Mahāmudrā (Sanskrit; Tibetan: Chagchen, Wylie: phyag chen, contraction of Chagya Chenpo, Wylie: phyag rgya chen po) literally means "great seal" or "great symbol." It "is a multivalent term of great importance in later Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism" which "also occurs occasionally in Hindu and East Asian Buddhist esotericism."

The name refers to the way one who has realized mahāmudrā (that is, one who has succeeded in the practices of mahāmudrā) experiences reality: mudra refers to the fact that each phenomenon appears vividly, and maha refers to the fact that it is beyond concept, imagination, and projection.

Mahāmudrā is a body of teachings that represents the culmination of all the practices of the new translation schools of Tibetan Buddhism, who believe it to be the quintessential message of all of their sacred texts.

The usage and meaning of the term mahāmudrā evolved over the course of hundreds of years of Indian and Tibetan history, and as a result, the term may refer variously to "a ritual hand-gesture, one of a sequence of 'seals' in Tantric practice, the nature of reality as emptiness, a meditation procedure focusing on the nature of mind, an innate blissful gnosis cognizing emptiness nondually, or the supreme attainment of buddhahood at the culmination of the Tantric path."

Lama Ole Nydahl (born March 19, 1941) is a Danish Lama in the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism under guidance of Trinley Thaye Dorje. Since the early 1970s, Nydahl has toured the world giving lectures and meditation courses. With his wife, Hannah Nydahl, he founded Diamond Way Buddhism, a worldwide lay organization of Karma Kagyu Buddhism.

Nydahl is the author of nine books in English, including The Way Things Are, Entering the Diamond Way, and Riding the Tiger.

Ole Nydahl was born in Copenhagen and grew up in Denmark. In the early 1960s, he served briefly in the Danish Army, then studied philosophy, English, and German at the University of Copenhagen, where he completed the examen philosophicum with the best possible grade. He began but did not finish a doctoral thesis on Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception. As a young man, Nydahl was involved in boxing, race car driving and also travelled overland from Denmark to Nepal several times. As described in his book "Entering the Diamond Way", his travels were financed through smuggling, for which he was once arrested and detained in Denmark.

His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche (born: 1936, east Tibet) is a Tibetan Buddhist teacher in the Drikung Kagyu lineage. He is believed to be an incarnation of Siddha Gar Chodingpa, a heart-disciple of Jigten Sumgön, founder of the Drikung Kagyu lineage in the thirteenth century, C.E. He is also believed to have incarnated as Mahasiddha Aryadeva in ancient India - the lotus-born discipe of Nagarjuna himself. He was known as Lonpo Gar, the minister of Tibetan dharma king Songsten Gampo in the seventh century CE.

Garchen Rinpoche was born in 1936 in Nangchen, Kham in eastern Tibet. When Garchen Rinpoche was seven years old he was brought to Lho Miyal Monastery after he was recognized by the former Drikung Kyabgon Zhiwe Lodro where he was instructed by Siddha Chime Dorje.

When he was 22 he was imprisoned by the Chinese for 20 years and put in a labor camp during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. During that time he met with Khenpo Munsel who became his root guru. Khenpo Munsel was a Nyingma master who taught him during the whole 20 years of his imprisonment. During that time, while enduring the labor camp hardships, Garchen Rinpoche kept on practicing in secret, according to his guru's instructions until he achieved the wisdom-mind which Khenpo Musel called "an emanation of a Bodhisattva".