The Sakya and Karma Kagyu Traditions

Tibetan Buddhism has developed as number of major and minor traditions preserving the teachings of the sutras and tantras in lineages of transmission that can be traced back to Lord Buddha himself. There are four major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism in existence today, namely Sakya, Kagyu, Gelug and Nyingma.

From among these, our teachers are masters of the Karma Kagyu and Sakya, both of which originate from the eleventh century CE. Whilst the lamas of Dechen hold these two lineages, the teachings are never mixed together but transmitted in their original purity. Accordingly, each Dechen centre focuses primarily on only one of the two lineages, Kagyu or Sakya. The lineages of Dechen derive from the recognition of its founder, Karma Thinley Rinpoche, as an incarnation of two separate tulku (incarnation) lines by the respective heads of the Sakya and Karma Kagyu traditions. A non-sectarian attitude to all traditions and teachers is an important principle in the Dechen Community.

The masters of Sakya are known as the ‘Owners of all Teachings’ due to the incomparable number of teachings they have collected and preserved in their one-thousand year history. Among the forty-one throne holders of Sakya are included such illustrious lamas as the great Sakya Pandita (1182 - 1251), who actually bore the major and minor marks of a Buddha on his body.		Karma Kagyu is the largest of several Kagyu subsects, and is presided over by the black-crowned Gyalwa Karmapa lama, whose seventeen incarnations to date have all been regarded as emanations of the buddha of compassion, Chenrezik. The Karma Kagyu tradition is often styled as the ‘practice lineage’ due to its keen emphasis on meditation practice over and above mere scholarship.

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