Jigten Sumgön or Jigten Gönpo was the founder of the Drikung Kagyu lineage and main disciple of Phagmo Drupa. He founded Drikung Thil Monastery in 1179. Jigten Sumgön and the Drikung lineage are best known for the set of teachings known as The Five Profound Paths of Mahāmudrā. Some of Jigten Sumgön's sayings were collected by Sherab Jungne into what is known as Gongchik, a profound philosophical compendium that further developed in commentarial works written in following generations. Some of Jigten Sumgön's teachings were collected by another disciple into what is known as The Heart of the Great Vehicle's Teachings.
Family
Jigten Gönpo's great-grandmother was Achi Chökyi Drölma, who prophesied his birth and vowed to protect his lineage. Jigten Sumgön was born in 1143 into a famous clan called the Kyura in the Kham region of Tibet by the name of Tsungu ; his mother was Rakyisa Tsunma, and his father, Naljorpa Dorje, was a devout Vajrayāna practitioner who died when Jigten Sumgön was still a boy—at that time, Jigten Sumgön started to support his family by reciting scriptures. It is said that when he was only eight years old, he understood that all phenomena are like a reflection in a mirror.
Name
The meaning of Jigten Sumgön is "The Lord of the Triple World". Jigten Sumgön is known under various names: Drikung Kyobpa Jigten Gönpo Rinpoche, Drikung Kyobpa Jikten Gönpo Rinchen Päl, Lord Jigten Sumgön, Kyobpa Rinpoche, and many others. Because his mother had a connection with the Bön tradition, upon his birth Jigten Sumgön was initially given a Bön name, Welbar Tar.
Teaching
Lord Jigten Sumgön was one of the most notable masters of Tibetan Buddhism, and his teachings had wide-reaching influence for centuries to come; up to 130,000 monks and practitioners came to his teaching at one time. The eighth Karmapa referred to Jigten Sumgön's philosophical text Gongchik as "siddhānta of the Kagyupas", suggesting he considered it to be the definitive text outlining the philosophical tenets of all Kagyu schools. Seven centuries later, Dudjom Rinpoche quotes Jigten Sumgön on something else he emphasized, the significance of the preliminary practices :
Other teachings consider the main practice profound, but here it is the preliminary practices that we consider profound.
In a praise to his guru, Sherab Jungne said about Jigten Sumgön:
He teaches according to the four kinds of proof: First, the instructions of the holy lord lamas; Second, the teachings of sūtra and tantra of the Sugatas; Third, the experience of you yogins; Fourth, the history of the Dharma of Interdependence.
Regarding Buddhist philosophical tenets, Jigten Sumgön and his followers generally held a dismissive attitude towards their usefulness. Jigten Sumgön states in Gongchik : "The truth is veiled by all tenets whatsoever." He also wrote:
May those who mistake the system of tenets, which is a knot of the mind, as the Buddha’s intention, realise true reality and may their mindfulness be purified in itself.
All the views starting from the Non-Buddhists’ view of permanence and nihilism and up to the Madhyamikas’ are something that is a mind-made duality. Since I have not studied these views of the various tenets, I do not know them.
Due to his fame, many great masters came to study and practice in Drikung Thil for many centuries after Lord Jigten Sumgön's passing into parinirvāṇa. Perhaps the most famous of these was Lama Tsongkhapa, the founder of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. While staying near Drikung Thil, Tsongkhapa received the Drikung teachings on the Six Yogas of Naropa, as well as all of the outer and inner texts by Jigten Sumgön. Many Gelugpas, including the fourteenth Dalai Lama, uphold Tsongkhapa's lineage of Naropa's yogas until today.
