For Episode 9 of the Dakini Conversations podcast I am delighted to welcome Deepak Anand, an Indian explorer, writer and researcher and author of several books on Indian Buddhist heritage sites and Buddhist relics, and founder of a remarkable project to film and document important Buddhist sites by personally retracing by foot, the route of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, 7th CE monk scholar Xuanzang’s epic journey of over 10,000 miles from China to India and back, to throw fresh light on the routes and sacred places of the Buddhist pilgrimage and create awareness about the importance of Xuanzang in preserving the Buddhist pilgrimage legacy. Anand's walk took six months going through Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and parts of southern Nepal, and ended at Nālandā in Bihar, which was Xuanzang’s final destination in his journey, covering a distance of roughly 2000 kilometres. This pilgrimage was no hyper-expensive luxury spa/hotel trip with privately arranged cars and tour guides. It involved Anand walking long distances, sleeping wherever he was offered a place to stay in local villages and institutes, crossing many rivers during the monsoon season and along precarious paths and routes. Making his pilgrimage as close experientially to Xuanzang's (and Buddha's) footsteps as possible. Although Anand has been working on this project since 2020, I only recently discovered his work on his excellent website, Nalanda-Insatiable in Offering (http://nalanda-insatiableinoffering.blogspot.com/), while researching pilgrimage sites of Buddhism myself in relation to my own current andongoing pilgrimage travels around Asia. Part of the project is also to include local communities in their heritage by raising awareness within them but also using their unique local knowledge about the places themselves that have been passed on for generations. In this interview we discuss Anand’s background and interest in Buddhism in India and Xuanzang, inspired by the Xuanzang Memorial project built in Nālanda in 2007 (https://artsandculture.google.com/story/xuanzang-memorial-n%C4%81land%C4%81-xuanzang-memorial-nava-nalanda-mahavihara/-gXx1Bey76EHJA?hl=en) his work on reviving walking pilgrimage in India (Cetiya Cārikā), motivation for starting the project, the highlights and challenges of his journey so far, and plans and aspirations for the future.

For the latest episode of Dakini Conversations podcast Episode 8, Adele Tomlin speaks with writer, thinker and philanthropist, Prof. Peter Singer, considered by many to be the “founder of the modern animal welfare movement,” he was recently named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine (https://content.time.com/time/special.... I first came across Singer’s ideas a few years ago (before becoming a Buddhist) while a Philosophy postgraduate student in London and I was studying his works on animals and ethics. It was groundbreaking and inspiring, and I agreed with everything he wrote about animals and our lack of respect and care for them when treating them as food for humans. Shortly after, I became vegetarian. So having the chance to meet and discuss these issues with Singer is like a personal dream come true. After Singer became a vegetarian at Oxford University, he wrote what would become one of his most influential works, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals (1975). In this ground-breaking book, Singer challenges the speciesism of human beings who kill animals to eat, stating that if we did the same thing to humans with a similar level of consciousness/sentience, people would (and do) strongly object. In 1999, after teaching at New York University, Singer became a Professor at Princeton University. This appointment was protested by people who objected to his view on euthanasia. He has been called a 'dangerous philosopher' by some. In 2009, Singer wrote the first edition of The Life You Can Save to demonstrate why we should care about and help those living in global extreme poverty, and how easy it is to improve and even save lives by giving effectively. In 2018, Singer also co-founded the open-access Journal of Controversial Ideas. Now, nearly 50 years on, Singer has published a revised version titled Animal Liberation Now. Singer also recently entered into a discussion of Buddhist ideas and ethics with a Taiwanese Buddhist nun, Venerable Shih Chao-hwei, in the publication of their new book, The Buddhist and the Ethicist: Conversations on Effective Altruism, Engaged Buddhism, and How to Build a Better World (Shambhala, 2024).

Here is the seventh episode of the Dakini Conversations podcast, an in-depth discussion with the leading Indian Kālacakra scholar and translator, Niraj Kumar, who was also recently promoted to Joint Secretary of the Indian Ministry of Culture (after being the Director for a couple of years).

Niraj is a commentator on Shakta and Buddhist Tantras, and has been active with various facets of Tibetan and Himalayan Buddhism for more than a decade. His ongoing work is five volume pentalogy on Kalacakra Tantra, the first comprehensive English translation and new commentary of the Sanskrit text, for several centuries after it was said to have been first written down in the 11th century. The Kālacakra Tantra is said to be the climax of the Indian Buddhist Nalanda tradition and the last major Buddhist tantra composed in India. Niraj Kumar’s first volume on Kālacakra was published in 2022, and the second volume is expected to be released within next couple of months. Niraj is also a pan-Asian thinker and writer on geopolitics in Asia and was instrumental in organizing the First Asia Peace Forum in New Delhi (2015). He is also one of the key architects of ongoing exposition of the sacred relics of Shakyamuni Buddha in Thailand this year.

I first became aware of Niraj Kumar when he personally asked me to present his Kālacakra work at the Vajrayana conference in Bhutan in 2022, which he was unable to attend. Several people also suggested that I interview him about his work on Kalacakra. I then had the good fortune to meet Niraj in India last year for an Indian academic conference at which I was invited to be a keynote speaker. At that time, we exchanged our Kālacakra publications and on finally reading his work, I was amazed and fascinated by the research, ideas and revelations in the Introduction to his book. It was surprising that more people did not know about them and so part of the reason for this interview is to bring some of those ideas out to a larger more general audience. See also: https://dakinitranslations.com/kalacakra-2/

During our podcast discussion, we speak about Kumar's Introduction to the first volume, which is full of fascinating research and revelations, including some of the key concepts in the Tantra regarding time (kāla), the three realms (outer, inner and other), the types of breath/energy, and death itself. This is then followed by a discussion of the dating of the composition of the root Kālacakra text itself (1027 CE), the oldest extant texts available of it (one on palm-leaf currently housed at the British Library), and remarkably indeed the proposed authorship of the written root text being the great Indian Mahasiddha, Naropa, who received the transmission of it from his guru Tilopa, who is said to have been taught it in the Kingdom of Shambhala itself.

The latter part of the discussion relates to how the main lineages of Kālacakra came into Tibet, finishing with an analysis of contemporary practice and application of Kālacakra and how it has degenerated away from the words and advice of the root Tantra text with 20th Century mass empowerments to thousands of 'unqualified' people, for predominantly political, social and financial purposes in cohorts with the Chinese communist government. Kumar also states in his book that the empowerments given by the 14th Dalai Lama are also not 'correct' because they were not all given on the full moon, as advised by the root Tantra.

For the Youtube video of the interview (with English captions) and chapter outline of the discussion, see here: https://youtu.be/TJ4ec1wV-2o

For article about the interview, see here: https://dakinitranslations.com/2024/03/17/the-roots-and-fruits-of-the-kalacakra-tantra-niraj-kumar-dakini-conversations-ep-7/

To download a free pdf file of Kumar's Kālacakra Tantra Volume I book: https://www.academia.edu/76581752/Kalacakra_Tantra_Vol_I