Kalachakra Mandalas From Nepal

Kalachakra Mandala

The word Kalachakra means “Cycle of Time”.

The Kalachakra Tantra is a profound Buddhist system of teaching and practice which encompasses three aspects:

• Outer Kalachakra: the external environment, the universe, and its cycles of arising and disintegrating.
• Inner Kalachakra: the sentient beings living in the universe, and the cycles of death and birth and internal flows of breath and energy;
• Alternative Kalachakra: The practice of purification undertaken by an individual so that ordinary death, birth, and manifestation on both an individual and universal level, which are usually uncontrollably subject to the passage of time, become purified into the fully Enlightened state of complete Buddhahood.

Kalachakra Mandalas

Kalachakra is a black-skinned, four-faced god with twelve arms and twenty-four hands. He is the personification of time, and his name carries that meaning. The Sanskrit word “Kala” means time and “chakra” means cycle. The name makes reference to the cyclical nature of time in Buddhist and Hindu cosmologies. In these traditions, time is nonlinear and without end, having an almost three-dimensional quality.

Dragon Kalachakra painting