Naropa 1016 – 1100

Naropa was an eleventh-century Indian Buddhist tantric master, abbot of the great monastic university of Nalanda before he renounced his post in search of his teacher Tilopa, and one of the most important figures in the history of late Indian and Tibetan Buddhism. The twelve trials by which Tilopa, in the traditional accounts, brought him to awakening became the model of the Vajrayana relationship between teacher and student, while the Six Yogas of Naropa, transmitted through his pupil Marpa to the Tibetan Kagyu lineage, remain among the central practices of Tibetan Buddhism. His commentaries on the Hevajra Tantra and his songs of realization shaped Tibetan tantric philosophy for nearly a thousand years.

Naropa was born around 1016 in eastern India, probably in Bengal, into a kshatriya family. After an arranged marriage he separated from his wife by mutual consent, took monastic vows, and trained in the great curriculum of the Mahāyāna, eventually serving as one of the four principal abbots of the monastic university of Nalanda — the master of its northern gate. Already established as a learned scholar, he abandoned his academic position in response to a vision and set out to find his predestined teacher Tilopa, under whom he underwent twelve years of severe trials before receiving the highest tantric transmissions.

His writings, surviving mainly in Tibetan translation, include the Sekoddeśa-ṭīkā, a commentary on the abhiṣeka section of the Kālacakra Tantra, the Vajrapadasāra-saṃgraha, songs of realisation, and a collection of instructions transmitted to his disciple Marpa.

Naropa systematised six tantric yogas — inner heat, illusory body, dream, clear light, intermediate state, and consciousness-transference — that have been transmitted ever since as the 'Six Dharmas of Naropa'. Through Marpa the Translator and his pupil Milarepa they founded the Kagyu lineage and the wider Mahamudra tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He spent his last years at the hermitage of Phullahari in northern Bihar, where he died in 1100.