The Liberation Stories of the Kagyu Masters – Day 3

The Practice Lineage is the lineage of those who follow a way of studying and practising that is not directed externally to words, texts, treatises and that sort of thing.
It’s about what is going on inside. It’s also not about remaining in retreats or hermitages, it’s much broader than that. Tilopa and Naropa didn’t remain in retreat, they didn’t sit quietly on cushions. So the Kagyu Practice Lineage is not about these external things, it’s about the mind itself, investigating mind and thought and coming to see them as they are.
‘Lineage’ in this sense means ‘transmission’, something is being transmitted transmitted or passed on. For example, if I have a good practice of mahamudra and I teach you, but you don’t understand, even though you heard the words, then no transmission has taken place, nothing has been handed over. But if you are able to recognise, in your own mind, what is being taught, then you can be said to have received the lineage.