Karmapa
The Gyalwa Karmapa (honorific title: His Holiness the Gyalwa (རྒྱལ་བ་, 'Victorious One') Karmapa, more formally as Gyalwang (རྒྱལ་དབང་ཀརྨ་པ་, 'King of Victorious Ones') Karmapa, and informally as the Karmapa Lama) is the head of the Karma Kagyu, the largest sub-school of the Kagyu school (Tibetan: བཀའ་བརྒྱུད, Wylie: bka' brgyud), itself one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The Karmapa was Tibet's first consciously incarnating lama.
| Karmapa | |||||||||
The 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (1924 – 1981) | |||||||||
| Tibetan name | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tibetan | རྒྱལ་དབང་ཀརྨ་པ་ | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 噶瑪巴 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 噶玛巴 | ||||||||
| |||||||||
| Part of a series on |
| Tibetan Buddhism |
|---|
The historical seat of the Karmapas is Tsurphu Monastery in the Tolung valley of Tibet. The Karmapa's principal seat in exile is the Dharma Chakra Centre at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India. His regional monastic seats are Karma Triyana Dharmachakra in New York and Dhagpo Kagyu Ling in Dordogne, France.
A decade after the passing of the 16th Karmapa, a controversy within the Karma Kagyu school over the recognition process of a second Karmapa occurred. The identity of the current 17th Karmapa was resolved by the Karmapas themselves, Orgyen Trinley Dorje and Trinley Thaye Dorje, both of whom issued a joint statement on 04 December 2023.