The Wheel of Time or Kalachakra is a Tantric deity that is associated with Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, which encompasses all four main schools of Sakya, Nyingma, Kagyu and Gelug, and is especially important within the lesser-known Jonang tradition.

Maha Ati is a term coined by Chögyam Trungpa, a master of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism.

Many lamas, particularly of the Nyingma and Kagyu schools, regard them as the most profound teachings altogether.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, recognizes the Bon tradition as the sixth principal spiritual school of Tibet, along with the Nyingma, Sakya, Kagyu, Gelug and Jonang schools of Buddhism, despite the long historical competition between the Bon tradition and Buddhism in Tibet.

At the same time, the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Sakya orders of Buddhism were also reorganizing themselves in order to be able to compete effectively with the dominant Gelug order.

However, Tibetans still differentiate between Bon and Buddhism, referring to members of the Nyingma, Shakya, Kagyu and Gelug schools as nangpa, meaning " insiders ," but to practitioners of Bon as " Bonpo ," or even chipa (" outsiders ").

The Sakya ( Tibetan: ས ་ ས ྐྱ་, wylie: Sa skya, " pale earth ") school is one of four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the others being the Nyingma, Kagyu, and Gelug.

It is one of the Red Hat sects along with the Nyingma and Kagyu.

During the 19th century the great Sakya master and terton Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo, the famous Kagyu master Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye and the important Nyingma terton Orgyen Chokgyur Lingpa founded the Rime movement, an alleged ecumenical attempt to incorporate all teachings of all schools, to overcome the separation of Buddhist transmission in different traditions.

The Kagyu, Kagyupa, or Kagyud () school, also known as the " Oral Lineage " or Whispered Transmission school, is today regarded as one of six main schools ( chos lugs ) of Himalayan or Tibetan Buddhism, the other five being the Nyingma, Sakya, Jonang, Bon and Gelug.

Although monasticism and the lojong teachings were of greatest centrality to the Kadam / Gelug, they were incorporated into the other three schools — the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya — as well.

The Madhyamika philosophy obtained a central position in the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelugpa schools.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche ( Wylie: Chos rgyam Drung pa ; February 28, 1939 – April 4, 1987 ) was a Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, the eleventh Trungpa tülku, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Shambhala vision.

The prominent contemporary Kagyu / Nyingma master Chogyam Trungpa, expressing the Kagyu Mahāmudrā view, wrote, " your breathing is the closest you can come to a picture of your mind.

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, holder of the Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, in a 2008 talk delivered to LGBT Dharma practitioners at the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York, stressed that for vajrayana lay practitioners, homosexual relationships are no better or worse than heterosexual relationships and that only unhealthy relationships in general are to be avoided.

As Batchelor noted, however, in other traditions, particularly the Kagyu and Nyingma, mindfulness based on ānāpānasmṛti practice is considered to be quite profound means of calming the mind to prepare it for the higher practices of Dzogchen and Mahamudra.

The prominent contemporary Kagyu / Nyingma master Chogyam Trungpa, echoing the Kagyu Mahāmudrā view, wrote, " your breathing is the closest you can come to a picture of your mind.

" The Gelukpa allow that it is possible to take the mind itself as the object of meditation, however, Zahler reports, the Gelukpa discourage it with " what seems to be thinly disguised sectarian polemics against the Nyingma Great Completeness and Kagyu Great Seal meditations.

Buton Rinchen had considerable influence on the later development of the Gelug and Sakya traditions of Kalachakra, and Dolpopa on the development of the Jonang tradition on which the Kagyu, Nyingma, and the Tsarpa branch of the Sakya draw.

Naropa University was founded by Chögyam Trungpa, an exiled Tibetan tulku who was a Karma Kagyu and Nyingma lineage holder, and scholar of comparative religion at Oxford University in England.

In Tibetan Buddhist history there have been many different versions of lamrim, presented by different teachers of the Nyingma, Kagyu and Gelug schools.

In the 11th century, the Northern Monpas in Tawang came under the influence of Tibetan Buddhism of the Nyingma and Kagyu denominations.

The Nyingma school, however, holds that the lowest level is the way of the king, who primarily seeks his own benefit but who recognizes that his benefit depends crucially on that of his kingdom and his subjects.

The syllable-po or-pa is appended to a noun in Tibetan to designate a person who is from that place or performs that action ; " Bonpo " thus means a follower of the Bon tradition, " Nyingmapa " a follower of the Nyingma tradition, and so on.

Rigdzin Shikpo went on to continue Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche's teachings from a primarily Nyingma rather than a Kagyü point of view in the Longchen Foundation.

Dhardo Rinpoche ( 1917-1990 ) was the 12th in a line of tulkus from Dhartsendo on the eastern border of Tibet who hailed from the Nyingma Gompa in Dhartsendo called Dorje Drak ( not to be confused with Dorje Drak in Central Tibet ).

Later on His Holiness the Dalai Lama would regard Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche as his principal teacher in the Nyingma tradition and of Dzogchen.

Following the death of Dudjom Rinpoche in 1987, he became the head of the Nyingma School, and remained so until his own death in Bhutan on 28 September 1991.

While on the expedition to Tsaparang and Tholing in Western Tibet in 1948-49, sponsored by the Illustrated Weekly of India, Govinda received initiations in the Nyingma and Sakyapa lineages.

As an emblem of the wrathful kīla transmission the image of the scorpion took on a strong symbolic meaning in the early development of the Nyingma or ' ancient school ' of Tibetan Buddhism ...".

" Nyingma " literally means " ancient ," and is often referred to as Nga ' gyur (, school of the ancient translations ) or the " old school " because it is founded on the first translations of Buddhist scriptures from Sanskrit into Tibetan, in the eighth century.

Up to then, the Nyingma tradition had mostly relied on non-ordained tantric practitioners to transmit its teachings through authorized lineages.

" Instead, he traces back the conflict more on the exclusive / inclusive approach and maintain that to understand the Dalai Lama's point of view one has to consider the complex ritual basis for the institution of the Dalai Lamas, which was developed by the Great Fifth and rests upon " an eclectic religious basis in which elements associated with the Nyingma tradition combine with an overall Gelug orientation.

Mipham's works on both the exoteric or Sutrayana teachings and the esoteric or Vajrayāna teachings have become core texts within the Nyingma tradition.

Although Mipham wrote on a wide range of subjects, Prof. David Germano identifies the most influential aspect of Mipham's career in that he " was the single most important author in the efflorescence of Nyingma exoteric literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Grounding himself theoretically in the writings of Longchenpa and other great Nyingma authors, Mipham produced brilliant exegetical commentaries on the great Indian philosophical systems and texts with a Nyingma orientation.

" Until his time the colleges or shedra associated with the great Nyingma monasteries of Kham, such as Dzogchen, Shechen, Kathog, Palyul and Tarthang lacked their own exegetical commentaries on these exoteric Mahayana śāstras, and students commonly studied Gelug commentaries on these fundamental texts.

Grounding himself in the writings of Śāntarakṣita, Rongzom Chokyi Zangpo, and Longchenpa, Mipham produced a whole array of brilliant exegetical commentaries on the great Indian philosophical systems and texts that clearly articulated a Nyingma orientation or view.

Practitioners later go on to practice the Karma Kagyu ngöndro and in some cases one of the Nyingma ngöndro practices.

Then in 1926 he went on a pilgrimage to Central Tibet, and at Mindrolling, the main Nyingma monastery, took ordination as a monk for a second time.

Khenpo made extensive travels across Tibet and the rest of China teaching Nyingma traditional Buddhism and rediscovering hidden treasures.