Notes

These notes serve three purposes. First, wherever we found what we felt were misspellings or ambiguous readings, we brought them to the attention of one or more of the scholars consulted on this translation. We then rendered these words in the way we thought best reflected the intended meaning and identified our decisions in the notes. Second, Longchen Rabjam quotes from traditional sources to support his arguments. In particular; he cites extensively many of the seventeen tantras that comprise the scriptural basis for the Category of Direct Transmission in the Great Perfection approach. Occasionally, the version of a passage that he cites differs from the text of the source currently available to us. Although the original source and Longchcn Rabjam’s citation are both clear and meaningful, we chose the version that seemed more pertinent to the context. Again, we identified such choices in the notes. We referenced the edition of these tantras that was printed at Adzom Chogar in eastern Tibet. We wish to acknowledge the enormous benefit we derived from the work of Mr. James who had previously transcribed the texts of these tantras in the Wylie system of transliteration, making our search for such variant passages much easier. Third, there are a number of places where Longchen Rabjam's source verses differ from his citation of those verses in the commentary. Once again, we chose the version we thought best reflected the intended meaning and identified our choice in the notes. In some instances, we changed the commentary citation so that it was consistent with the source verse version; in others, we changed the source verses to match the commentary citation. In the latter case, we also changed the Tibetan text, and so in these places it differs from the source verse text that appears in the Adzom Chogar edition.