Kalachakra
nondualistic tantra tradition in Tibetan Buddhism
Kālacakra (Tibetan: དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ།, Wylie: dus kyi 'khor lo) is a polysemic term in Vajrayana Buddhism and Hinduism that means "wheel of time" or "time cycles". "Kālacakra" is also the name of a series of Buddhist texts and a major practice lineage in Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism. The tantra is considered to belong to the unexcelled yoga (anuttara-yoga) class.
Kālacakra also refers both to a patron tantric deity or yidam in Vajrayana and to the philosophies and yogas of the Kālacakra tradition. The tradition's origins are in India and its most active later history and presence has been in Tibet. The tradition contains teachings on cosmology, theology, philosophy, sociology, soteriology, myth, prophecy, medicine, and yoga. It depicts a mythic reality whereby cosmic and socio-historical events correspond to processes in the bodies of individuals. These teachings are meant to lead to a transformation of one's body and mind into perfect Buddhahood through various yogic methods.
The Kālacakra tradition is based on Mahayana Buddhist non-dualism, which is strongly influenced by Madhyamaka philosophy, but also draws on a wide range of Buddhist and non-Buddhist (mainly Hindu) traditions (such as Vaibhāṣika, Kashmir Shaivism, Vaishnavism, and Samkhya). The Kālacakra tradition holds that Kālacakra teachings were taught in India by Gautama Buddha himself.
The public source identifies “Kalachakra” as nondualistic tantra tradition in Tibetan Buddhism. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kalachakra, nondualistic and tantra.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kalachakra” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.