Talk:Shangpa Kagyu

I see Shangpa listed as one of the "The Eight Chariots of Tibetan Buddhism" at KagyuOffice.org ... seems a useful term to disconfound from "8 Lesser".
And here, more ... so to "Chariots of Tibetan Buddhism" and "great practice lineages" we must add "Eight Great Disciplines" and "Eight Chariots of Transmission" --KC:

"sgrub brgyud shing rta brgyad" by any other name. How many different designations do we need... Somewhere else on their site they also go on to say that the Shangpa are one of the 4 Greater and 8 lesser Dagpo Kagyu lineages, which is of course wrong. I for one think what we have is quite enough. Every one knows that the "sgrub brgyud shing rta brgyad" and the "bka' brgyud chung brgyad" are two different kettle of fish... :-) TSD

Oooops, I have to correct that! My bad! The DON'T say that, they just call them "one of the main Kagyu lineages", which still a bit misleading, since the Shangpa developed completely independent of the Marpa/Dagpo Kagyu lineages. It's just that term "Kagyu" that keeps confusing people... TSD

Quite. So the magnificence of "8 Great" or "8 Chariots" stands in nice contradistinction to "8 Lesser". --KC:

With your permission, I'm going scratch that last reference from the History page of the Shangpa Network site again. Because: it's quite an incorrect statement! The Jonangpa were officially disbanded, so to speak, in 1658 in Central Tibet. But they have remained alive and very well in Amdo and Golok, they continue to do so to the present day, and have thus also carried on their Shangpa heritage to the present day. Thus the Shangpa have never ceased to exist as a lineage. As to the term "independent", the Shangpa never established monastic seats for themselves, that is true. They never had a main center, but their transmissions have always been maintained by masters of many different lineages and backgrounds and they have survived very nicely, and fully intact, in many small retreat centers all over the Himalayas... TSD

I'm rewarded for my meddling; to discover a connection between Jonangpa and Shangpa shows how great is the tree from which I'm tasting low-hanging fruit! --KC:

If you have access to Taranatha's Collected Works, check the index or check on TBRC. He wrote quite a bit on Shangpa materials. Matter of fact, many of the Shangpa liturgical texts in use today are by Taranatha. Many others are by Kongtrul. You might also check the outline of Shangpa works here [1]... TSD