Kālacakra

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Kālacakra

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Book
Ornament of Stainless Light
The premiere volume of Thupten Jinpa’s thirty-two-volume Library of Tibetan Classics series, inaugurated to coincide with the Dalai Lama’s conferral of the initiation rite of Kālacakra in Toronto in April 2004.

The Kālacakra, or “wheel of time,” tantra likely entered Indian Mahayana Buddhism around the tenth century. In expounding the root tantra, the Indian master Puṇḍarīka, one of the legendary Kalkī kings of the land of Shambhala, wrote his influential Stainless Light. Ornament of Stainless Light is an authoritative Tibetan exposition of this important text, composed in the fifteenth century by Khedrup Norsang Gyatso, tutor to the Second Dalai Lama.

One of the central projects of Kālacakra literature is a detailed correlation between the human body and the external universe. In working out this complex correspondence, the Kālacakra texts present an amazingly detailed theory of cosmology and astronomy, especially about the movements of the various celestial bodies. The Kālacakra tantra is also a highly complex system of Buddhist theory and practice that employs vital bodily energies, deep meditative mental states, and a penetrative focus on subtle points within the body’s key energy conduits known as channels. Ornament of Stainless Light addresses all these topics, elaborating on the external universe, the inner world of the individual, the Kālacakra initiation rites, and the tantric stages of generation and completion, all in a highly readable English translation. (Source: Wisdom Publications)
Kilty, Gavin, trans. Ornament of Stainless Light: An Exposition of the Kālacakra Tantra. By Khedrup Norsang Gyatso (mkhas grub nor bzang rgya mtsho). Library of Tibetan Classics 14. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2004.
Text
Kalkī Śrī Puṇḍarīka: vimalaprabhānāmamūlatantrānusāriṇīdvādaśasāhasrikālaghukālacakratantrarājaṭīkā
A crucial commentary to the Kālacakra Tantra purported to have been written by Kalkī Śrī Puṇḍarīka, the fabled Second King of Shambhala also known as Kulika Puṇḍarīka, though in the Tibetan tradition the work is sometimes attributed to the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara whom Puṇḍarīka was considered to be an emanation of. In the Tibetan tradition it is counted among the Three Cycles of Bodhisattva Commentaries (Sems 'grel skor gsum), which are a trilogy of canonical commentaries attributed to the transcendent Bodhisattvas Vajrapaṇi, Vajragarbha, and Avalokiteśvara on the Cakrasamvara, Hevajra, and Kālacakra Tantras, respectively.
Text
Tāranātha: dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i chos skor gyi byung khungs nyer mkho bsdus pa
Tāranātha's history of the Kālacakra teachings.
Text
Rendawa Zhönu Lodrö: dpal dus kyi 'khor lo'i nges don gsal bar byed pa rin po che'i sgron ma
In the Jewel Lamp Illuminating the Definitive Meaning of the Glorious Kālacakra, Rendawa Zhönu Lodrö presents the content of Kālacakra tantra using the scheme of the causal continuum or the ground nature, the method continuum or the path, and the resultant continuum or the all pervading adamantine body of the Buddha. Though not a polemical work, he repeatedly refutes the position holding buddha-nature and resultant Buddha body to be identical, absolute and eternal. He provides a very clear and comprehensive presentation of the causal continuum through conventional and ultimate types of the ground nature, the method or path continuum by discussing the six limbs of yogic applications in Kālacakra, and the resultant state by discussing its nature, cause, duration, forms and qualities.
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