THE RADIANT SUCCESSION OF SHAMBHALA: DHARMA RAJAH TEJIN

1
Now the third Dharma Raja of Shambhala
Takes his seat within the Crystal Palace of the Kalapa Court:
He is Tejin, Glowing with the Splendor and Dignity of Unconditional Confidence,
The bearer of the dharma wheel and auspicious conch.

The Dharma Raja Tejin enters this world as an emanation
Of the terrifying Conqueror and Lord of Death, Yamantaka.

Yamanataka is Dark blue in color with thirty-four arms, sixteen legs, and nine heads,
His principal face is that of enraged buffalo.
His three blood-shot eyes wheel madly,
And below his burning snout his pointed iron teeth gnash.
He is adorned by serpents and garlands of human heads.
Because he sees to the core of all the cycles of time,
The empty radiance of reality itself.

2

The Dharma Lord Tejin sits erect near a fresh stream in a forest glade.
His face is dark brown and stern. His gaze is uncompromising.
His hair and mustache are black and cool.
He wears the gold crown of a dharma king, surmounted by a yellow diamond
Which shines like the sun appearing through the smoke of a battle-field.

He wears a glistening white robe embroidered with golden lions.
His sash is orange like an early sun.
He wears the gold necklaces, earrings and bracelets of an earth-protector.

In his right hand, he holds a golden eight-spoked dharma-chakra,
And in his left he holds a conch shell.
Thus he proclaims the unceasing path of liberation
And the truth which is not limited by words.

To see him is to experience a terror that cuts to the marrow,
As all one's self absorption, one's schemes for self-satisfied happiness
Are revealed as cowardly vain, and finally fatal self- deceptions.

3

In his unchanging secret form, the Dharma Raja Tejin
Is the color of a lake of molten gold,
And he is youthful, naked to the waist.
His teeth are clenched,
And his three eyes stare implacably into the depths of space.
He wears the crown of the five families of Thatagathas,
And his red hair, the color of fire is bound into a top-knot.

As the lord who is unaltered by time's endless cycles
And is never confused by changing reference points,
Blue serpents twine around his neck, wrists and ankles as ornaments.
His legs are covered by a silk rainbow and he wears a tiger-skin skirt.

In his raised right hand he upholds that which never changes,
The golden eight spoked dharma cakra;
In his left hand he holds a pure white conch
Whose turnings shape the elements in ever shifting forms
And whose sound is the birth-cry of all creation.

His throne is a black and red jeweled palace
Floating amid clouds and a halo of time-ending fire,
And supported from below by three blue and two bronze water buffalo.

His consort, on his right, is the color of pure lapis,
She holds the kapala of amrita which overcomes death
By dissolving belief in the permanence of individual existence
And the hooked knife which returns all thoughts to the essence.