The Path of Compassion: A Biography of Hor shul Khenpo Gelek Palsang Rinpoche — Part One: An Introduction to the Lineage of the Nyingma Tradition — The Three Inner Yogas of the Old Translations

Especially worthy of mention are the three yogas of inner tantra among the Old Translations. They are the intent of the buddhas of the three times and the core of the Vajrayana, profound and vast as the ocean. These most secret teachings, which were not spread widely even in India, were retrieved by the great master Padmasambhava, Vairotsana, and other accomplished masters from the secret treasuries of human and nonhuman ḍākinīs in Nepal, Kashmir, Zhuxia, Zhuoding, and other lands, in order to benefit the beings of the Land of Snows.

In Tibet alone, numerous accomplished practitioners appeared. Famous among them were the twenty-five king and subjects of Chimphu, the eighty accomplished masters of Yerpa, the one hundred meditators of Chuwori, the thirty mantra practitioners of Drayang Dzong, the fifty-five adepts of Sheldrak, and the twenty-five ḍākinīs throughout the regions who attained rainbow body. Their three doors were pure, and they possessed bodhicitta according to both ultimate and conventional truth. They attained the corresponding states of the generation and completion stages; directly beheld and were accepted by their yidam deities; gained common accomplishments such as moving unobstructedly through sky, water, stone, and mountains and extending their lives according to their wishes; and, after passing through the four stages of the paths that must be traversed from learning to no-more-learning, displayed uncommon accomplishments such as attaining the fruition of the purified body of the great transference and ascending directly in their physical bodies to the ḍākinī realms. Such accomplished masters existed in the past, exist in the present, and will continue to exist in the future. This has become an undisputed common understanding.