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Karmapa

Tulku lineage of the Tibetan Buddhist Karma Kagyu

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Their honorific titles include His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa (རྒྱལ་བ་, lit. 'Victorious One', and more formally as Gyalwang (རྒྱལ་དབང་ཀརྨ་པ་, lit. 'King of Victorious Ones') The Karmapa is the head of the Karma Kagyu, the largest sub-school of the Kagyu school (བཀའ་བརྒྱུད bka' brgyud), itself one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

The main seat of the four Tibetan seats of the Karmapas is the Tsurphu Monastery in U-Tsang, along the Tolung valley of central Tibet. The Karmapa's seat built during the Tibetan diaspora is the Dharma Chakra Centre at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India. The international monastic seats are Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in New York and Dhagpo Kagyu Ling in Dordogne, France, and in Dominica.

Born in 1985, it was a few years after the 17th Karmapa, Orgyen Trinley Dorje was located and then recognized in 1992 by the Dalai Lama, and by the Chinese Central Government, that another Karmapa was recognized by Shamar Rinpoche, Trinley Thaye Dorje. The identity of the current 17th Karmapa was resolved by the Karmapas themselves, Orgyen Trinley Dorje and Trinley Thaye Dorje, both of whom issued a joint statement on 4 December 2023.

Origin of the lineage

Düsum Khyenpa, 1st Karmapa Lama (Wylie: Dus gsum Mkhyen pa, 1110–1193), was a disciple of the Tibetan master Gampopa. A talented child who studied Buddhism with his father from an early age and who sought out great teachers in his twenties and thirties, he is said to have attained enlightenment at the age of fifty while practicing dream yoga. He was henceforth regarded by the contemporary highly respected masters Shakya Śri and Lama Shang as the Karmapa, a manifestation of Avalokiteśvara, whose coming was predicted in the Samadhiraja Sutra and the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra.

The source of the oral lineage, traditionally traced back to the Buddha Vajradhara, was transmitted to the Indian master of mahamudra and tantra called Tilopa (989–1069), through Naropa (1016–1100) to Marpa Lotsawa and Milarepa. These forefathers of the Kagyu (Bka' brGyud) lineage are collectively called the "Golden Rosary".

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