The Kalachakra Empowerment is Buddhism's supreme celebration of the interconnectedness of all living things, as Jeremy Ball explains.

Buddhism can be split into two main schools, Hinayana and Mahayana. The Lesser Vehicle, Hinayana, focuses on the teachings of the Gautama Buddha as recorded in the lessons known as sutra that he gave while in the flesh on the physical plane. With these teachings the intent is to rid one’s mind of mental afflictions in order to free oneself from suffering. The Greater Vehicle, Mahayana, as followed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people, adheres to sutra as well. Yet they take it one step further. The purpose for attaining an enlightened mind is so that you can then be in a position to assist all sentient beings. If carried out sincerely this pledge generates great compassion and a feeling of interconnectedness - the oneness of all. It is called bodhicitta, and can act as the fuel to propel one toward the ultimate goal. Once there, you realise the true interdependence of everything - or so I’m told.

The Mahayana teachings can be further divided, as there is a set of “secret” teachings. The fact that they exist is no secret and you aren’t required to roll your trousers up and do a funny handshake to receive them. They are secret because the masters only revealed them to the students of the highest intent and greatest mental capacity. Often, to receive the teachings requires taking the Bodhisattva Vow, in which the student vows to remain in the cycle of existence until all sentient beings are saved (enlightened). Quite a big thing, a little bit more than giving up your seat on a packed bus for someone else and waiting in the rain for the next one - it could mean several hundred more incarnations of suffering, losses and frustrations! It both comes from, and generates, the knowledge and feeling of the interconnectedness of life - a big part of the goal.

These secret teachings are called Tantra or Tantric teachings. Don’t get too excited, there is no actual cavorting - not on the physical plane at least. And most of the highest Tantric Masters are virgins! It is more to do with channelling and transmuting energy, sometimes sexual, for higher spiritual attainment.

The Tantric teachings are then split into a hierarchy of four, with Kalachakra being in the elite bracket known as Anuttara or Supreme Tantra. This does not necessarily make it the automatic first choice for one’s spiritual practice, as there are many factors to take into account when making a selection of this manner - a Porsche doesn’t suit everybody’s needs. And for those who like to know the origin of things, the name Kalachakra translates from Sanskrit as the “Wheel of Time”, a gateway to enlightenment.

Before I get on to the juicy stuff, just let me share with you a little of how a Tantric practice works. The aim, as in all Buddhism, is to achieve an omniscient mind and Tantra is the superhighway to achieving this goal. It works by meditating on the effect - basically you pretend that you already have a perfectly enlightened body. More than that, through the empowerment conferred by the Tantric Master, you actually merge various aspects of your bodies, both physical and subtle, with the Tantric Master and/or the deity in question. Modern day personal development practices employ similar strategies to this; from axioms like “be the change you want to see in the world” and “fake it till you make it” to advanced NLP (Neuro Linguistic Psychology) processes where you merge yourself with and become your future selves. With Tantric Guru Yoga and Deity Yoga practices, you mix your energy bodies with those of enlightened beings. You can see why it’s the superhighway.

But before you can gain access to this wonderful freeway to Nibhana and beyond, you have to be initiated. That's where the Kalachakra Empowerment comes in. A lot of us have received Reiki empowerments. When done properly this, too, is a Tantric empowerment. Well, the Kalachakra empowerment is not dissimilar in principle - the difference is it will often take four or five full days, and you may be taking it simultaneously with as many as 250,000 people if you attend a ceremony on the Indian Subcontinent or a mere 10,000 if the ceremony is in the West. To receive the empowerment, you must take certain vows of general behaviour and respect for the teachings, and to receive the full empowerment you must take the Bodhisattva Vow. It is only for the open- hearted and those intending to be this way.

People attend a Kalachakra Empowerment for different reasons: for a few it is their chosen spiritual practice for this lifetime; some desire the imprint on their mind stream to assist with their practices in future lifetimes; yet others seek the blessing it bestows upon them in a more mundane sense. The number of people of differing spiritual backgrounds who attend for the latter reason or out of curiosity is growing, particularly in the West. For this reason, and because of the significance of the times in which we are living, HH the 14th Dalai Lama (he is the same being that has reincarnated 14 times in a row to be a Tantric Master and leader of a Mahayana lineage) has greatly increased the bestowal of the Kalachakra in recent times.

In long distant incarnations, it may have been granted only once or twice in a lifetime with people flocking from far corners of the Tibetan plateau and beyond to attend. Now HH Dalai Lama gives it twice a year, once somewhere in India and once in the West. In fact, he will give it for the 30th time, in his current incarnation, next January in Amaravati, India. This will be a very auspicious ceremony, as it is in the place where Gautama Buddha first brought this powerful teaching into the physical plane. It is said that while the Lord Buddha gave a discourse at Vultures Peak in Bihar, North India, 12 lunar months after having achieved full enlightenment under the bodhi tree, he simultaneously expounded the Kalachakra to a host of Buddhas, gods and goddesses near Amaravati in South India. King Suchandra of Shambhala (the Buddhist realm of spiritual warriors - a higher dimensional reality of peace and spiritual prosperity) miraculously descended to Earth to attend the teachings, record and take them back to Shambhala where Kalachakra became the spiritual practice of choice. And as legend would have it, it is being held until such time as the world and human beings are ripe for it to be revealed en masse to assist in bringing about the fabled reign of Shambhala on Earth, an unparalleled time of peace and opportunity to practise spiritual advancement.

I speculate that it is no mistake that in this time of planetary change from the Piscean to the Aquarian age, the age many people believe to be the time as prophesied in the Book of Revelation and referred to by the Mayan elders many, many moons ago, HH Dalai Lama has greatly stepped up the dissemination of Shambhala's prized teaching. Could the one thousand years of peace spoken of in the Bible be equated with the reign of Shambhala on Earth? Buddhists realise this can only come about once a critical mass of people in society take responsibility for their own mind and what it contributes to the collective interdependent whole. Hence the fields are ploughed and fertile now the seeds are being sown.

It is said that if you have received the seeds of a Kalachakra Empowerment in a previous lifetime you will be drawn to it again. The imprint will be on your mind stream and you will be strangely and irresistibly drawn to Kalachakra again. Perhaps the name will ring in your mind once you have heard it or you will have a strange fascination with the symbol or mandala. They may even cause noticeable activations in your body. You may, as I did, even feel the urge to fly halfway round the world to sit on a mat on a dusty floor among 250,000 people in the baking heat, spending your nights huddled up in a mud hut just to attend it. Many thousand Tibetans travel by foot for weeks over high mountain passes, using up their life savings, to attend and get a glimpse of HH Dalai Lama. I think my hardships were minimal in comparison.

For the lovers of pomp and ceremony and beautiful intricacies the Kalachakra has it all, especially on the Indian Subcontinent. It takes about a fortnight for the whole event to take place. It’s a cross between a University Conference and a Buddhist Jamboree, with monks by the thousands trotting around town. Makeshift food and accommodation tents are put up and there are market stalls with Tibetan goods and souvenirs, even ferris wheels and dodgems! There certainly is a carnival atmosphere in the lead up, as everyone waits and anticipates Santa Lama and the spiritual gifts he will bestow. I think of it as Buddstock!

It all starts with a few days of preparatory rituals to gain permission from the local earth spirits to perform the ceremony - they generally require appeasing. Then the meticulous construction of the sand mandala commences. The mandala is the palace and abode of the deity Guru Kalachakra and exists in the higher realms. Fantastically talented and dedicated monks construct a 2D version of it out of coloured grains of sand. No glue and definitely no mistakes - probably the hardest jigsaw you are ever likely to find created by several monks working round the clock for five days on hands on knees. While the mandala is under construction, the Tantric Master gives several days of preparatory teachings, with the message firmly drummed home that it is practising the basic virtues day in and day out that is the basis of achieving Buddhahood and that the higher teachings are just the icing on the cake. After four or five days of preliminary teachings, the excitement really starts to grow, as more and more people arrive from out of town to receive just the empowerment. The expectation peaks as proceedings stop for a day, the pre-exam wind down as everyone relaxes and there are ritual offering dances and other goodies.

Then to exams, or rather the initiation begins. The first day of preliminary empowerments is followed by seven other empowerments spread over three further days. It is on the day of the preliminary empowerment that you can choose to take the Bodhisattva vows in order to be conferred the full empowerment or to simply receive the ceremony as a blessing. You are also given two blades of kusha grass, the short one for under your pillow and the big one under your mattress. That night, you must pay particular attention to your dreams as some aspect of yourself will be revealed and the dreams interpreted the next day. I can tell you that whatever happened in the empowerment the first day of the Kalachakra I attended in Graz, Austria, previous nights of insomnia were well forgotten in the dorm I shared with 500 Russian and Polish men who snored like drunken sailors all night! In fact, I found the whole five days of the empowerment fairly intense and powerful and, in fact, was in a fair amount of pain - it was some consolation when I was told my enlightenment body was being prepared, although a massage would have been more welcome!

The camaraderie between Vajra brothers and sisters (those who have shared the same Tantric empowerment) is truly beautiful to be a part of, an unspoken yet very deep love. I seemed to float through the next three days, gliding in and out of the hall and spending a lot of time sleeping, resting and contemplating- contemplating nothing, just a stillness of mind and very warm temples, my neurology being reconfigured, no doubt. And then, all of a sudden, the 12 days were over and we were offering long life prayers for HH Dalai Lama. I didn't even feel animosity towards the people who had arrived in the nick of time to receive the empowerment, pushed to the front of the queue and then left early before we could make this small gesture of a morning's prayers for His Holiness to have a long life. It was like giving a thimble of water in return for the ocean. And then I was following a parade of monks led by the Dalai Lama and the sand mandala builders to throw the bag of multicoloured sand in the local river. Sand that 10 minutes earlier had been the most intricate and mathematically correct work of art I had ever seen, thus demonstrating the impermanence of everything. One day this body and even this world will crumble to dust, only the interconnectedness and compassion I had felt for a vast and diverse gathering of people was real. I remembered back to the Dalai Lama's open address on the first day where he, first and foremost, very warmly and completely genuinely welcomed the handful of Chinese people attending the empowerment before turning to his beloved Tibetans and, finally, the Westerners. A teardrop ran from the corner of a previously cynical Londoner's eye. Imagine if all world leaders were like this! Well practise Kalachakra and we might just make Shambhala now.