Unlike most of the previous Karmapas, the 15th Karmapa Khakyab Dorje (1871-1922) married and fathered three sons. His root guru was the great Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye (1813-1899), one of the most prominent Tibetan Buddhists of the nineteenth century. He is credited as one of the founders of the non-sectarian Rimé movement. From him the Karmapa received the entire transmission of the Kagyu teachings, including the instructions of the Five Treasures that Kongtrul compiled in over one hundred volumes, presenting religious thought and practice from the Rimé perspective.
The 15th Karmapa recognized two of his sons as the 2nd Jamgon Kongtrul and the 12th Shamarpa, Tugsay Jamyang Rinpoche. The latter was not officially recognized because of the political situation relating to the Shamarpa lineage.
The main consort of the 15th Karmapa and the mother of his children was known as Khandro Chenmo, which means “the great dakini.” In his book Blazing Splendor, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche describes her:
Khandro Chenmo was very beautiful and she became a remarkable practitioner. She was loving and compassionate, full of devotion and with an unfathomable spiritual depth. I knew her quite well in the last years of her life…. She was a very special being, a true dakini. She spent almost all of her time in retreat practicing sadhana and reciting mantra, and reached a profound level of experience and realization. That is not hearsay, I can bear witness to it myself.
