teacher of Dzogchen. A student of the great Dzogchen lamas Dudjom Rinpoche and Kanjur Rinpoche, he lived in Banares, India, and Kathmandu, Nepal for 50 years. His translations include Longchenpa�s Natural Perfection, Spaciousness and Maya-Yoga. A cultural refugee from his native England, travelling overland Keith Dowman arrived in Banares, India, in 1966. Apart from an occasional foray back to the West, he has spent a lifetime in India and Nepal, not always in Tibetan refugee society, engaged in existential buddha dharma. He has lived as a yogin, monk, pilgrim, and then as a householder, and as a scholar and poet free from any institutional or political constriction. He now teaches Dzogchen, the quintessence of buddha-dharma, throughout the world. In India, in the �sixties, he was fortunate enough to encounter the grandfather-lama refugees arriving in India in the wake of the Chinese invasion of Tibet. In those heady years when the old lamas were totally receptive to the solicitation of western disciples seeking confirmation of the validity of their existential trajectories, he received initiation, empowerment, pith instruction and personal guidance from Dudjom Rinpoche Jigdral Yeshe Dorje and Kanjur Rinpoche Longchen Yeshe Dorje, who became his root gurus, Many other Nyingma lamas and lamas of other schools, notably the Eighth Khamtrul Rimpoche and the Sixteenth Karmapa Rikpai Dorje. As Chogyal Namkhai Norbu remarked "In communion with many great masters [Keith Dowman] has fortuitously absorbed the realization of Dzogchen." In the �eighties he translated various Vajrayana texts and when Tibet opened three years of seasonal trekking in central Tibet resulted in a pilgrims� guide to Tibet. More recently, he has concentrated exclusively on the translation of Dzogchen texts, in particular, Natural Perfection and Spaciousness, two of the Treasuries of Longchenpa. Likewise, although he has taught Vajrayana since 1992, more recently he has focused entirely on Dzogchen. He lives a peripatetic lifestyle teaching the radical Dzogchen derived from the early Nyingma tantras that is free of the tendency toward the spiritual materialism so evident in western Buddhism, a dharma easily assimilable into Western culture.