The Oral Lineage: Marpa, Milarepa, and Mahamudra

The Kagyu ("oral lineage" or "teaching lineage") takes its name and its self-understanding from transmission by word of mouth, master to disciple, of practices carried from India. Its founding lineage runs from the Indian adepts Tilopa and Naropa through the Tibetan translator Marpa (1012-1097) to his disciple Milarepa, Tibet's beloved yogi-poet, whose songs of realization and life of ascetic practice made him the model of the meditator who attains awakening in a single lifetime.

From Milarepa's pupil Gampopa the order took on monastic form. Its characteristic teachings are mahamudra, the "great seal," a direct approach to the nature of mind, and the Six Yogas of Naropa, advanced tantric practices including the famous inner-heat yoga (tummo). The Kagyu is not one body but a family of sub-schools; its senior reincarnation lineage, the Karmapa, is historically important as the first formally recognised tulku line in Tibet, the model for the institution later adopted across the traditions.