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From Bodhicitta
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Acharya Sempa Dorje was a Buddhist polymath, former Tibetan Buddhist monk and Buddhist practitioner with mastery in Hindi, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Pali language. A native of Kinnaur in northern India, he completed his Buddhist philosophical training in pre-1959 Tibet. He continued his studies, complementing them with contemporary education at Sanskrit University. He taught for several decades at Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies and served as a tutor to the Seventeenth Karmapa, Thaye Dorje. +
Gaton Ngawang Lekpa was one of the most prominent Sakya lamas of the early twentieth century. He was a disciple of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo and the root teacher of Dezhung Rinpoche. In addition to teaching widely in Kham, Ngawang Legpa spent fifteen years in closed retreat. +
Gampopa Sonam Rinchen, also known as Dakpo Lhaje, is credited with founding the Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Trained first as a medical doctor and then ordained as a Kadam monk, Gampopa met Milarepa when he was thirty years old, and spent much of the next decades in meditation retreat. Never renouncing his monastic vows, he combined the Indian Mahāsiddha practices brought back to Tibet by Marpa and others with the monastic order of his Kadampa teachers. He also united the Kadam teachings of Lamrim with the Mahāmudrā teachings he received from Milarepa. He founded Daklha Gampo in 1121 and trained many of the greatest Kagyu masters of all time, including the First Karmapa and Pakmodrupa. +
Śākya Chokden was one of the most important thinkers of the Sakya tradition. His teachers were Rongtön Sheja Kunrik, Dönyo Pelwa and Ngorchen Kunga Zangpo. A thinker who accepted both the rangtong and zhentong, or "self-empty" and "other empty" views of Madhyamaka, Śākya Chokden's seat was at Serdokchen Monastery near Shigatse in Tsang. Influential and controversial in his own day, his writings fell out of favor over time and many were banned in the seventeenth century. +
Śākya Śrī was an influential yogic practitioner and teacher in Kham who traveled throughout the Himalaya giving teachings in Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen. A student of some of the era's greatest lamas, including the Sixth Khamtrul, Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, and Ju Mipam Gyatso, he taught hundreds of disciples including the Tenth Drukchen and Sonam Zangpo, the brother of the first king of Bhutan. +
Kawa Peltsek was one of the first Tibetans to take Buddhist ordination. He later became a disciple of Padmasambhava, who identified him as an incarnation of an Indian mahapaṇḍita. A famed translator, he was instrumental in designing forms of Tibetan calligraphy. +
Konchok Gyatso also known as the Gya Zhabdrung, was the second reincarnation of the thirty-fourth throne holder of Labrang, Trangkya Jamyang Kelden Gyatso. A student of the Fourth Jamyang Zhepa, he was known for giving the Kālacakra initiation five times in different locations in Amdo. +
Kyotön Mönlam Tsultrim was born into the Kyo (''skyod'') clan at a place named Tanakyang (''rta nag yang''), in U (''dbus''), in 1219, the earth-rabbit year of fourteenth sexagenary cycle.
He studied the complete Kadam traditions under the guidance of the sixth abbot, Sanggye Gompa Sengge Kyab (sangs rgyas sgom pa seng ge skyabs, 1179-1250) and the seventh abbot of Nartang Monastery (''snar thang dgon''), Chim Namkha Drak (mchims nam mkha’ grags, 1210-1285). +
Smṛtijñānakīrti is sometimes considered the first translator of the "later propagation" of Buddhism in Tibet, and the figure who inaugurated the "new translations." He was primarily based in Kham, at Drentang, near Langtang Dolma Lhakhang. +
Chennga Lodro Gyeltsen, one of the principal students of Khedrubje, was an early Geluk scholar-adept. He was educated in the classical scholastic curriculum and gained a reputation as a learned scholar at an early age. After his ordination, he received special instructions from Tsongkhapa's close disciple Tokden Jampel Gyatso. He served as abbot of two monasteries for a few years, but spent most of his adult life as a hermit. Although he wrote on a variety of topics, Lodro Gyeltsen is renowned for his extensive writings on Lojong, or Mind-Training, and Lamrim, or the Stages of the Path. +
Chennga Tsultrim Bar was an early Kadam master, considered one of three main students of Dromton. He established Lo Monastery to the northeast of Lhasa in the late eleventh century. His most famous disciples were Tolungpa Rinchen Nyingpo and Jayulwa Zhonnu Wo. +
Taklungtangpa, one of the main disciples of Pakmodrupa, stands at the head of the Taklung Kagyu lineage. He founded Taklungtang Monastery in about the year 1180. +
Taktsang Lotsāwa Sherab Rinchen was a polymath scholar-monk of the Sakya tradition. Active during a great period of classical scholarship and translation, he was a prolific commentator on a wide range of topics, with special focus on medicine, poetry, Vinaya, and Kālacakra. He is said to have had an encyclopedic knowledge of not only the five topics of monastic study -- Vinaya, Abhidharma, Pramāṇa, Madhyamaka, and Prajñāparamitā -- but also the five major fields of traditional learning -- grammar, art, medicine, logic, and the inner science. However, he is perhaps best known for his critique of Tsongkhapa's interpretation of Madhyamaka in his philosophical treatise, ''Knowing All Philosophical Systems'', which generated centuries of often polemical Geluk-Sakyapa debate. +
Sumpa Khenpo Yeshe Peljor was a prominent eighteenth-century Geluk lama of Amdo. He was ethnically Mongol -- most likely Oirat, from the Dzungar Federation. He was educated in Amdo monasteries such as Kumbum and at Drepung Gomang in Lhasa, and served as abbot of many monasteries including Gonlung, Dreyul Kyetsel, Pari Tashi Choling, Serlung, and Ganden Chodzong Hermitage, which he founded. He visited China several times at the request of the Qianlong Emperor, and spent about eight years in Mongolia giving teachings and empowerments as per the requirement. A prolific author, he composed works on many subjects, most famously his history of Amdo and of Buddhism in India, Mongolia, and Tibet. Present in Lhasa during the upheavals of the early eighteenth century in which Mongolian tribes and the Manchu Empire vied for political control of Tibet, Sumpa Khenpo wrote with a strident Geluk partisanship. +
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In the history of the Jonang tradition Tāranātha is second in importance only to Dölpopa himself. He was responsible for the Jonang renaissance in U-Tsang during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the widespread revitalization of the zhentong teachings. Like his previous incarnation, Kunga Drolchok, Tāranātha practiced and taught from many different lineages and was nonsectarian in his approach to realization. He was also one of the last great Tibetan translators of Sanskrit texts. The abbot of Jonang Monastery, he emphasized the practice of the Sakya teachings of Lamdre and the esoteric instructions of the Shangpa Kagyu, but he specially focused on the explication of the Kālacakra Tantra and the practice of its Six-branch Yoga as the most profound of all the teachings given by the Buddha. It is clear in his writings that Tāranātha considered Dölpopa to be the ultimate authority in matters of doctrine and practice. +
Gyalse Tokme Zangpo was a Kadampa master of the fourteenth century based at Ngulchu Monastery where he sat in retreat for twenty years. He had previously served as the abbot of Bodong E for about nine years, from 1326 to 1335. Significant in the transmission of Lojong teachings, his compositions include the famous ''Thirty-seven Practices of the Bodhisattva'', one of the classics of Tibetan buddhist literature. A specialist in tantric Mahākaruṇā, he was a disciple of Butön Rinchen Drup and a teacher of Rendawa Zhönu Lodrö, and is counted as seventy-third in the Lamrim lineage. +
Bamda Gelek, whose given name was Tubten Gelek Gyatso, was one of the greatest scholar-practitioners of the Jonang tradition. Based largely at Dzamtang, he was considered the reincarnation of various masters, including the Indian saint Candrakīrti, the siddha Nāropa, and two famous early Jonang lamas, Tāranātha and Kunga Drolchok. Because of his strong interest in the Geluk tradition, some thought him to also be an incarnation of the great Geluk scholar Jamyang Zhepa. His intellectual prowess and strong devotion to the deity Mañjuśrī, his tutelary deity, led others to surmise that he might be an emanation of the deity himself. +
Tong Ācārya (rgya'i lo ts+tsha ba ban d+he tong A tsarya) was a monk who participated in the translation of the ''Aṅgulimālīyasūtra'' into Tibetan in the late eighth or early ninth century. It is not known whether he was Indian or Chinese. According to Kazuo Kano, the colophon to the sūtra in the Tabo version of the Tibetan canon states that both Sanskrit and Chinese were used by the translators, and that while it refers to Tong Ācārya as an Indian paṇḍit (''rgya gar gyi mkhan po''), in other versions of versions of the canon he is called a Chinese translator (''rgya'i lo tsA ba''). The translation team on the sūtra included also [[Dharmatāśīla]] and [[Śākyaprabha]]. +
The Third Trijang, Lobzang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso was one of the most prominent Geluk teachers of the twentieth century. One of two principle teachers of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, he was a disciple of the Pabongkha, from whom he received Ganden Nyengyu and numerous other teachings, including the worship of the deity Dorje Shugden. Virtually every Geluk teacher today has received teachings or empowerments from him or from one of his direct students. +
Tengpa Lotsāwa was a twelfth-century translator who made three trips to India. He studied under Tsami Lotsāwa Sanggye Drak and numerous Indian paṇḍitas, chief among them being Alaṅkadeva. He is credited with at least five translations in the Tibetan canon, and is said to have brought over 300 sūtras to Tibet by oral transmission. +
