The Golden Dot: The Epic of the Lha
$60.00
The Translation Committee is pleased to announce a new publication of The Golden Dot: The Epic of the Lha. This text, written in England by the Druk Sakyong Dorje Dradül in the 1960s, describes the creation of the world by the nine cosmic lhas and the primordial lha, Shiwa Ökar (“Peaceful White Light”). It provides rich history and imagery, full of energetic and vivid detail, for practitioners of the Werma Sadhana.
Although The Golden Dot is not considered to be a terma, it is based on a terma that the Dorje Dradül received and then, unfortunately, lost during his escape from Tibet: two volumes on Shambhala, its history, and its teachings. He wrote down the text that we now have as a shorter version of what he could remember of the original. He said that it was a tagdren, or “pure remembrance”: something that he was able to “remember” in a pure vision from previous lives.
In 1972, during his retreat in Charlemont, Massachusetts, the Dorje Dradül dictated an English translation of the first sections of the text to Sherab Chödzin. At the 1979 Vajradhatu Seminary, the Committee translated the Tibetan text with the Dorje Dradül, and it was first distributed at the 1979 Kalapa Assembly.
The first three chapters of The Golden Dot describe the world of the cosmic mirror, the creation and manifestation of the external world, as well as Shiwa Ökar taking his seat at the center of this world, which is Shambhala. Although the Dorje Dradül only wrote three chapters, he explained that The Letter of the Black Ashe, a later Shambhala terma, picked up the story where The Golden Dot left off. In 2016, we discovered what appears to be the beginning of another effort to continue writing The Golden Dot. While it is quite short, we include a translation of this as a one-page offprint, entitled The Snow Mountain.
This deluxe, hardbound edition has Tibetan and English on facing pages. It contains a significantly revised and improved translation, including a final section not translated in the original publication.
75 pp.
