Karma Chagme (1613–1678) was a scholar and meditation master, versed in both the Nyingma and Karma Kagyu traditions. While in a thirteen-year retreat, he recognized and enthroned Migyur Dorje, the great tertön, when Migyur Dorje was ten years old. Karma Chagme offered the child profound empowerments and teachings, and while they were in retreat together, he wrote down the Namchö cycle of teachings, as they were revealed and dictated to him by Migyur Dorje, comprising thirteen volumes.

B. ALAN WALLACE has authored, translated, edited, and contributed to more than forty books on Tibetan Buddhism and culture, as well as on the interface between science and religion, and he has spent many years in solitary meditation retreat. Having trained for many years as a Buddhist monk in India, Switzerland, Sri Lanka, and the United States, he then earned a BA in physics and the philosophy of science and later a PhD in religious studies. After teaching in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he founded the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies and more recently the Center for Contemplative Research.