Within the Kagyu world, Mahamudra is held and transmitted through several intertwined yet distinguishable streams. At the broadest level, one can speak of the great institutional lineages that carry their own Mahamudra manuals, styles of instruction, and contemplative emphases. Among these, the Karma Kagyu, Drikung Kagyu, Drukpa Kagyu, and Taklung Kagyu are especially prominent, each tracing its roots to early masters such as Düsum Khyenpa, Jigten Sumgön, Tsangpa Gyare, and Taklung Thangpa Tashi Pal. These are often regarded as major Kagyu schools, and within each, Mahamudra functions as a central contemplative path rather than a peripheral teaching. Their monasteries and retreat centers have served as crucibles where distinct ways of introducing the nature of mind have been refined over generations.

Alongside these larger streams, traditional histories also remember a constellation of smaller or “minor” Kagyu branches, many of which arose from the disciples of Phagmo Drupa Dorje Gyalpo. Names such as Trophu, Yazang, Shugseb, Martsang, Yelpa, Drungpa, Barom, and Phagdru (or Phagmo Drupa) Kagyu designate lineages that once maintained their own Mahamudra transmissions and commentarial traditions. Even where these have diminished or been absorbed into other schools, they remain important in the way Kagyu practitioners understand the diversity of Mahamudra expression. In this sense, the Kagyu heritage resembles a great river system, with many tributaries feeding a shared contemplative current.

Kagyu sources also describe Mahamudra in terms of three principal modes of transmission, each coloring the meditative journey in a slightly different way. Sutra Mahamudra presents realization through the lens of the classical Buddhist teachings on emptiness and meditation, emphasizing śamatha and vipaśyanā grounded in the sutric view. Mantra, or Tantra Mahamudra, unfolds within the completion-stage yogas of highest yoga tantra, where the recognition of mind’s nature is inseparable from subtle-body practices. Essence Mahamudra, by contrast, is spoken of as a direct, “naked” pointing-out of awareness itself, transmitted from master to disciple without elaborate conceptual scaffolding. These are not competing systems so much as complementary gateways into the same nondual insight.

Finally, lineage histories trace these various Kagyu Mahamudra currents back to foundational Indian and early Tibetan streams. The central axis runs from Tilopa through Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa, and Gampopa, but other lines associated with figures such as Maitrīpa, Shavaripa, Kukkuripa, and Niguma are also remembered as contributing to the Kagyu synthesis. In practice, these strands are often woven together, yet they are still distinguished in lineage charts and scholastic works to honor the diversity of sources from which the tradition draws. For a contemplative attuned to lineage, this layered heritage suggests that Mahamudra is less a single fixed method than a family of related approaches, all converging on the same recognition of mind’s luminous emptiness.