The Buddhist adept Tilopa

Tilopa, intense but friendly, sits atop a blue antelopeskin pedestal. Ankles crossed and wearing a full panoply of symbolic jewelry, his minimally clothed appearance accords with the iconography of the Indian adepts (siddha) who were instrumental in transmitting Indian Vajrayana Buddhism to Tibet in its eleventh-century renaissance. According to his Tibetan biographer Rangjung Dorje Karmapa III, Tilopa was born in Zahor, which Karmapa locates “east of Bodh Gaya,” in modern Bangladesh.

Tilopa was the founding Indian adept of the Buddhist training lineage that came to be known in Tibet as the Kagyu, or “oral tradition.” His “six words”—practiced every day by Tibetan meditators—encapsulate a technique for achieving atemporality in meditation. Not merely a great meditator, Tilopa was also a great teacher. His most famous student was Naropa, to whom he taught the “six words” and who eventually became Great Scholar of the great Indian monastery of Nalanda.