The Dalai Lama’s Gift
The Kalachakra: The Wheel of Time
A hidden ritual. A sacred promise. A transformed cornfield.
In 1981, His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama accepted a heartfelt invitation from Geshe Lhundup Sopa, a revered Tibetan master, to perform the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time) initiation in the United States for the first time, marking a pivotal moment in the transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to the West. This powerful tantric ritual—never before held outside India or Tibet—was to take place in the heart of rural Wisconsin.
With only a few months to prepare, Geshe Sopa’s students, the monks of Namgyal Monastery, and volunteers built America’s first Kalachakra Temple from the ground up, transforming an open cornfield into a site of extraordinary spiritual awakening. That July, the temple hosted the historic ceremony that introduced thousands to one of the most profound and complex rituals in Tibetan Buddhism.
Working closely with coproducer Sharpa Tulku, Geshe Sopa, and the monks of Namgyal Monastery, filmmaker Dr. Ed Bastian and his team documented every stage of the ceremony—from preparations in India to the construction of the Kalachakra Temple and the initiation itself. Additionally, interviews with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Geshe Sopa, and multiple initiates, many of whom would later emerge as influential Buddhist teachers, were filmed. These interviews include José I. Cabezón, Roger Jackson, Jan Willis, Vesna Wallace, and more. After the initiation, the original footage was entrusted to the Smithsonian Institution Film Archives for safekeeping.
Now, more than forty years later, that footage has been digitized and interwoven with contemporary interviews and the first-ever animation of the majestic three-dimensional mandala with the support of The Spiritual Paths Foundation. The resulting documentary revisits this landmark moment in time, inviting the viewer on a journey of devotion, resilience, and transformation, revealing a story of the power of one sacred encounter to ripple across generations.
While Ed and The Spiritual Paths Foundation have made The Dalai Lama’s Gift available free as an offering of peace and compassion, your generosity helps them to bring this film—and its message of awakening—to more people around the world. Please consider donating to the film’s foundation to help support this beautiful gift.
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“The Dalai Lama’s Gift is a marvelous invocation of a historic event. It serves
as an excellent introduction to the Kalachakra initiation and Tibetan
Buddhist philosophy. Overall, this is an exceptional work!”
Gaetano Kazuo Maida
International Buddhist Film Festival
Founder/Executive Producer
Learn More
The Dalai Lama’s Gift
Visit the film’s website—dalailamagift.org—to learn more about the story and individuals behind the documentary. Read about director Ed Bastian’s approach to making the film, meet the production team, and discover its collaborators.
Additionally, please consider donating to the film’s foundation to help support this beautiful gift in the world. Your support allows the film team to reach a wider audience by scheduling more screenings, distributing it as an educational resource in libraries, universities, and Buddhist centers, and engaging in global outreach to share the film at festivals and cultural institutions to promote interfaith understanding and compassion.
Kalachakra Tantra
Rite of Initiation
By His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
translated, edited, and introduced by Jeffrey Hopkins
Associated with the promotion of world peace, the Kalachakra—or “Wheel of Time”—tantra is one of the most detailed and encompassing systems of theory and practice within Tibetan Buddhism. This book contains a complete translation of the Kalachakra initiation ritual as conferred by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, along with his commentary and a comprehensive introduction by Professor Jeffrey Hopkins that explores the Kalachakra’s rich symbolism, meaning, and history. The book also includes the Six-Session Yoga.
“Tantalizing glimpses into the philosophy and practice of Kalachakra.”—The Middle Way
The Kalachakra Mandala 
The Jonang Tradition
Translated by Edward Henning
A detailed, beautifully illustrated presentation of the construction and symbolism of the famed Kālachakra mandala, the crown jewel of the Indo-Tibetan tantric traditions.
“With great care, this book describes the symbolism, architectural design, and the multi-dimensional experience of the mandala. Such exquisite detail will be appreciated by scholars for its historical importance, artists for its representation of the mandala in both 2D drawings and 3D constructs, and perhaps most essentially, by Kālachakra practitioners for its instruction on how the vivid resplendence of the mandala is performatively visualized in their mind’s eye.”—Michael R. Sheehy, director of scholarship at the Contemplative Sciences Center, research assistant professor in Tibetan Buddhist studies in the Department of Religious Studies, and affiliated faculty at the Tibet Center at the University of Virginia
Like a Waking Dream
The Autobiography of Geshe Lhundub Sopa
Geshe Lhundub Sopa with Paul Donnelly
In Like a Waking Dream, Geshé Sopa frankly and observantly reflects on how his life in Tibet—a monastic life of yogic simplicity—shaped and prepared him for the unexpected. His is a tale of an exemplary life dedicated to learning, spiritual cultivation, and the service of others from one of the greatest living masters of Tibetan Buddhism.
“Geshe Sopa is one of the greatest living Buddhist masters of his generation. This marvelous lifestory, rich in detail and told in his own words, will captivate the hearts and minds of anyone who reads it.”—José Ignacio Cabezón, Dalai Lama Professor and Chair of the Religious Studies Department, UC Santa Barbara
