Gampopa

Gampopa (Sönam Rinchen, Dakpo Lhajé) was Milarepa’s foremost disciple — the physician of Dakpo who merged the monastic scholarship of the Kadampa with the yogic transmission of Mahamudra, creating the Kagyu school as it exists.

Life

Born in Nyel, Gampopa married, lost his wife and children to an epidemic at twenty-five, and took ordination in the Kadampa tradition. Hearing of Milarepa, he crossed Tibet to find him; the master taught him Mahamudra step by step — the exchanges of their meeting are the Kagyu’s classic hagiography — and sent him to meditate at Gampodar? — at Daklha Gampo, where the monastery he founded in 1121 became the school’s mother-seat.

Teachings/Works

The Jewel Ornament of Liberation (Damchö Yönten Norbu) is the Kagyu’s graded-path textbook — buddha-nature, the teacher, impermanence, compassion, the bodhisattva vows, mahamudra in its gradual form. The four special? — his “four dharmas of Gampopa” (make dharma the dharma, make dharma the path…) is recited across schools. He also systematized the Six Yogas’ place alongside Mahamudra.

Legacy

Every Kagyu lineage — Karma, Drukpa, Drikung — descends from his seat; his “physician turned yogi” story is the tradition’s model of the householder’s total turn.

Verification notes

• Life is documented in Tibetan hagiography with reliable chronological anchors (his own works’ colophons).
• Audited against Wikipedia (September 2026).