This set of three stunning 19th Century Tibetan thangka paintings (click on each to enlarge) was just posted to the Himalayan Art Resource website. The three composition painting set depicts the Karma Kagyu Great Seal (Skt. Mahamudra) Lineage ending with the 14th Gyalwa Karmapa, Thegchog Dorje (1798-1868).
6th Shamarpa Mipham Chokyi Wangchuk
The Himalayan Art Resource website recently posted a picture of this marvellous 18th century thangka painting (click to enlarge) of Mipam Chokyi Wangchuk, The 6th Shamarpa (1584-1629). The 6th Shamarpa is an exceptionally important figure in the Karma Kagyu school, holding the lineage between the 9th and 10th Karmapas. His debating skills were so extraordinary that he was known as the “Pandita of the North, the Omniscient Shamarpa in whom Manjushri delights”. Famed for his deep insight, he had memorised fifty volumes of sutras and tantras by the age of seventeen, and was later to write ten texts explaining both the sutra and tantra traditions. He was the teacher of Desi Tsangpa, who ruled central Tibet, and it was while he was travelling in east Tibet – successfully playing the mediator in a regional disturbance – that he recognised and became the teacher of the 10th Karmapa, Choying Dorje. Subsequent travels took him to Nepal, where he taught Buddhism in the original Sanskrit to the king, Laxman Naran Singh, and to other devotees, and where he eventually died in the Helambu mountains, near a cave in which Milarepa, Tibet’s great yogi, had once meditated.
In the second of a series of entries, we present Buddhist books from the “recommended reading list” for students of Diamond Way Buddhism by various authors, together with links to a reliable UK-based supplier, Wisdom Books. This group of books includes life stories of great Buddhist practitioners.
Entering the Diamond Way – Tibetan Buddhism Meets the West
Lama Ole Nydahl
This is the genuinely compelling story, and spiritual odyssey, of Ole and Hannah Nydahl, who in 1968 became the first Western students of the great Tibetan master, His Holiness the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa. Their exciting travels on the worn path between the green lowlands of Europe to the peaks of the Himalayas, led them to experience the skilful teachings of numerous Tibetan lamas who helped transform their lives into “limitless clarity and joy.” From their first contact with Tibetan Buddhism in Kathmandu in the form of a lama with extraordinary psychic powers, Ole and Hannah encountered the full spectrum of the Buddhist view. Their real aim in writing this book is “to form a bridge between two worlds, and especially to share with all who are looking for their true being… an introduction to a time-proven way to Enlightenment.”
Europe Center Blog Meditation Research Blog