This is the first year of teachings on the text “Creation and Completion: Essential Points of Tantric Meditation” by Jamgon Kongtrul the Great (1813 – 99). The small book includes some of the most profound teachings on all Vajrayana practices.
Rinpoche uses the English translation by Sarah Harding, the commentary (at that time not translated) is by one of the main students of Jamgon Kontrul, Shechen Gyaltsab Pema Namgyal, who was the main teacher of Jamgon Kongtrul of Shechen and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
Rinpoche emphasizes that Vajrayana includes all Buddhist practices. First there are the Shravakayana teachings of the Hinayana, the basic teachings of Buddhism and very important. The Mahayana teachings accept the Shravakayana and Hinayana as foundation and then go deeper into the bodhisattva practices, therefore it is sometimes referred to as the Bodhisattvayana. The Vajrayana accepts both these two, they accept all the Mahayana teachings as their foundation, one cannot practice Vajrayana without the Mahayana.
On top of that, Vajrayana has certain techniques, certain understandings like the Buddha nature, how to be introduced to Buddha nature in our daily life. Therefore Vajrayana is not separate from the Mahayana or Shravakayana, when going into the practices and particular teachings of the Vajrayan, like the Creation stage and the Completion stage, this has to be understood as an addition, as particular methods.
Some quotes from these teachings (edited) about Creation and Completion:
In the actual practices there are two things, one is the visualisation part, it is called Creation and then the Completion is the dissolution part. The Creation part are the different kinds of methods of working on your mind, and the Completion is the real kind of understanding or insight into the nature of your mind. So in Creation you have all the visualisations, all the mantras, all the other different kinds of methods.
Without the completion stage, the creation stage is not complete and it does not work. But usually when you go through a sadhana text, most of it is on the Creation stage, how to visualise things, how to make offerings and all different kinds of mantras and how to do the visualisations of all those things. The Completion stage is maybe one line or two lines or maybe half a line. That is not to say that the completion stage is not important, but that the completion stage has to be learnt besides this particular text, it is a general thing. The completion stage practice is the main thing that we learn.
The teachings in Dublin were continued in 1998.
There exists an unedited transcript, Rinpoche had the idea to make it into a book at some point.