- The True Buddha School Kalachakra Lineage
- By Living Buddha Lian-sheng Sheng-yen Lu.
- Translated by Janny Chow.
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Tantrayana attaches great importance to lineage. Without receiving
the proper Tantric lineage and initiation, one is not allowed to
teach the sadhana or even to practice it.
I, Living Buddha Lian-sheng, have received the Kalachakra Initiation
and teaching from my guru, Master Shakya Zhen-Kung, who had in turn
received the initiation from Panchen Lama IX. This is the lineage
of our school's Kalachakra Practice.
In 1998, when I met with Guru Thubten Daerje, the master handed
me an envelope without saying a word. Inside was a letter which
read, "Liturgical practices from the Buddhist Tantra have to
be passed to one by one's guru in accordance with the rules. Beware
that one does not read such texts without permission, as such an
act is tantamount to a theft and will result in karmic consequences.
These are the practice texts transmitted to me by my honored and
revered lineage gurus: Shan-hui Gan-Zu Er-wa, Thubten Nima, and
Thubten Tieh-li." At the end of the letter were the words:
Transmitted by Guru Thubten Daerje.
When I read the letter, a great shock went through me. So my guru
was handing over to me his own Kalachakra practice texts! One had
been handed down from Rinpoche Gan-Zu and the other from Thubten
Nima. I immediately knelt down to thank him and to receive the empowerment.
The practice text that came from Vajra Master Thubten Nima was
exactly the same as the one that had been passed down from Panchen
Lama IX when he held the Kalachakra Ceremony in Ta-er Monastery
in Qinghai Province (Eastern Tibet). The two tributaries of the
same lineage had merged again.
When I read the practice text from Rinpoche Gan-Zu, I noted that
it differed slightly from the one transmitted by Panchen Lama IX.
The mantra was also different.
Rinpoche Gan-Zu was the political leader of Inner Mongolia and
a graduate of the Buddhist University at Guang-Jie Monastery. According
to his lineage chart, the first Rinpoche Gan-Zu was born in India
as Tsa-jing Ganpa (?), one of the principal disciples of Shakyamuni
Buddha. Rinpoche Gan-Zu is the seventeenth successor to that title.
The Kalachakra lineage of our True Buddha School, as coming from
Guru Thubten Daerje should be listed as below:
The lineage of our True Buddha School is, indeed, remarkable because
it is a convergence of many various tributaries, thus bringing them
back into one.
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