Padmasambhava, the 8th-century master credited with bringing Buddhism to Tibet, the second Buddha, tamer of local gods.
Documented
The historical kernel
Padmasambhava, invited by King Trisong Detsen, helped found Samye monastery (c. 779 CE), Tibet's first. The Nyingma school reveres him as second Buddha; terma, hidden treasure texts, are attributed to his concealment for later discovery. Historical details are thin; the hagiography is a library.
Assessment: Documented: Samye's founding and the terma tradition; the lotus birth and demon-binding are tradition, filed as such.
Stories
The lotus-born wonder-worker
The legendary career: born from a lotus, flying tiger mounts, subduing gods across the Himalayas. Tibetan practice treats these as literal, symbolic, or both, depending on the teacher, the text, and the audience.
Assessment: Stories: the hagiographies are real texts; the flight schedule is faith.
Interesting claims
The conversion technology
The mechanism worth studying: rather than erasing local religion, Padmasambhava's myth absorbs it, native deities reemployed as oath-bound guardians. It is history's most successful spiritual acquisition strategy, and every later missionary either copied it or failed against it.
Assessment: Interesting: the pattern, conversion by employment, is documented across Buddhist expansion.
Sources and further reading
Samye monastery founding records, c. 779 CE, Tibetan histories
Nyingma tradition terma literature
Matthew Kapstein, The Tibetan Assimilation of Buddhism (2000)