Kim Lai
La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia
Kim Lai’s work derives from several decades of personal and academic research into the Kālacakra Tantra. Within that great Tibetan esoteric encyclopaedia he finds a compelling interest in its approach to the traditional sciences, especially the unique symbolic language of ‘correspondence astronomiae’ (rtsis rig). These esoteric fields range from yoga and medicine to liberative alchemy; from macro-microcosmic correspondences to their unifying reality; from anatomy and meta-physiology to psycho-anatomy; from mandala art and ritual to theurgy and siddhi; from astronomy and astrology to redemptive astronomiae; and from the distinct epistemologies of reason and direct-perception to non-dual meditative gnōsis. Kim has studied with Tibet’s leading astronomiae professors, and learnt much from contact with the Kalacakra vajra-masters from several lineages. He practices a form of Buddhist astronomiae that recognises its original role as a traditional science of the psyche. Valued in Tibet as the ‘marriage partner of medicine’ this astronomiae’s objectives are primary therapeutic and redemptive. He is presently completing his doctoral dissertation, The Astronomiae Correspondences of the Kālacakra Tantra: A Vajrāyana View of Dependent Arising, under the supervision of Rod Blackhirst.