Asanga, Maitreya and Voltaire: Kalachakra Study + Practice Retreat with Robert AF Thurman at Menla
In this short video Professor Robert AF Thurman explains the story of the Future Buddha Maitreya appearing to Asanga and their connections to the Historical Buddha and the Kalachakra Mandala and practices.
This is video is an excerpt from the archive recording of the second morning session of the “Kalachakra Study & Practice Retreat” with Robert AF Thurman. Recorded July 2017 at Menla’s Nalanda Conference Center in Phoenicia, New York.
“Having been preserved for centuries in the fabled kingdom of Shambhala, the Kālachakra Tantra is an Unexcelled Yoga Tantra system of teachings which is believed to originate directly from Shakyamuni Buddha and which revolves around the concept of cycles (chakra) of time (kāla), from the cycles of the planets and the outer world to the cycles of human breathing and our physical-spiritual development.
It teaches the practice of working with the most subtle energies within one’s mind and body on the path to enlightenment, through famously complex deity yoga which helps practitioners with a basic understanding of emptiness dissolve their ordinary sense of self and re-create themselves in the ideal form of the Kālachakra deity pair in union who represent omniscient Buddhahood–the union of great bliss and the wisdom perceiving emptiness. Since Kālachakra is created of time and everything manifest is under the influence of time, Kālachakra Buddha is experiential knowledge of all manifest reality. Vishvamata, his spiritual consort and complement, is aware of all that is timeless, not time-bound, or out of the realm of time. In yab-yum union, they are temporality and a temporality conjoined and represent the full glory of the ultimate nature of reality, compassionately abiding in a vast multidimensional mandala rich with symbolic meaning.”
From www.menla.us
To learn more about the Annual “Kalachakra Practice + Study Retreat” held at Menla please visit: www.menla.us.
“Asanga, Maitreya and Voltaire: Kalachakra Study + Practice Retreat with Robert AF Thurman at Menla” Maitreya the Conqueror, 1926 by Nicholas Roerich, All rights reserved.
About Robert AF Thurman
Suggested Books & Audio by Robert AF Thurman:
Man of Peace: Illustrated Life Story of Tibet’s Dalai Lama (Book), Infinite Life: Awakening to Bliss Within (Book), Anger: The Seven Deadly Sins (Book), Inner Revolution (Book), Circling the Sacred Mountain : A Spiritual Adventure Through the Himalayas (Book), Essential Tibetan Buddhism (Book), The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Book of Natural Liberation Through Understanding in the Between (Book) The Jewel Tree of Tibet: The Enlightenment Engine of Tibetan Buddhism (Book), The Central Philosophy of Tibet (Book), The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture (Book), Life & Teachings of Tsong Khapa (Book), Why the Dalai Lama Matters: His Act of Truth as the Solution for China, Tibet, and the World (Book) & Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between: Living with the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Audio).
