LINEAGE
Introduction to Buddhism
Welcome to Buddhism: A Journey of Awakening
Discover the ancient wisdom of Buddhism, a profound spiritual tradition founded by Shakyamuni Buddha over 2500 years ago in ancient India. Rooted in the essence of enlightenment, Buddhism is also known as "Buddha-Dharma," the teachings of the Awakened One.
Prince Siddhartha Gautama embarked on a quest for truth, exploring ascetic practices to find enlightenment. However, it was beneath the bodhi-tree that he realized the futility of his path and uncovered the profound reality of all existence. Thus, he became the "Buddha," symbolizing the awakened consciousness.
Path to Enlightenment: Unveiling Buddha's Teachings
Buddhism blossomed as Buddha shared his insights in Sarnath, India. These teachings, referred to as the "dharma," conveyed both philosophical wisdom and practical guidance for daily life. The path encompasses the "buddha-dharma," transmitting the teachings of enlightenment. It unfolds the journey towards complete liberation from the cycle of existence, samsara, by nurturing merit, wisdom, and meditation practice.
Three Yanas: Illuminating the Buddhist Way
Experience the transformative wisdom of the Three Yanas, the distinct vehicles of Buddhist teachings. The Hinayana, or basic vehicle, emphasizes individual liberation and flourished during the Buddha's early teachings. The Mahayana, the great vehicle, emerged after the millennium and spread across Asia, with luminaries like Nagarjuna shaping its path. Vajrayana, the indestructible vehicle, emerged later, allowing chosen disciples to embark on advanced practices. Join us on this profound journey of enlightenment through the ages, embracing the essence of Buddha's teachings.
MARPA KAGYU LINEAGE
From Karmapa: 900 Years, (Third edition 2016), revised and expanded under the direction of the Gyalwang Karmapa, copublished by Karmapa 900 Organizing Committee and KTD Publications.
The Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism traces its origins to Shakyamuni Buddha through Marpa the Great Translator, whom three times traveled to India to bring back authentic Buddhist teachings to Tibet. Marpa’s teacher, Naropa, received the lineage transmission from Tilopa and so on, back to the Buddha himself.
Marpa’s most famous student was the greatest yogi in all of Tibet, the renowned Jetsun Milarepa, who passed the teachings on to Gampopa, who in turn transmitted the teachings to the First Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa. Since then, the Kagyu Lineage has been headed by a succession of reincarnations of the Gyalwang Karmapa.
Driven by an intense thirst for Dharma, in the early 11th century, a young Tibetan named Marpa Chökyi Lodrö (1012-1097) journeyed overland from Tibet to India. There, he trained under a series of great Buddhist masters, foremost among whom was one of India’s most eminent mahāsiddhas, Nāropa (1012/1016-1100), an eminent scholar of Nālandā’s monastic university. Nāropa guided Marpa personally until Marpa gained full realization—an understanding that goes far beyond intellectual knowledge to permeate and transform one’s very being. Delighted with his disciple’s spiritual attainments, Nāropa authorized Marpa to transmit his lineage to Tibet. Once Marpa had made the return trip to his homeland, he deployed a variety of means to guide each of the many disciples who came seeking to train under him.
The quest for wisdom that led Marpa to India, and that had also driven the Buddha in his search for enlightenment, was not a mere love of knowledge for its own sake, but was imbued with a concern for suffering. The Buddhadharma teaches that the most basic cause of human suffering is profound ignorance, in the form of deeply held misconceptions about our own nature and the world we live in. Marpa was willing to sacrifice life and limb in search of Dharma teachings and texts, precisely because he understood that wisdom dispels suffering—his own and that of countless other beings.
Once he had received and put the Dharma into practice, the full realization of that wisdom transformed every fiber of Marpa’s being, such that he became entirely oriented towards the production of realization in all those around him. This intense concern to accomplish the welfare of others has infused the Marpa Kagyu lineage since its inception nearly a millennium ago.
Indeed, its emphasis on the attainment of realization and on the transmission of those attainments to others has earned Marpa’s Kagyu lineage the epithet, "the practice lineage."
Through the Mahāmudrā and other teachings that Marpa received from his Indian masters, and through their own personal meditative attainments, Kagyu lamas train their students to gain direct meditative experience of the luminous nature of their own minds.
The term Kagyu itself emphasizes the way that the teachings and realization Marpa brought from India continue moving forward through time, ensuring that each successive generation has access not only to the theories of Buddhism but also to the personal instructions they need to put them fully into practice. Ka refers to speech or oral instructions, and gyu means lineage or transmission. Thus Kagyu is quintessentially a lineage of instructions spoken directly by teacher to disciple.
Within this context, the personal relationship between the lama and disciple takes on central importance. Jamgön Kongtrul Lodrö Thaye, who transmitted the Karma Kagyu teachings to the Fifteenth Karmapa, identified as one of the necessary qualities of authentic spiritual masters that they do not abandon their disciples even at the cost of their own lives. Indeed, it was the Kagyu school that produced the first great being in the history of Buddhism to conceive of establishing an intentional reincarnation line as a means of caring for disciples continuously life after life. That great being was the First Karmapa, Dusum Khyenpa
Just as a mighty mountain can produce many rivers that will take different courses as they wind their way down to the same ocean, so too from Marpa the Buddhadharma flowed forth in a great abundance of transmission streams. While one stream of explanations was passed to Ngok Chöku Dorje (b. 1036), Marpa transmitted his practice lineage to Milarepa, the greatest yogi Tibet has known, and its most universally revered practitioner.
Milarepa in turn passed his lineage to his moon-like disciple Rechung Dorje Drakpa (1085-1161) and to his sun-like disciple Je Gampopa, also known as Dagpo Rinpoche (1079-1153). Je Gampopa, himself a towering mountain of spiritual realization, combined the Mahāmudrā lineage from Milarepa with the Kadampa teachings he had absorbed earlier in life. Gampopa integrated and passed these mutually reinforcing lineages to his heart disciple the First Karmapa and to other disciples, and thus emerged another great wealth of transmission streams, known as the Dagpo Kagyu.
Over time, the paths of these distinct transmission streams would cross again and again. Some Kagyu lineages merged with others in the process, enriching and enlivening one another, as masters from different Kagyu lineages continued to exchange teachings and initiations over the centuries. And just as great rivers bring life to many different fields as they course forwards to the sea, so the living Kagyu teachings flowing from Marpa continue to yield bountiful harvests in a vast number of minds and hearts around the world today.
Dzogchen Lineage
THE NYINGMA SCHOOL OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM The Nyingma school traces its origins back to the Buddha Samantabhadra, Vajrasattva, and Garab Dorje of Uddiyana. The most important source of the Nyingma order is the Indian Guru, Padmasambhava, the founder of the Nyingma Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, who came to Tibet in the eighth century C.E. More on the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism
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