Part Three: Commentarial Material on The Heart Essence of Vimalamitra and The Innermost Essence of the Master

The Heart Essence Mother and Child is a composition of Jamgön Kongtrul himself. It sets out the path of practice related to The Heart Essence of Vimalamitra in conjunction with Longchenpa’s Innermost Essence of the Master, which are respectively the mother and child texts. It explains how this path was practiced in the tradition of Minling Terdak Lingpa and is based on the commentary The Excellent Path of Great Bliss composed by Terdak Lingpa’s daughter, the celebrated Mingyur Paldrön. The text also contains short explanations of how this path was practiced in the traditions of the third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje and Rikdzin Tsewang Norbu of Katok. A contemporary of Longchenpa, Rangjung Dorje received the transmission of the Heart Essence directly from Kumaradza himself.

The main part of The Heart Essence Mother and Child covers the whole range of preliminary practices: the usual preliminaries for tantric practice and the special preliminaries for the Great Perfection, briefly expounded in The Heart Essence of Vimalamitra itself and expanded by Kongtrul’s explanations. It should be noted that, in this context, even tantric practice is regarded as a preliminary to the Heart Essence. The text continues with detailed instructions on trekchö and tögal. After an explanation of the bardo and the yogas related to it, the text concludes with an exposition of the resultant state of buddhahood.

In brief, this extraordinary work constitutes a comprehensive guide for the practice of the Great Perfection. The translation was greatly facilitated by notes taken from oral explanations given by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche in France in the early 1980s.