Blazing Splendor

“In Blazing Splendor, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most recent great masters, offers an intimate and in-depth history of Tibetan Buddhism through his own eyes. His firsthand accounts create a compelling narrative, spanning from the arrival of Buddhism in Tibet to the Cultural Revolution and beyond, providing rare insight into the personalities and stories of the lineage holders preceding him. This new edition also includes beautiful photos and imagery to further illustrate his story.”–Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Life“Reading Blazing Splendor, I am transported back to my childhood at Nagi Gompa, where my father, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, shared these captivating stories of our family lineage and the remarkable beings that traversed his extraordinary life. The way these stories emanated from him speaks to the very essence of Dzogchen–heart wide open, ordinary and natural with a clarity unobstructed by details of place and time. As a child, I had no idea of the incredible impact and inspiration these living stories would have on my own life and the potential they could set alight in others. These profound teachings, hidden in plain sight, and offered with such warm-hearted generosity, make clear his unceasing devotion to his own teachers, and radiate the wisdom of the nine yanas.”–Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920-96) is recognized as one of the greatest twentieth-century masters of Tibetan Buddhism and one of the first to bring the essential teachings of Buddhism beyond Tibet. Born into an illustrious family, he took as the core of his own practice the indivisibility of the three great traditions: the Dzogchen view of primordial purity and perfection, the Mahamudra view of mental nondoing, and the Middle Way view of holding no mental constructs. After fleeing Tibet shortly before the Dalai Lama, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche devoted the rest of his life to trying to keep the spirit of the classical Tibetan spiritual system alive. Blazing Splendor is a translation of the name he was given by the head of the Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism, the name referring to the qualities of a realized master. He was a teacher without peer, who transformed the lives of those who came to him from the world over, among them Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Tara Bennett-Goleman, and Lama Surya Das.

Marcia Binder Schmidt, who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, and the U.S., was a long-time, close attendant to Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Previous publications include the compilation Dzogchen Essentials, a comprehensive and accessible collection of essential Dzogchen instructions that combine study and practice.

Erik Pema Kunsang, who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, is one of the world’s most gifted English interpreters of Tibetan. Since first traveling to Nepal from his native Denmark at the age of twenty, he has studied with and translated for more than sixty Tibetan masters. He is the compiler of a 3,000-page Tibetan dictionary of spiritual terms, “The Rangjung Yeshe Tibetan-English Dictionary of Buddhist Culture.”

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