Vesna Wallace

• University of California, Santa Barbara

the legend of Śambhala and a related eschatological battle between the twenty-fifth kalkī king of Śambhala and the enemy of Dharma, which initially appeared in the eleventh-century Indian, Buddhist tantric tradition of the Kālacakratantra, proliferated in the later Tibetan and Mongolian sources. In the nineteenth, and particularly in the early twen...

Copious examples in the writings of Mongolian Buddhist authors demonstrate the significance of the Kāvyadarśa in the development of the Mongolian poetic tradition. Numerous versified eulogies, prayers, verses recited at the time of ritual offerings, benedictions in colophons, and other poetic works written by Mongolian scholars of the late seventee...

This article examines the issue of theft as addressed in two legal texts—the Khalkha Regulations and the Laws and Regulations to Actually Follow—which functioned as the customary and statutory laws for Khalkha Mongolia at different periods, and which governed the life of lay and monastic Buddhists. The article approaches the concept of theft as a b...

Studies in originality, authorship, and intertextuality in the contexts of the South Asian and Tibetan Buddhist literature are indispensable for uncovering the direct and indirect referential connections and the diverse modes of their production in an extensive mosaic of Buddhist texts. They also highlight the multifarious functions of textual reus...

The Kālacakra tradition positions itself in the philosophical system of Madhyamaka, from whose perspective it criticizes the doctrinal tenets of Hindu philosophical schools and of Buddhist schools other than Madhyamaka. The concept of emptiness is the most essential tenet of the Kālacakratantra practice. Before analyzing the practical applications...

Divine Knowledge: Buddhist Mathematics According to the Anonymous Manual of Mongolian Astrology and Divination. By BaumannBrian. Leiden: Brill, 2008. xvii, 890 pp. $279.00 (cloth). - Volume 69 Issue 1 - Vesna A. Wallace

This paper analyzes the reasons for which the incorporeal ultimate reality called the “Gnostic Body” (jñānakāya) is categorized as a “body” in the Kālacakra tradition. It examines the diverse ways in which the body imagery is applied to ultimate reality within this tradition. Although conceptions of the Gnostic Body (jñāna-kāya) as a special catego...

In September of 2006, the Dalai Lama of Tibet came to the University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY, to speak at a conference, "Law, Buddhism, and Social Change." It was the first time he has publicly addressed issues concerning the law and the religious foundations of a legal system and the result was a major event of great significance for contempor...

Photocopy. Thesis (Ph. D. in South and Southeast Asian Studies)-- University of California, Berkeley, May 1995. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 542-565).