Awakening To The Kalachakra

How Easy It Is to Completely Miss the Inner Wisdom of Our Ancient Wisdom Traditions.

- ED Bastian, PhD

About 35 years ago, the Dalai Lama accepted an invitation to bestow the Kalachakra Tantra (the Wheel of Life) at the Deer Park Buddhist Center near Madison, Wisconsin, and I asked to help film the process. The Kalachakra is the “King of Tantras,” said to be the most complete and complex, and the only “Higher Tantra Initiation” open to the public. I accepted because I knew the event would be historically significant: the first time the Kalachakra had been bestowed outside of India or Tibet. But at the time, I wasn’t prepared to embrace the fantastical images, esoteric methods, and lofty claims that this initiation could speed up spiritual transformation into the body, speech, and mind of an enlightened Buddha. Our raw film footage ended up being stored at the Smithsonian, and only now are we working to complete the project. The goal is to explain why these public initiations, which have now been experienced by more than a million people worldwide, may actually help usher in an era of world peace.

ORIGINS OF TANTRA

Buddhism, of course, is best known for meditation, and its most enduring image is the Buddha seated in the lotus posture, meditating under the Bodhi Tree to gain Enlightenment so he could free others from suffering. The Buddha realized the central importance of compassion and that all phenomena are impermanent, interdependent, and empty of inherent existence. During his life, he taught others to become enlightened through meditations on wisdom and compassion. Centuries after the Buddha’s death, paintings and sculptures of the various manifestations of the Buddha became transformative agents propelling believers toward Enlightenment. These images became important elements in the practices of the Buddhist Tantras, including the Kalachakra.