Dampa Sangye

Dampa Sangye ( "Excellent Buddhahood", d.1117, also called "Father Excellent Buddhahood", ) was a Buddhist mahasiddha of the Indian Tantra movement who transmitted many teachings based on both Sutrayana and Tantrayana to Buddhist practitioners in Tibet in the late 11th century. He travelled to Tibet more than five times. On his third trip from India to Tibet he met Machig Labdrön. Dampa Sangye appears in many of the lineages of Chöd and so in Tibet he is known as the Father of Chod, however perhaps his best known teaching is "the Pacification" (). This teaching became an element of the Mahamudra Chöd lineages founded by Machig Labdrön.

His Tibetan name translates into Sanskrit as ''Buddha Paramapitā'' "Buddha Excellent Father". He often was identified by the descriptive name ''Nakpopa'', "Black One".

History

Some texts report that Padmasambhava was reborn as Dampa Sangye during the life of Machig Labdrön.

Another text says:

''Drum khar Nagpopa'': Khampa yogi who meditated in dark retreat for 18 years was -according to Keith Dowman- considered to have been the twelfth of Dudjom/Jiktrel Yeshe Dorje's seventeen previous incarnations.

According to Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991), considered an emanation of Dampa Sangye, the story goes that the great pandit Śāntarakṣita, who was instrumental in transplanting Buddhism from India to Tibet, promised that one of his students would come one day to complete his work. Kamalaśīla (Tib., Padampa Sangye) fulfilled this prophecy. Khyentse Rinpoche in a 1987 gathering of students at Shechen Monastery, his seat in Nepal, offered a commentary on the Hundred Verses of Padampa Sangye.

In the esoteric oral tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, a version of Dampa Sangye's life-story has him traveling to China and teaching there for 12 years, where he was known as Bodhidharma the founder of Zen. Dampa Sangye is associated with the Tingri area of Tibet, where he lived for many years.

Bardok Chusang Rinpoche is recognized as the incarnation Dampa Sangye. He is a married yogi, living in Kathmandu.

There is a morality tale, allegory and teaching story inherent within the transmission of Chöd to Tibet that has been culturally remembered as a Cham dance. In this sacred dance, Moheyan is generally depicted as of ample girth goaded by children. Chöd is a product of both the Indian and Chinese transmissions of Buddhism into the Himalaya For a discussion of the Dunhuang fulcrum of the entwined relationship of Chinese and Indian Buddhism refer van Schaik and Dalton (2004).

For simplicity, the Indian tantric transmission may be characterized as " gradualist", (, p. 273) and the Chan Buddhism transmission may be characterized as "direct", (). It needs to be emphasized that this neat dichotomy in characterization of these two approaches to the Dharma is only valid for the historical context of the great debate between Kamalaśīla and Moheyan arranged by Trisong Detsen and even then it is still open to dialectic. This debate has been named the " Council of Samye" by Giuseppe Tucci and also as the " Bsam yas Debate" or "Council of Lhasa" in English. According to the general Tibetan tradition, the two years of the debate transpired at Samye (Tibetan ''Bsam yas''), a significant distance from Lhasa.

According to the lore of the orthodox, prevailing Tibetan cultural tradition, Kamalaśīla, a '' mahapandita'' and scholar educated at Nalanda

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