The two cycles from the Northern Treasures catalogued in the list below are the rDzogs chen kun bzang dgongs pa zang thal and the Thugs sgrub kyi rtsa ba gsang ba rin po che’i ‘dus pa, both discovered by Rig ‘dzin rGod ldem (1337–1408). The reproduction of the texts is based on “an ancient manuscript from the monastery of Gsang-sngags-chog-gling in Spiti, H.P.” In other words, what has been published in this collection in three volumes is a handwritten copy in dbu med based on the original manuscripts.
There is one single volume, in manuscript form, of works attributed to mNga’ ris paṇ chen Padma dbang rgyal (1487-1542), collated under the reference “Potala number 01272” and kept in the Potala Library. This volume contains only eleven individual texts which merely give an incomplete picture of the numerous works authored and revealed by Padma dbang rgyal. These eleven texts are:
Stūpa in Dorje Drak Monastery, Shimla, India (photo by S. Arguillère, December 2022)
In Rigdzin Gödem’s biographies, it appears that his father, Lopön Düdül (sLob dpon bDud ’dul, or Sidüdül–Srid bdud ’dul), was a practitioner of the Yang ti bram ze. What do we know about this little-known cycle of Dzogchen tantras?
There are clearly none extant practice instruction manuals (khrid yig), let alone masters who would know the practice in concrete terms. I could not even find a precise list of the tantras of this class. After a discussion with Jean-Luc Achard, I understood that we were indeed in such a total vagueness that his own efforts produced only a tentative list of these tantras by starting from the idea that the Yang ti was subdivided into two–Yang ti nag po and Yang ti bram ze. The Yang ti nag po being a living tradition, its tantras are well known (or at least, there is no ambiguity as to their list). It would therefore be possible to reconstitute the list of tantras of the Yang ti bram ze by eliminating the tantras of the Yang ti nag po from the whole of the tantras of the Yang ti (assuming that there are indeed only these two classes–which is not self-obvious, as, sometimes, one also finds mention of the Yang ti sangs rgyas mnyam sbyor, to which a cycle revealed by Guru Chöwang (Gu ru Chos dbang) belongs).