Tradition · Buddhist lineage · Bhutan
The Drukpa Kagyu
The school Bhutan is named after — Druk Yul, the land of the thunder dragon — and the lineage through which Indian Buddhism reached these valleys. It descends from Tilopa and Naropa in eastern India, through Marpa the translator, who crossed the Himalaya repeatedly to fetch texts, to Milarepa, Gampopa and then Tsangpa Gyare, who founded it about 1180. Its tantric corpus is Indian, translated in Tibet, and practised in Bhutan as the state religion.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 27.500, 90.000
Worth knowing
Naropa taught at Nalanda and later at Phullahari in Bihar, so a state religion in the eastern Himalaya traces its authority to a teaching lineage that began in a Magadhan monastery.
Connections (3)
- Teaching lineageNālandā mahāvihāra
Bhutan's state religion traces its authority to a Magadhan monastery. The Drukpa Kagyu descends from Tilopa and Naropa — Naropa taught at Nālandā and later at Phullahari in Bihar — through Marpa the translator, who crossed the Himalaya repeatedly to fetch texts and take teaching, then Milarepa, Gampopa, and Tsangpa Gyare who founded the school about 1180. The tantric corpus it practises is Indian, translated into Tibetan, and recited in Bhutanese dzongs eight centuries later in a language no Bhutanese speaks at home.
- AnalogueAtiśa Dīpankara Śrījñāna
Two routes by which Indian Buddhism became Himalayan, running in parallel. Atiśa left Vikramaśīla for Tibet in 1042 at the invitation of the kings of Guge and reformed the monastic order there; the Kagyu line worked the other way, with Marpa travelling from Tibet to Bengal and Bihar to find Naropa and bring the teaching back himself. One was a scholar exported, the other a student importing — and Bhutan's religion comes down the second.
- Parent ofKagyu — the Oral Lineage
The Drukpa Kagyu is one of the four greater sub-schools of the Kagyu school.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Drukpa Kagyu”. Michael Aris, Bhutan (1979); Roberto Vitali and John Ardussi on the Drukpa in Bhutan.
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