Timeless Rapture: Inspired Verse from the Shangpa Masters

The Shangpa Masters and Their Lineage 255
became the basis for the Path and Result (Lamdré) teachings of the Sakya
School. He was another of Marpa’s teachers.
Marpa (1012–1097), founder of what Kongtrul calls the Marpa Instruction
Lineage (Marpa Kagyu), studied with some of the same teachers as
Kyungpo Naljor, including Niguma and Métripa.
Machik Lapdrön (1031–1129), founder of the Severance (Chö) Instruction
Lineage, never journeyed to India, but she lived during this crucial
period.
Gyi Jo Dawé Özer (eleventh century, dates unknown), Ra Lotsawa
Dorjé Drakpa (1016–1098), and Dro Shérab Drakpa (eleventh century,
dates unknown) will never be household names, but these three translators
were responsible for the initial introduction of Kalachakra to Tibet. Gyi Jo
Dawé Özer was the first of the three. His return from India (in 1027) with
the first translation of a Kalachakra tantra is remembered by all Tibetans,
as their sixty-year-cycle calendars then began. These master meditators
and translators were the founders of the Six Applications Lineage (Jordruk),
based on Kalachakra.
Finally, Padampa Sangyé, founder of the Pacification of Suffering Lineage
(Zhijé) ended Tibet’s astounding eleventh century with what some say
was his second visit, in 1091–92. He would teach Machik Lapdrön,
Milarepa, and many others.
Thus, much of Tibetan Buddhism was produced from the cross-
Himalaya exchange during this short window of time. We have no record
of India continuing to produce masters of eleventh-century caliber, and
Tibet seems to have waited a century or so before hitting spiritual high tide
again in the thirteenth century.
What causes and conditions contributed to this crucial era? On one side
of the border, the Muslim invasion of India had begun, although the situation
was not as disastrous as it would become. Later generations of Indian
masters fled to southeast Asian countries, some even to Tibet (among them,
the Kashmiri pandit Shakyashri among them, who stayed in Tibet 1204–
1214). The Muslims did not single out the Buddhists for persecution, nor did
they eradicate other faiths from the country—Hinduism continued to
thrive. Yet Buddhism suffered far more than Hinduism when foreigners
unlikely ever to convert ruled India. With the end of royal patronage, Buddhism’s
major institutions, which had been on a scale of modern universities,
withered. It is also possible that the heavy demands Buddhism makes