His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be in Ladakh this July, when we will be on tour there!  He will confer the Kalachakra Initiation from July 10 to 13.  On July 14, a long life empowerment (tsewang) and a ceremony offering prayers for the long life of His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be performed.

Contact Website:www.ladakhkalachakra2014.com

Several years ago our tour was lucky enough to see His Holiness the Dalai Lama at Diskit Gompa in Nubra valley. The teachings that day were on the initial procedures of taking refuge and the bodhisattva and tantric vows. I was personally moved by His Holiness, his warmth and humour and by the ceremony conducted by the monks, who were attending from Gompas all over the area.

The local people demonstrated such love, such devotion and humbleness that I left feeling uplifted and hopeful for the future.
“The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” A quote by Bruce Lee, and one that I resonate with!

Overview of Kalachakra

The word kalachakra means cycles of time, and the Kalachakra system presents three such cycles – external, internal and alternative. The external and internal cycles deal with time as we normally know it, while the alternative cycles are practices for gaining liberation from these two.

Time, in Buddhism, is defined as a measurement of change.

These cycles are driven by impulses of energy, known in the Kalachakra system as “winds of karma.” Karma is a force intimately connected with mind and arises due to confusion about reality. Imagining that ourselves, others and everything around us exist in the way our mind makes them appear – as if with concrete, permanent identities established from within each being or thing – we act on the basis of this confusion with attachment, anger or stubborn foolishness.

As each of our lives unfolds over the course of time, karmic potentials from our previous actions ripen at appropriate astrological, historical and life-cycle moments into the various events we experience. Some of these are pleasant, but many are not. We seem to have little choice about what happens in life.