Garab Dorje, The Original Tulku
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In the Land of Uddiyana, on the island Dhanakosha, was a great temple called the Blissful Tower, Deje Tsekpa, surrounded by 6800 shrines. In this tower lived King Upa Raja and his consort Queen Radiance. Their daughter, Sudharma, had taken novice vows and soon after the full Bhiksuni ordination, and she lived on a small island with her maidens in meditation. One night she dreamed that an immaculate white man came to her holding a crystal vessel sealed with the mantra OM AH HUNG SVAHA, and he placed it on her head three times and light shone out from it and she perceived the threefold world clearly in its totality. Soon after the Bhiksuni Sudharma gave birth to a son, but ashamed that the baby had no father, she sought to conceal it and threw it into a pit of ashes. Light and music emanated from the ash pit and after three days the mother retrieved the baby and the gods and spirits came with offerings to honour him. But Sudharma remained unaware that the baby's father was the Bodhisattva High Mind, Adhicitta, the emanation of Vajrasattva who had taught Dzogchen in the heavens.
When he was seven years old, the boy defeated the five hundred panditas of the royal court in debate and they gave him the name Prajnabhava, Wisdom Being, but the king called him Acharya Garab Dorje and by that name he became renowned. It was at this time that the boy recited the sutra "The Vast Spaciousness of Vajrasattva". Garab Dorje renounced his parentage and palace and journeyed to the mountains where amongst peaks inhabited by Hungry Ghosts he spent thirty-two years meditating in the residence of a Mountain God. Here he achieved realization and a rainbow body and the earth shook seven times. The world made obeisance, but the Shakta-Dakinis proclaimed that a danger to their yoga practice had arisen. When the Hindu king sent messengers to apprehend him he ascended into the sky.
At the completion of his period of renunciation and ascetic practices, Garab Dorje had comprehended both the outer and inner paths and most particularly he had apprehended the sixty-four hundred thousand Dzogchen verses. Then the Bodhisattva Vajrasattva gave him the initiation and empowerment of the Bestowal of Awareness and permission to write down the sixty-four hundred thousand Dzogchen verses and the oral tantras. They were written down by three Dakinis, some say on Mount Malaya.
Garab Dorje then journeyed to Bodhgaya to the terrible Sitavana cremation ground, where he remained for the rest of his life. He met his disciple Manjushrimitra there and taught him for seventy five years. He attained his parinirvana in a mass of light and then bestowed upon Manjushrimitra a tiny golden casket containing Dzogchen verses. The text called "The Three Incisive Precepts" (Tsiksum Nedek) was amongst those verses.