In 1978, Dharma Publishing, through the inspiration of Tarthang Tulku, published The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, a translation of the Padma Ka’i Thang, a terton or ‘treasure text’ telling the life of Padmasambhava, discovered in the 14th century by Orgyen Lingpa. It is a beautiful production, in two volumes, with bright red covers and filled with full-colour images of the Greatly Precious Guru. The publication had a significant effect on Sangharakshita and the Order. Sangharakshita wrote a review of the book for the FWBO Newsletter entitled Padmasambhava Comes to the West. As well as summarising the course of the book, he also expressed important insights into the nature of Padmasambhava and some of the stories, myths, and symbols found in the book.

“Reading The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava one gets the impression not only of a vivid and powerful spiritual ‘personality’ heroically battling with the forces of evil but also of a stream of impersonal spiritual energy which is conterminous with historical Buddhism itself and which, intervening in the course of events age after age, and assuming a variety of forms, brings under control all the swirling emotional-psychic energies which at one or another level of mundane existence obstruct the liberating influence of the Dharma. This impression is heightened by the fact that Padmasambhava is actually involved in some of the most important events of Buddhist history, as well as the fact that, at various stages of his career, he is known by different names. He has, we are told, eight secret names, eight borrowed names, eight present names, twenty magic names ‘which vary at will’, and so on. One indeed gets the impression that, perhaps extrapolating from Padmasambhava’s exploits in Tibet, the text sees not only the history of Buddhism but the whole course of mundane existence in terms of a conflict between the forces of light and the forces of darkness – a conflict in which the forces of light are concerned not simply to conquer but to transmute and transform.”

Sangharakshita, FWBO Newsletter 43 and CW8, pp.524-5

FWBO Newsletter 43
Published summer 1979

So impressed was he by The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, Sangharakshita ends his review with the following inspired words —

“Reading The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava is a major imaginative and spiritual experience. This is due, principally, to the fact that ‘the poetic beauty and symbolic strength of the Tibetan original’ have been carried over from the French into the English translation, so that we can read this great work of literature in its present version not only for information but also for inspiration. Enjoyment and inspiration alike are enhanced by the reproductions of thangkas which illustrate the material within the text, as well as by the care and devotion with which Tarthang Tulku and his co-workers at Dharma Publishing have produced these two splendid volumes. Holding them in our hands, we cannot but agree with Tarthang Tulku that Padmasambhava’s teachings have now come to the West. We cannot but feel that Padmasambhava himself has now come to the West.”

Sangharakshita, FWBO Newsletter 43 and CW8, pp.524-5