Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920–96) is recognized as one of the greatest twentieth-century masters of Tibetan Buddhism and one of the first to bring the essential teachings of Buddhism beyond Tibet. Born into an illustrious family, he took as the core of his own practice the indivisibility of the three great traditions: the Dzogchen view of primordial purity and perfection, the Mahamudra view of mental nondoing, and the Middle Way view of holding no mental constructs. After fleeing Tibet shortly before the Dalai Lama, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche devoted the rest of his life to trying to keep the spirit of the classical Tibetan spiritual system alive. Blazing Splendor is a translation of the name he was given by the head of the Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhism, the name referring to the qualities of a realized master. He was a teacher without peer, who transformed the lives of those who came to him from the world over, among them Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Tara Bennett-Goleman, and Lama Surya Das.

Marcia Binder Schmidt, who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, and the U.S., was a long-time, close attendant to Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche. Previous publications include the compilation Dzogchen Essentials, a comprehensive and accessible collection of essential Dzogchen instructions that combine study and practice.

Erik Pema Kunsang, who lives in Kathmandu, Nepal, is one of the world's most gifted English interpreters of Tibetan. Since first traveling to Nepal from his native Denmark at the age of twenty, he has studied with and translated for more than sixty Tibetan masters. He is the compiler of a 3,000-page Tibetan dictionary of spiritual terms, "The Rangjung Yeshe Tibetan-English Dictionary of Buddhist Culture.”