Sakya

Kagyu:

The Kagyu School traces its lineage to the teachings of the Indian mystics Tilopa (988-1089 CE) and Naropa (1016-1100 CE), whose lineage was transmitted in Tibet by the great translator Marpa (1012-1097 CE). Marpa's principal disciple was Milarepa (1052-1135 CE), arguably Tibet's best known religious poet and meditator. Amongst Milerapa's many students was Gampopa (1079-1153 CE), a great synthesizer, who can be recognized as the real founder of Kagyu as a distinct School of Tibetan Buddhism. Following Gampopa's teachings, there evolved the so-called "Four Major" and the "Eight Minor" lineages of the Kagyu School.

The central teaching of this School is the doctrine of Mahamudra, or "the Great Seal", as elucidated by Gampopa in his various works. This doctrine focuses on four principal aspects of meditative stages, namely:

1. The development the single-pointedness of mind,

2. The transcendence of all conceptual elaboration,

3. The cultivation of the perspective of all things as being of a "single taste",

4. The application of a path that is beyond any acts of meditation.

It is through these four stages of development that the practitioner is said to attain the perfect realization of Mahamudra.