Full Shamarpa Reincarnation Lineage
The Shamarpas, also known as the “Red Hat” Lama, are a line of reincarnated lamas (tulkus) within the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The Shamarpa lineage is considered to be the second oldest reincarnate lineage in Tibetan Buddhism, following the Karmapa lineage.
The official line of succession of the Shamarpas, perforce, came to an abrupt halt.
The 11th Shamarpa was a bodhisattva, in the guise of a physician lama, in northern Tibet. Medicine was his generosity. He treated the patients with his own compounds, never expecting a return; thus seeing to the physical well-being of the people as well as to their spiritual needs. Studying and meditating, his other buddha-activities, though varied, were unrecorded.
Tugsay Jamyang Rinpoche
It was in the prediction of the 5th Shamarpa that the Karmapa and the Shamarpa, in their absolute purity of mind are spiritually inseparable; they are separable, however, in identity as two distinct manifestations “Manifesting sometimes as father and son, sometimes as brother-like relatives.” The prediction, in part, came true, when the Shamarpa as Jamyang Rinpoche became the 15th Karmapa’s son. Jamyang Rinpoche led a retired but fruitful life.
It was a lamentable reflection on the adverse karmic conditions of the time, that the infant Rinpoche lived for a little more than a year then passed away.
