THE SUN OF THE HEART AND THE BAI-RO-RGYUD-’BUM*

n recent years we have seen much progress in scholarship clarify-ing the historical development of the Rdzogs-chen traditions of contemplative practice. Not long ago, this topic was, to quote Chur-chill in a context he never dreamt of, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery in-side an enigma, ” but now — thanks in large measure to the initial impetus provided by the late Herbert Guenther’s interpretations of the writings of Klong-chen Rab-’byams-pa (1308-64); to the pioneering contributions on the early formation of the Rdzogs-chen of Samten G. Karmay, to whom the present work is dedicated; and to the access to traditional instruction pro-vided by some of the leading contemporary teachers of Rdzogs-chen meditation —, we face instead many particular riddles contained within a field whose general features no longer appear to be so mysterious as for-merly they did.1 One of these particular puzzles is the collection of Rdzogs-chen tantras from the library of Rtogs-ldan Rinpoche that was published in 1971 under the title The Rgyud ’Bum of Vairocana (hereinafter: Bai-ro-rgyud-’bum). As the introductory remarks accompanying that work made clear, the collection had obvious affinities with the then known edition of the Rnying-ma-rgyud-’bum, but also included many tantras not identified in the available cata-logue of ’Jigs-med-gling-pa (1730-1798).2 Questions surrounding the origi-* The present essay was first presented to the International Association of Tibetan Studies meeting at Indiana University (Bloomington) in 1998. It is a pleasure to make it avail-able in the present collection honoring a friend of many years, Samten G. Karmay, whose work has done so much to open the present subject-matter for scholarly investi-gation