The Gyalwa Karmapa (honorific title: His Holiness the Gyalwa (རྒྱལ་བ་, 'Victorious One') Karmapa, more formally as Gyalwang (རྒྱལ་དབང་ཀརྨ་པ་, 'King of Victorious Ones') Karmapa, and informally as the Karmapa Lama) is the head of the Karma Kagyu, the largest sub-school of the Kagyu school (Tibetan: བཀའ་བརྒྱུད, Wylie: bka' brgyud), itself one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. The Karmapa was Tibet's first consciously incarnating lama.
A decade after the passing of the 16th Karmapa, a controversy within the Karma Kagyu school over the recognition process of a second Karmapa occurred. The identity of the current 17th Karmapa was resolved by the Karmapas themselves, Orgyen Trinley Dorje and Trinley Thaye Dorje, both of whom issued a joint statement on 04 December 2023.[1]
^Orgyen Trinley Dorje and Trinley Thaye Dorje. 4 December 2023, "A joint statement regarding the reincarnation of Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche". Karmapa.org. Retrieved 14 December 2023