A Letter of Support for Karma Chakra Board Game from Dr. Jinpa

KARMA CHAKRA is no ordinary board game. Conceived and developed in Canada by a young Tibetan Chodrak Tashi Ghartsang, Karma Chakra is an educational board game, with education in the highest sense of the word. Literally meaning "the wheel of karma," Karma Chakra takes the players on a tour de force of both the exotic and esoteric dimensions of the Tibetan Buddhist world. Blending myths, history, philosophy and the moral theory of karma, the game mimicks the experience of what it would be like to live in the Tibetan Buddhist world, echoing the influential Dungeons and Dragons game.

The beautiful design of the board with its omipresent mandala themes and the colors representing the five primary elements of earth, water, fire, wind and space convey the aesthetic experience of the depth psychology symbolism of esoteric Tibetan Buddhism. On this view, the human psyche is characterized by five primary emotions - attachment, aversion, delusion, pride and envy - the transformation of which constitutes the heart of the spiritual path of a human being.

Karma Chakra will be especially valuable to those who wish to learn something about the Tibetan Buddhist world in an "experiential" way. It will be particularly welcomed by thousands of Buddhists of Asian origin who today live in multicultural societies, such as Canada and the United States, and wish to teach their children something valuable of their own traditional culture. I, for one, have great fun playing this game with my two young daughters with the awareness that, at the end of the game, my girls would have become more familiar with my own Buddhist tradition and Tibetan culture.

Thupten Jinpa
Principal translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Adjunct faculty, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University
May 4, 2006.