Wellsprings of the Great Perfection

About Erik Pema Kunsang

Erik Pema Kunsang, also known as Erik Hein Schmidt, is one of the world’s best known and most accomplished translators of Buddhist literature from Tibet. Traveling to Nepal from his native Denmark at twenty years old, he has studied with or translated for more than sixty Tibetan masters. He is the compiler of a voluminous 3,000-page Tibetan dictionary for spiritual terms (The Rangjung Yeshe Tibetan-English Dictionary of Buddhist Culture), used by other Tibetan translators as an authoritative reference. He was the main interpreter of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche for seventeen years, living in Tulku Urgyen's monasteries and translated forty-six books of scripture and sacred writings. His books include: As It Is, Mirror of Mindfulness, Blazing Splendor, Wellsprings of the Great Perfection and Juniper Ridge. Other projects include translating over fifty volumes of Tibetan texts and teachings, and creating the Dharma Dictionary, an electronic dictionary of Tibetan and English terms. He currently lives and teaches at Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, a Buddhist retreat center in Denmark. Together with Marcia Binder Schmidt, he founded Rangjung Yeshe Publications, an independent publisher of Vajrayana Buddhist texts in English.

Praise

"The ultimate origin and absolute teachings of Dzogchen inscribed in this most sacred text and whispered by the greatest adepts of its lineage are finally available in this volume. Every serious student of Dzogchen must study and enshrine it in their heart."
—Tulku Thondup, author of The Healing Power of Mind

"The revelations and other authentic narrations in Wellsprings are translated into the English language by Erik Pema Kunsang...whose flowers of experience and realization are blooming. On this endeavor I repeatedly throw flowers of praise and honor.... The Dzogchen teachings of the Greatest Secret, also known as the Great Perfection, are the words of the compassionate Buddha, and among the causal and resultant vehicles, they are of the type that employ the fruition as the path. Wellsprings of the Great Perfection describes the origin, and gives both short and detailed historical accounts and teachings. I see a profound importance in studying, reflecting upon and practicing the authentic statements and explanations of the Dzogchen lineage masters—especially for people who aspire to realize the Great Perfection—the Thorough Cut of primordial purity, the view of Trekchö. I therefore request readers to keep these scriptures in the center of their hearts.”
—Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, author of Present Fresh Wakefulness