Within the Jonang tradition, the Kālacakra Tantra functions as the central tantric system and the primary vehicle for its distinctive spiritual vision. It is regarded as the highest yoga tantra of the school, and its completion-stage practices are especially emphasized. The tantra, together with its commentarial tradition, provides the main scriptural and contemplative framework through which Jonang practitioners approach the path. In this way, Kālacakra is not a peripheral practice but the defining matrix of Jonang meditative life and institutional identity.

Doctrinally, the Kālacakra corpus is taken as a key source for articulating the Jonang understanding of *shentong*, or “emptiness of other.” Its teachings on a luminous, immutable awareness are read as affirming an ultimately real buddha-nature that is empty only of adventitious defilements, not of its own enlightened qualities. Thus the tantra serves as a scriptural foundation for the claim that buddha-nature is inherently endowed with wisdom and qualities, even though these are obscured in ordinary experience. The philosophical view and the tantric revelation are seen as mutually reinforcing, each illuminating the other.

On the level of practice, the entire tantric path in Jonang is organized around the Kālacakra system, with particular stress on its completion-stage discipline known as the sixfold, or six-branch, yoga. This structured yogic regimen is upheld as the principal meditative method for uncovering and directly realizing buddha-nature. Through its sequence of practices, the tradition understands the practitioner to be moving from conceptual elaboration toward a direct experience of the luminous ground described in the doctrine. In this sense, Kālacakra is treated as the bridge between philosophical exposition and transformative contemplative experience.

Institutionally and ritually, Jonang lineages are closely identified with the preservation and transmission of Kālacakra empowerments, commentaries, and practice manuals. The tradition is widely recognized for maintaining a distinct Kālacakra lineage, and its public rituals, retreats, and transmissions revolve around this tantra. As a result, Kālacakra shapes not only the inner yogic life of practitioners but also the outward face of the tradition—its ceremonies, its lineal continuity, and its sense of custodianship of a supreme tantric teaching.