The Kagyu Sect: Tibetan Buddhism struggling with exile and
feuding by Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian, October 4, 2005 London,
UK -- Tibetan Buddhism is a fusion of Buddhism with the ancient,
animistic religions of the rooftop of the world: Bon and
Hinduism. It has four schools of thought. The oldest is
Nyingmapa, founded by the monk Padmasambhava, who spread
Buddhism from the Indus to the Tibetan plateau in the 8th
century. In terms of antiquity the Kagyu ranks second. It is led
by the karmapa and was popularised in the west partly because a
monk translated the Tibetan Book of the Dead into English. The
third school, Sakyapa, is now the smallest. The dominant Tibetan
sect is the Gelupa, or yellow hats, headed by the Dalai Lama.
The karmapas, whose rank is second only to the Dalai Lama, were
the first lamas or priests to establish the principle of
reincarnation. The current fight in Sikkim began in a Chicago
cancer ward, with the 1981 death of the 16th incarnation,
Rangjung Rigpe Dorje. He neglected to leave the