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Drikung Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism originated in the twelfth century when an unusual monk from Eastern Tibet took up residence in a small, probably ramshackle hut offered to him in the Drikung Valley. A secluded landscape tucked away to the northeast of the ancient Tibetan capital of Lhasa, this high-elevation alpine valley was named after a legendary dri (the proper name for a female yak). The Drikung Valley then and now is green and fertile in the summers with not much snow even in the coldest winters, and it is home to small, quaint villages scattered throughout, with a few bigger townships closer toward Lhasa and of course some sacred sites.

It was here that Kyobpa Jikten Sumgon (1143–1217) settled after more than fifteen years of wandering, studying, training and meditating throughout Central Tibet. His reputation as a realized master and the main successor of the famed master Pakmodrupa spread swiftly, and soon an active and large community of disciples gathered around him in this valley. During his lifetime, the valley likely saw its most densely-populated period in history—populated by the meditators and mystics, monks and magicians in the retinue of Kyobpa Rinpoche. Traditional accounts tell us that at a certain point, there were as many as 50,000 disciples from all over Tibet and her neighbors gathered in Drikung. “All the mountains were filled with Drikung meditators and all the valleys with Drikung patrons,” says one later source, referring to the time of Kyobpa Rinpoche.

As one of the luminaries of the early Kagyu lineage, Kyobpa Jikten Sumgon embodied the distinctive characteristics of the early Kagyupas: an uncompromising personal commitment to meditative practice and experience, coupled with an instructional style that emphasized direct, heartfelt advice arising from experience over the mastery of theory and of intellectual and philosophical sophistication. These early Kagyu masters taught like wise grandmothers—with a love that was as warm as it was tough, and with a directness that was as nurturing as it was no-nonsense.

Anyone interested in Tibetan Buddhism will instantly find that it consists of many different lineages and sub-lineages. However, lineages here aren’t like the different denominations in other religions—if anything, the most similar to the various monastic orders within Roman Catholicism. Some of these Tibetan lineages are formally distinct from one other, complete with their own institutions, organizational structures, leadership hierarchies and liturgical traditions, while others are merely different lines of transmissions that actually exist and overlap with the formal lineages used in the first sense. Formally, five distinct Buddhist lineages can be identified in Tibet: Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, Jonang and Geluk. Each of these is in turn a family with many branches—though some more distinct and separate than others. Thus in the Kagyu lineage there are definite distinct branches such as the Karma Kamtsang, Drukpa and Drikung, while the Sakya branches such as the Ngor and Tsar traditions are less distinct. Used in the second sense, as lines of transmissions for the different practices and textual traditions within Tibetan Buddhism, there are literally thousands of lineages. Thus, Tibetan lineages are quite dissimilar to Christian or Muslim denominations. Christian denominations are mutually exclusive of each other, whereas members of various Tibetan lineages routinely receive teachings and transmissions from one another. Whereas followers of Muslim denominations, for example, do not worship together, often leaders and members of the different Tibetan lineages engage in public and private rituals together.

Although the different lineages of Tibetan Buddhism are more similar to each other than different, nonetheless there are some general characteristics that make each of them stand out in comparison to one another. For instance, the most recently developed of the main lineages, the Geluk lineage that the Dalai Lamas hail from, is renowned for its learning, scholarship and skill in debate and logic. Nyimgmapas—literally the “ancient ones”—are recognized for their mastery of tantra and its mysterious powers. Writing about the characteristics of the Kagyu lineage, Ju Mipham—a great Nyingma polymath of the nineteenth century—wrote the following about its practitioners:

The transmission of practice has fallen to the Kagyupas,
They are masters of realization,
Persevering in meditation is most excellent among the Kagyupas.
The Kagyupas chant from the heart,
And they are like the heart of the teachings, bringing devotion into the practice.

The Kagyu lineage thus emphasizes meditative practice and experience over scholarship and learning. Devotion is the most important quality of mind to cultivate since Kagyupas insist that devotion is the immediate condition for realizing the nature of one’s mind. There is a lot of heart here. It is also fair to say that there is an overarching mistrust of intellectual speculations and doctrinal disputations, given that Kagyupas privilege diligent meditative practice and the experience that arises from practice under the guidance of masters.

This basic attitude toward what constitutes the essence of Dharma is clearly seen in the examples of lineage masters like Gampopa Sonam Rinchen (1079–1153) and the generations that followed him, including Pakmodrupa’s generation and that of Jikten Sumgon. Consider for instance, Pakmodrupa’s advice from his text Jewelled Ladder:

Persons who rely on tenets
may have achieved certainty through their own intellects
in their various diverse views,
but since they have neither understood nor realized them
through meditative-practice,
theirs are views devoid of realization.

Not just for three limitless eons,
but even for a million they may follow their procedures
But still, there is no squeezing oil from husks.
They may plow and hoe the winter ground,
but come spring there will be no result.
Those who want to go east
waste their steps going west.
People suffering from the sweltering heat
desire shade, but surely, if they go again and again
to bask by the bonfire,
they will just go on suffering from heat.

Pakmodrupa expresses this sentiment even having a reputation as a great authority on Buddhist doctrine and systematic philosophy. But his warning is precisely more powerful because it comes from someone like him who has experienced firsthand the limits of doctrinal mastery and vast knowledge, despite his fame as an accomplished Dharma scholar.

Pakmodrupa’s biography contains a memorable, life-changing moment in his first meeting with the famed Kagyu master Gampopa, in which he traveled to Daklha Gampo with the aim of defeating Gampopa in debate over what he considered Gampopa’s erroneous understanding of the precious Dharma. Gampopa was eating some tsampa (a Tibetan barley-cereal staple) when he granted an audience to Pakmodrupa. After Pakmodrupa proudly listed out his Dharma credentials—the names of his famous teachers, the complex systems of sutra and tantra he had mastered, the number of followers he had gathered, and so on—Gampopa looked up and startled Pakmodrupa with a direct and simple question: “And what bodhisattva level did your sublime teachers say you have attained with all those credentials?” Gampopa went right to the heart of the matter! “My master confirmed that I have attained the first bodhisattva level,” answered Pakmodrupa with self-satisfaction. To this, Gampopa slightly raised his hand with a piece of tsampa dough and said to Pakmodrupa, “Even this mouthful of tsampa of mine has qualities that surpass your first bodhisattva level.” Pakmodrupa was shaken to his core by Gampopa’s “lion’s roar” of a Dharma statement! Clearly, it wasn’t so much what Gampopa actually said; maybe it was how he spoke, or maybe it was what Pakmodrupa heard. We are not told why Pakmodrupa reacted so strongly, but we are told that Gampopa’s words turned Pakmodrupa the challenger into Pakmodrupa the disciple. And Pakmodrupa never looked back. Such is the way of the early Kagyu masters!

Beyond their general deemphasis of intellectual engagement and preference for such meditation practices as mahamudra and the yogic training in the six dharmas of Naropa, the early Kagyupas also did not care for the performance of elaborate public rituals. Spiritual cultivation was primarily a personal and solitary activity. Early Kagyupas did gather for occasional communal monastic rituals such as the conferment of vows and the twice-monthly “purification of vows” ritual (Tib. sojong). They also congregated to receive teachings and transmissions. Yet other than these occasional gatherings, early Kagyupas preferred solitary practice. Likewise, there was also little emphasis on popular spiritual practices such as visiting holy places or undertaking pilgrimage. Drikungpas often hear the adage that “there is more benefit accrued by flattening a single cushion seated in meditation than there is in wearing down a thousand pairs of shoes walking on pilgrimage.” The message is clear: cultivate, cultivate, cultivate. Cultivate the mind.

Throughout his life as a teacher, Kyobpa Rinpoche famously sent disciples by the thousands into long-term meditative practice in the sacred mountains of Tsari, Lapchi and Kailash and all over the Drikung region. On one occasion, when the other disciples who remained with him in Drikung resisted or made excuses for not spending more time in meditative practice—giving excuses such as the need to study more or to engage in communal rituals in the service of lay patrons—Kyobpa Rinpoche himself withdrew from all public engagements and secluded himself in a remote area in Drikung. When representatives from the Drikung leadership came to beg Kyobpa Rinpoche to return, alarmed by his self-imposed exile, he gave them a choice: he would either remain secluded away from the community and his disciples could do as they wish, or he would return and the disciples whom he directed to withdraw into retreat would do as he instructed. Given these two choices, we are told the community—thankfully—chose the latter.

Such are the ways and means of the early Kagyupa masters, especially starting even earlier in the history of the lineage with Kyobpa Rinpoche’s spiritual grandfather, Gampopa.

Although the conventional view of the origins of the Kagyu lineage identifies the eleventh-century master Marpa Chokyi Lodro as progenitor of the lineage since he brought the teachings of Naropa from India to Tibet, the Kagyu lineage as we know it gained its characteristic substance and form under Gampopa. Often, we think of Gampopa as principally a disciple of the itinerant, unconventional yogi Milarepa, who was in turn the heart-disciple of Marpa, and therefore assume that what Gampopa taught and how he taught it must be due to Milarepa’s influence—and not his own Kadampa background. This view becomes especially entrenched among later Kagyupas due to the hardening of sectarian lines and competition among lineages. But this understanding of Milarepa’s exclusive influence on Gampopa does not match available evidence. Kagyu sources closest to Gampopa’s own time show that even after realizing mahamudra through the guidance of Milarepa, Gampopa continued to see himself as a Kadampa monk, albeit one who achieved complete realization of mahamudra under the guidance of Milarepa.

While Gampopa no doubt considered Milarepa’s pith instructions and blessings to be superior to that of his Kadampa teachers, Gampopa did not “convert” away from his Kadampa foundations. Consequently, Gampopa’s Kagyu wasn’t identical to Milarepa’s Kagyu. Gampopa’s Kagyu, or Dakpo Kagyu (named after Daklha Gampo, where Gampopa taught) bears the unique imprint of Gampopa’s own background and experience.

So what can we say about Dakpo Kagyu? Briefly, we can say that Gampopa’s Kadampa training foregrounds bodhicitta among all the other aspects of Dharma. As for his training with Milarepa, it was primarily the blessings that he received from Milarepa that finally enabled Gampopa’s full realization of mahamudra—something that Gampopa’s Kadampa training alone could not engender. Gampopa needed Milarepa’s blessings. He needed Milarepa’s heart to be “transferred” to his heart. Bodhicitta training and mahamudra through devotion are thus central to Dakpo Kagyu.

In Gampopa’s Kagyu approach, bodhicitta is always related to mahamudra and mahamudra without bodhicitta makes no sense. This dual-emphasis is also prominently at the core of Kyobpa Rinpoche’s Drikung Kagyu. On top of this, his explanations for the process of actualizing bodhicitta and mahamudra often make use of the principle of dependent origination, which is another core Buddhist teaching. This is succinctly illustrated in the following quote from The Blazing Precious Vajra, the earliest biography of Kyobpa Rinpoche written by his nephew and heart-disciple Chenga Sherap Jungne (1187–1241). Here, Sherap Jungne advises his readers on how to relate to the life story of Kyobpa Rinpoche he is about to tell:

The principle of the dependent-origination of causes and effects apply equally to buddhas and sentient beings. If we emulate the example of the Dharma Lord (Jikten Sumgon) in his elimination of obstacles and application of beneficial means, then the perfect benefit for ourselves which is the direct realization of Mahamudra, and the perfect benefit for others which is bodhicitta will arise as the result. Therefore, practice this perfect way to liberation that has been modeled for you (Jikten Sumgon).

In terms of the content of Drikung Kagyu training, there is a comprehensive system of practice known as “The Fivefold Mahamudra” (Tibetan: chakchen ngaden) formalized by Pakmodrupa and widely used by Kyobpa Rinpoche in training his own students. Here, the complete path to awakening consists of:

Bodhicitta Mahamudra,
Deity’s-form Mahamudra,
Fervent devotion Mahamudra,
Natural State Mahamudra and,
Dedication Mahamudra.

When one possesses these five aspects, then there is nothing in the 84,000 practices prescribed by the Buddha that is missing. Short of even one of these five aspects, buddhahood is not possible. Within this framework of The Fivefold Mahamudra system, Drikung Kagyu retreatants also often enhance their practice with methods from The Six Dharmas of Naropa. While The Fivefold Mahamudra constitutes the primary “path of liberation” in Drikung Kagyu, The Six Dharmas of Naropa function as potent supporting methods from “the path of methods.” Furthermore, although there are 12 volumes in the “Collected Works of Kyobpa Jikten Sumgon,” his most distinctive teachings are distilled in a collection of close to 200 “vajra-statements” circulated under the title of The Single Intention (Tibetan: Gongchik དགོངས་གཅིག་).

Over the last eight hundred years, Drikung Kagyu has also incorporated many other practices and transmissions that did not come directly from Kyobpa Rinpoche but nonetheless has become part of the lineage. Some of the more famous Drikung Kagyu traditions that do not flow directly from Kyobpa Rinpoche are “The Great Drikung Phowa” (from a terma of Guru Rinpoche) and a full terma-cycle known as “The Utterly Profound” (Tibetan: Yangzab) discovered and propagated by the seventeenth throne-holder of Drikung Kagyu.

Want to know more? Click here to a longer essay by Dr. Lye on the fascinating history of the Kagyu Lineage.