KĀLACAKRA

The Kālacakra Tantra (Tibetan, Dus kyi 'khor lo'i rgyud; Wheel of Time, System of Mysticism) is the most complex of the numerous VajrayĀna Buddhist systems of mysticism. Although it presupposes and draws on all of the preceeding developments of Indian Buddhism, it is innovative in both its soteriological doctrines and in its mythic prophetic vision. Based on the ancient idea of the homology of the macrocosm and the microcosm, the Kālacakra presents a tantric yogic method for transforming an individual from a suffering, saṃsāric state into the transcendent state of perfect awakening. Drawing on Hindu mythology and historical events, it predicts a conflict between the forces of good and evil out of which a new golden age will be born.

Doctrine

The subject matter of the Kālacakra system has a tripartite structure: the external world (bāhya), the self (adhyātman), and the transcendent (para). The last topic can be subdivided into three: initiation (abhiṣeka), practice (sādhana), and gnosis (jñāna). The yoga of the Kālacakra is founded on the idea that the world (the macrocosm) and the self (the microcosm) share essential properties and that a person contains all of the elements of the cosmos. Correspondences between world and self allow the universe to be treated as a unified field for the development of salvific knowledge—gnosis.

In the Kālacakra initiation rites—the entryway to the tantric path—the guru introduces the disciple to the maṆḌala, a palace inhabited by deities that represents the disciple's world/self in a purified, awakened state. The maṇḍala provides a new self-image for the disciple: Whereas previously the disciple was enmeshed in the impure, limited, and confused projections of ordinary saṃsāric mind, the mysteries of the maṇḍala revealed in the initiation rites furnish a glimpse of the disciple's potential for the realization of awakening.

During the initial phase of tantric practice—the generation stage (utpattikrama)—the practitioner first dissolves ordinary perceptions of self and environment into a perception of emptiness, and then imaginatively generates a vision of self in the form of the buddha deities Śrī Kālacakra (Splendid Wheel of Time) and Viśvamātā (Mother of the Universe), together with their progeny, the rest of the maṇḍala. This stage—explicitly correlated with the process of human conception, birth, and maturation—transforms and divinizes the power of imagination, loosens attachment to mundane concerns, and produces a great store of merit.

The second phase of practice—the completion stage (utpannakrama)—uses controlled sensory deprivation, mental fixation, and manipulation of respiration and other energies in the body to induce a physiological and psychic condition similar to death. In this state all forms of ideation cease, and the practitioner obtains a vision of the emptiness image (śūnyatābimbam). The emptiness image is a gnosis that nonconceptually cognizes the totality of the universe in terms of both conventional truth (the appearances of ordinary phenomena) and ultimate truth (the universal emptiness that is everything's lack of absolute, autonomous existence). Vision of the emptiness image gives rise to imperishable bliss (akṣarasukha), so that gnosis and bliss are inseparably fused. Repeated cultivation of this experience purifies the mind of obscurations, finally culminating in the practitioner's achievement of the transcendent, perfect awakening of a buddha.

Myth

According to the Kālacakra tradition, the Buddha taught this tantra at the Dhānyakaṭaka stūpa in South India to King Sucandra, ruler of Shambhala, a vast empire located in Central Asia. The Kālacakra was

preserved in Shambhala by Sucandra's successors, the sixth of whom—Yaśas—was given the title Kalkin for unifying all of the castes of Shambhala within a single Vajrayāna family. Also, the Kālacakra prophesies that at the end of the current age of degeneration, the twenty-fifth Kalkin of Shambhala—Cakrin—will lead the Hindu gods and the army of Shambhala in battle at Baghdad against the followers of the "barbarian religion" Islam. Kalkin Cakrin's defeat of the forces of Islam will mark the end of the age of degeneration and the beginning of a new golden age.

The preceding is a Buddhist rewriting of the earlier Hindu myth of Kalki updated to suit historical conditions contemporaneous with the origin of the Kālacakra. In the Hindu myth it is prophesied that the great god ViṢṆu will incarnate as a brahman warrior named Kalki in the village of Shambhala. At the end of the age of degeneration, Kalki will eradicate barbarians and unruly outcastes, thus reestablishing brahman supremacy and initiating a new golden age.

The Kālacakra first appeared in India during the early decades of the eleventh century c.e., when, in the name of Islam, Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni conducted expeditions of plunder and iconoclastic destruction in northwestern India. Thus the Kālacakra's retelling of the prophetic myth of Kalki replaces a brahman Hindu hero with a Buddhist messiah in response to the traumatizing depredations of the Muslim invaders of India.

History

The most important texts of the Kālacakra system contain a date that enables scholars to determine that they were completed between 1025 and approximately 1040. The authors of these works disguised their identities with mythic pseudonyms, but among the known early masters of the tradition is Piṇḍo (tenth–eleventh century), a brahman Buddhist monk born in Java who taught the famous Dīpaṃkaraśrījñāna (Atisha; 982–1054), and Nāropāda (d.u.–ca. 1040), the renowned Vajrayāna teacher of Nālandā monastic university. The Kālacakra flourished among the Buddhist intelligentsia of northern India from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries, and it continued to be studied and practiced in India until at least the end of the sixteenth century.

From northern India the Kālacakra spread to Nepal and Tibet, and from Tibet it was transmitted to Mongolia and China. The Tibetans produced a vast literature on the system, and continue to study and practice the Kālacakra. During the last decades of the twentieth century, the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet performed the Kālacakra initiation rites on numerous occasions in Asia and in the United States, fostering the continued cross-cultural diffusion of this important Vajrayāna tradition.

See also:Hinduism and Buddhism; Islam and Buddhism; Tantra

Bibliography

Lamrimpa, Gen. Transcending Time: An Explanation of the Kālachakra Six-Session Guru Yoga, tr. B. Alan Wallace. Boston: Wisdom, 1999.

Newman, John. "Eschatology in the Wheel of Time Tantra." In Buddhism in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

Newman, John. "Itineraries to Sambhala." In Tibetan Literature: Studies in Genre, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón and Roger R. Jackson. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1996.

Newman, John. "Islam in the Kālacakra Tantra." Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 21, no. 2 (1998): 311–371.

Newman, John. "Vajryoga in the Kālacakra Tantra." In Tantra in Practice, ed. David Gordon White. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Sopa, Geshe Lhundub; Jackson, Roger; and Newman, John. The Wheel of Time: The Kālachakra in Context. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1991.

John Newman