Reverence to our Guru, (His Holiness the Dalai Lama),
indivisible from Holy Manjughosha
and Primal Buddha Kalachakra,
Please now grant all common and supreme powers!
Reverence to the Primal Buddha, Kalachakra,
Whose Body transcends the subatomic realm,
shining translucent through every aspect,
Whose Speech touches the hearts of all beings
with inexpressible, invincible booming voice,
Whose Mind is the vajra of the great bliss
of the creativity of the undissipated drop,
encompassing all things while sporting
with the aspectless Lover Voidness!
Khedrub Jey (1385−1438), mKhas Grub Zhal Lung (Kalachakra Sadhana, Salutations)
I first beheld the color-particle mandala of Kalachakra at 23 in April 1965, during the annual Citra month performance of the Kalachakra practices in the Namgyal Monastery in Dharamsala, Punjab (at that time), India. As I walked around with the jostling crowd and marveled at the glistening vivid colors of the intricate powder-rendered patterns of the measureless mansion and its environs and seed-syllable-represented deities, my own voice, seeming to come from nowhere conscious, startled me by exclaiming in my head in English (that time I was mostly thinking in Tibetan); “If human beings can create something as exquisitely beautiful as that, then surely buddhahood is possible!” Though I might not have expressed it as such then, it was like seeing the genetic template of perfect enlightenment, body, speech, and mind. It awoke me from the subliminal cosmological despair shared with all modernized people, imprisoned within the indoctrinated idea that “life is meaningless, evolution is purposeless, so be resigned to such moments of relief as you can get in whatever way, wherever, whenever.” It gave me the hope that my deeper, almost innate determination that true happiness must be possible, this world does have a “happy ending,” beyond anything we are allowed to imagine, was in fact realistic. A dream, yes, considering our normal waking state, but a dream that could be realized in life.
The vision of enlightenment elaborated by the Buddha (Shakyamuni Buddha himself, according to Indo-Tibetan traditional scholars; some mystic celestial Shakyamuni Buddha encountered by visionaries in Kashmir fifteen hundred years later, according to modern historicist scholars) as the Wheel of Time buddha emanation and buddha world is among the most extraordinary of human artifacts. Time is usually represented in spiritual traditions, including most forms of Buddhism, as dreadful, destructive, deadly. It is relentless impermanence and cruel death. Krishna in the Bhagavadgita, reveals himself to the terrified Arjuna as “Great Time” (Mahakala), described as a monster destroyer with countless faces and gaping mouths devouring great streams of beings and worlds that flow into him. Shakespeare has Ulysses say to Achilles, with typically unforgettable profundity, “Time hath my Lord, a wallet at its back, wherein it puts alms for eternity!” (Troilus and Cressida). So what is a Buddha doing, creating himself as a “Wheel” (read “Machine”) of “Time.” How can what is supposed to be wisdom and compassion perfected, the consummation of all that living beings strive for, display itself as a machine of time?
My suggestion is that the buddha-art of the Wheel of Time is the Buddha’s solution of the insoluble dilemma of the bodhisattva, the resolution of the double bind she or he catches herself or himself in by undertaking the bodhisattva vow. In this vow, the bodhisattva vows to pursue perfect enlightenment for the sake of all beings, not seeking personal liberation from suffering alone, but only accepting the bliss of release when all beings also receive it. A noble determination, to be sure. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, our precious Guru, mentioning his name here only for a specific purpose, often repeats the verse of Shantideva, that he will stay in the world to help beings as long as space endures, and beings need his or her help.
Yet there have been innumerable buddhas in the past, buddhas free of suffering themselves, active in helping beings, at least some beings. Yet here we are still suffering and suffering. Did they break their vows as bodhisattvas? Did they abandon us to our miserable fates? It would certainly seem so, on the face of it. We cannot deny it.
But wait, we are ignorant, but buddhas are not. Do they know something we do not? Our ignorance causes our suffering. Their wisdom gives them their freedom. “As long as space endures!” “As long as time continues!” Hmmm! Could it be that buddhas go beyond space and time? Does their wisdom see through the intrinsic reality of space and time, realize their voidness of objective existence, thus releasing their universal compassion to reach out through all space and all time?
Certainly, they live beyond life-and-death-duality in a timeless moment and are beyond space because present everywhere. Thus they are tryadhvajnya, dus gsum mkhyen pa, conscious of all three times equally. Thus, they have not abandoned us or any living being, they are everywhere and everywhen for our sake, manifesting whatsoever educates whomsoever (gang la gang ‘dul de la de ston pa), as is said in the famous prayer addressed to Avalokiteshvara, who incarnates in our beloved Teacher.
There are said to be three ways in which a bodhisattva becomes a buddha; like a cowherd, like a boatman, and like a king; each has to do with time, again. Becoming a buddha like a cowherd is to bring all beings to freedom and enlightenment before you do, as a cowherd leads his herd into the pasture before entering it himself. Becoming a buddha like a boatman is to bring beings into freedom at exactly the same time as you enter it, as a boatman and his passengers reach the shore together at the same time. Becoming a buddha like a king is to first become a buddha yourself and then use your buddha powers to bring others into the same freedom as fast and effectively as possible. The first way is said to express the compassionate determination of the bodhisattva; but the last is in fact the practical way to accomplish your aim. How can you liberate others from suffering when you yourself are still caught in it?
The bottom line is that all three ways have to do with time. When through wisdom you break free of the reification of the stream of time and enter the infinite moment, the eternal now, every moment of every being’s possible future becomes immediately manifest to you, just as manifest as this particular moment. And yet the future, not being fixed in a concrete fate, can have many possibilities. Beings would perhaps never attain enlightenment completely on their own, if there were not infinite beings already enlightened tirelessly there to help them along the way. Therefore, when you become a buddha, your bodhisattva vow is fulfilled completely since you are present to all beings in all their future moments, not inertly and impassively watching them suffer, but compassionately, actively, totally engaged in seeing to it that they reach their own enlightenment with minimum suffering, optimal speed, total assistance by you in all possible creative manifestations. You accomplish all this instantaneously as far as you can perceive it with your buddha awareness, all the while you remain completely aware that those beings are perceiving themselves caught in the stream of time, evolving laboriously through long lifetimes and lifetimes.
And you can’t just pull them instantly, according to how they perceive an instant, into their own buddhahood—they are living beings, delicate and relational—just as you cannot take a sprout from a flower’s seed and pull it up into a blossomed flower. It has to grow according to its own causes and conditions of growth. Flowers and beings need time to grow, though your compassion, since it makes their suffering as intolerable to you as it is to them, empowers your creativity to accelerate their growth as much as possible.
Your Wheel of Time embodiment, therefore, is your promise to beings that you will remain present with them throughout all time. Your universal compassion turns time itself into an optimal environment for them to evolve optimally toward their own freedom and enlightenment. Your omniscient wisdom destroys time-thedestroyer, which takes away beings’ happiness, turning ordinary happiness into the suffering of change. You destroy the space-time of beings’ sufferings. Then your universal compassion restructures the space-time that endures and remains real for beings in their ignorance, that ticks away pain by pain for them and holds them in the grip of frustration, and you redesign it for them as a measureless mansion of bliss, a span of evolution, a sporting ground, a playing field of development, and a theater of liberation. And your omniscient wisdom ensures that their evolution beyond ignorance and harmfulness proceeds in the optimal possible way.
So here we are in these times of seemingly endless human violence, confusion, needless destruction of the environment, and even self-destruction of whole societies. We are caught in the poisonous ocean of unrealistic worldviews, especially those of nihilistic science that robs our breath of meaning and our steps of purpose. It is thousands of years past the most recent World Buddha’s manifest historical engagement with us, and everything seems to get worse and worse. But who shows up for us? Our Precious Teacher, our Ocean Guru. He constantly and tirelessly renews for us the pledge of Shakyamuni, his exquisite demonstration that he will never abandon any of us to our wretched fate—the art and wisdom of the Kalachakra, the Wheel of Time. He restores and educates and trains the monks of the Namgyal Monastery, the A-team for chasing away unhappiness, that used to, and will definitely soon again, cultivate their wisdom and practice their arts in the Potala Palace in Hlasa in Great Bod (“Lhasa in Tibet” as we inaccurately say it), serving the Dalai Lama incarnations as they keep hope alive on our difficult, “Tolerable” (Sanskrit Saha, “Tolerable” as in “barely tolerable”), planet.
So with these heartfelt words of appreciation and encouragement, I welcome this rich volume of learned studies of all sorts of scholars and practitioners of the Kalachakra arts and sciences, assembled by the Namgyal Institute in Ithaca to honor and celebrate His Holiness the Great Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Great Bod especially, and also now the whole world. May it help remove all obstacles from His Holy Person and help Him in whatever slightest way to realize all His deepest wishes for His people and all peoples and beings! May it please not only His Holiness but also all people who are interested in a positive world, a realized Shambhala or Land of Peace, where everyone, no matter what their religion or race or gender or culture, keeping them all and upgrading them all, can live in peace, enjoy their hard-earned human lifetime, and seek its essential potential by educating him- or herself in all the arts of wisdom, kindness, love, and joy!
Sarvamangalam!
Robert A. F. Thurman
(Ari Genyen Tenzin Chotrak)
Tibetan Lunar New Year of the Fire Pig!
Tibetan National Royal Year, 2134
Sunday, February 16, 2007 CE
Woodstock, New York, USA, Turtle Island