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Kalachakra: Textual and Ritual Perspectives
by Jensine Andresen 
 

Not a published book, but Dissertation (1997, UMI Number: 9733170, http://www.umi.com)

Available from UMI Dissertation Services, 300 North Zeeb Road, P.O. Box 1346, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106-1346, USA

Review by : Andy Wistreich
Overall Rating:

Andresens thesis is based around her 'preliminary translation' of Chapter Three of the Kalacakratantra together with its commentary the Vimalaprabha, which is the chapter on the initiation. In this respect, it picks up where Vesna Wallace's thesis based around the second chapter leaves off. In most other respects however, this is a very different type of work. I cannot comment on the accuracy of the translation, but since she herself describes it as 'preliminary' she acknowledges that in future her work will be refined. The third chapter is highly technical and is almost entirely focused on the ritual. However, as the book on the initiation by the Dalai Lama and Jeffrey Hopkins shows, even a study of the initiation can elucidate important understanding of the structure of the practice of the tantra, since it is here that the seeds are sown for all the realisations through all the yogas. The layout of the translation is useful, since it contains the Sanskrit then Tibetan then English, with the commentary added in brackets, and like Vesna Wallace, Jensine Andresen also includes references to Buton's commentary.

As she tells us in her abstract at the beginning, Andresen adopts a multi-disciplinary critical approach to Kalacakra as a cultural phenomenon, looking at 'the social, psychological, economic and political factors that have propelled this tradition forward.' Like David Reigle in Kalacakra Sadhana and Social Responsibility, she works across the canvass of history, looking at Shambhala, Tibet, and the West as comparable contexts within which Kalacakra has achieved social significance and meaning. True to her post-modernist methodology, her chapters arise as apparently disconnected fragments in her quest to engage with multiple readings of her central 'text', the initiation itself. She successfully deconstructs the concept of the initiation as an offering us as alternatives, the initiation as a video, as a spectacle, as a political vehicle, and in the process examines the notion of ritual as a social phenomenon. She helps us to see Kalacakra in a series of settings, as an instrument of power. Her critical stance inevitably renders her somewhat an outsider to this power, so practitioners may find themselves at odds with her perspective, since they are harnessing this power for the inner purpose of spiritual development, whilst Andresen seems mostly to look at Kalacakra as a social phenomenon. However, she cannot help being drawn into it, and has herself taken the initiation and has attended like the rest of us. We can sympathise with her orientation of one foot in the western academic tradition, and one foot in the Buddhist practice tradition. However, it makes for a serious tension in the whole work, which comes to a head in her final chapter, . Here, Western academic balance is sacrificed to a feeling of panic at the commodification of Tibetan Buddhism, through its encounter with capitalist culture.

I feel that the issues raised by Jensine Andresen are most relevant to our project of introducing this rich, diverse and powerful tradition to the West. We might read her concerns as a series of warnings. She warns against the development of the Kalacakra Initiation as an exotic spectacle. She warns against the tradition whereby the Kalacakra initiation is an instrument of powerful men in patriarchal cultures. She warns of how the internet and capitalist culture may have a destructive effect on the Kalacakra tradition. Although she does not say as much, for me, her whole thesis is a warning against losing touch with Kalacakra as a practice tradition, and of course this danger applies to the whole of Buddhism. The wherewithal to remedy this lies completely in our hands. I guess that Jensine Andresens thesis is evidence of the fear of losing the plot which can beset us unless we root our entire project in personal practice and pure motivation.

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