The Kusāli Yogi: Vinaya, Tantric Yoga, and the Internalization of Practice in the Early Kagyupa Tradition
Jan-Ulrich Sobisch
Aug 2026 · BRILL
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314
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About this ebook
This book offers a new interpretation of early Kagyupa Buddhism by demonstrating that Vinaya, tantric yoga, and mahāmudrā are not separate domains but integrated aspects of a single path. Focusing on Jikten Sumgön and his lineage, it shows how disciplined conduct functions as a method for transforming the mind and stabilizing awareness. Tantric practices involving channels, winds, and bindus are reinterpreted as techniques for generating and regulating experience, subordinate to realization. The study further argues that practices involving a karmamudrā were marginal, highly restricted, and increasingly internalized. The ideal of the kusāli yogi emerges as the key to this integration, embodying a path in which all experience becomes a means to realization.
This book offers a new interpretation of early Kagyupa Buddhism by demonstrating that Vinaya, tantric yoga, and mahāmudrā are not separate domains but integrated aspects of a single path. Focusing on Jikten Sumgön and his lineage, it shows how disciplined conduct functions as a method for transfo...
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About the author
Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, Ph.D. (1999), a former professor of Tibetan Studies, taught at Copenhagen University and Ludwig Maximilians University Munich. He works with CRC “Metaphors of Religion” at Ruhr University Bochum and publishes on early Kagyupa tradition and Tantric Buddhist metaphors.
Jan-Ulrich Sobisch, Ph.D. (1999), a former professor of Tibetan Studies, taught at Copenhagen University and Ludwig Maximilians University Munich. He works with CRC “Metaphors of Religion” at Ruhr University Bochum and publishes on early Kagyupa tradition and Tantric Buddhist metaphors.
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