Sarma (Tibetan Buddhism) in the context of "Adi-Buddha"

Atish Dipankar Shrijnan (Sanskrit transliteration: Atīśa Dīpaṅkara Śrījñāna) (c. 982–1054 CE) was a Bengali Buddhist religious teacher and leader. He is generally associated with his body of work authored at Vikramaśīla Monastery in modern day Bihar, India. He was a major figure in the spread of 11th-century Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism in Asia and traveled to Sumatra and Tibet. Atiśa, along with this chief disciple Dromtön, is regarded as the founder of the Kadam school, one of the New Translation schools of Tibetan Buddhism. In the 14th century, the Kadam school was supplanted by the Gelug tradition, which adopted its teachings and absorbed its monasteries.

The Drukpa or Drukpa Kagyu (Dzongkha: འབྲུག་པ་བཀའ་བརྒྱུད) lineage, sometimes called Dugpa in older sources, is a branch of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The Kagyu school is one of the Sarma or "New Translation" schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The Drukpa lineage was founded in the Tsang region of Tibet by Tsangpa Gyare (1161–1211), and later became influential in Ladakh and Bhutan. It is one of several lineages known as "Red Hat sects".

Within the Drukpa lineage, there are further sub-schools, most notably the eastern Kham tradition and middle Drukpa school which prospered in Ladakh and surrounding areas. In Bhutan the Drukpa lineage is the dominant school and state religion.

Samantabhadri (Sanskrit; Devanagari: समन्तभद्री ; IAST: samantabhadrī, Tibetan: ཀུན་ཏུ་བཟང་མོ, Wylie: kun tu bzang mo) is a dakini and female Buddha from the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition. She is the consort and female counterpart of Samantabhadra, known amongst some Tibetan Buddhists as the Primordial Buddha. Samantabhadri herself is known as the primordial Mother Buddha. Samantabhadri is the dharmakaya dakini aspect of the Trikaya, or three bodies of a Buddha. As such, Samantabhadri represents the aspect of Buddhahood in whom delusion and conceptual thought have never arisen. As font or wellspring of the aspects of the divine feminine she may be understood as the Great Mother or as an aspect of Prajnaparamita.

Samantabhadri is a figure found primarily in the Nyingma or Old Translation school of Tibetan Buddhism. A figure that is nearly equivalent to Samantabhadri in the New Translation or Sarma schools is Vajradhatu-ishvari; she is dark blue and her consort is Vajradhara.

Mahāmudrā (Sanskrit: महामुद्रा, Tibetan: ཕྱག་ཆེན་, Wylie: phyag chen, THL: chag-chen, contraction of Tibetan: ཕྱག་རྒྱ་ཆེན་པོ་, Wylie: phyag rgya chen po, THL: chag-gya chen-po) literally means "great seal" or "great imprint" and refers to the fact that "all phenomena inevitably are stamped by the fact of wisdom and emptiness inseparable". Mahāmudrā is a multivalent term of great importance in later Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism which "also occurs occasionally in Hindu and East Asian Buddhist esotericism."

The name also refers to a body of teachings representing the culmination of all the practices of the New Translation schools of Tibetan Buddhism, who believe it to be the quintessential message of all of their sacred texts. The practice of Mahāmudrā is also known as the teaching called "Sahajayoga" or "Co-emergence Yoga". In Tibetan Buddhism, particularly the Kagyu school, Sahaja Mahāmudrā is sometimes seen as a different Buddhist vehicle (yana), the "Sahajayana" (Tibetan: lhen chig kye pa), also known as the vehicle of self-liberation.

Classes of Tantra in Tibetan Buddhism refers to the categorization of Buddhist tantric scriptures in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism inherited numerous tantras and forms of tantric practice from medieval Indian Buddhist Tantra. There were various ways of categorizing these tantras in India. In Tibet, the Sarma (New Translation) schools categorize tantric scriptures into four classes, while the Nyingma (Ancients) school use six classes of tantra.