Jigme Lingpa

Jigme Lingpa was born in 1730 in southern Tibet and entered a monastery as a child. He received little formal scholastic training, and later described himself as largely self-taught, learning through retreat and visionary experience.

In his twenties he undertook two long retreats. During the first, according to his own account, he received in visions the teachings of the Longchen Nyingtik, the “Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse”, as a treasure (terma) of the mind. During the second, in a cave near Samye, he had three visions of Longchenpa, who empowered him to teach them. He kept the cycle secret for some years before transmitting it.

The Longchen Nyingtik, with its preliminary practices, sādhanas and Dzogchen instructions, spread rapidly and became the most widely practised Dzogchen cycle in Tibet. Jigme Lingpa also compiled a great edition of the Nyingma tantras and wrote the Treasury of Precious Qualities. His disciples, among them the first Dodrupchen and Jigme Gyalwé Nyugu, carried his tradition to eastern Tibet, where it shaped the non-sectarian movement of the following century. He died in 1798.

Jigme Lingpa wrote in a lively, personal voice, and his autobiographies and songs are among the most vivid in Tibetan literature. Patrul Rinpoche’s Words of My Perfect Teacher, the classic guide to the preliminary practices of the Longchen Nyingtik, made his cycle the common inheritance of practitioners across Tibet.