This work sets female voices from the Therīgāthāin in Pali, and the Golden Light Sūtra in early Chinese from the Dunhuang scroll. It is the seventh scroll of the Sūtra on the Supreme King of Golden Light, more commonly known as the Golden Light Sūtra. There were three translations of this text from Sanskrit to Chinese, with this edition completed in the seventh century by the Tang Dynasty monk Yijing. The Therīgāthā is the earliest collection of women’s literature known in the world, and it collects spiritual poems by and about early female disciples of the historical Buddha (from approximately 5th century BCE).
Voices of the Pearl traces, in newly commissioned song cycles, the tenuous lineage of women who dared to encounter the unmediated divine; their efforts span time, religion, nation and culture. The project commissions, performs and records musical works from composers across the globe, setting text by and about female esoterics from world traditions throughout history, reclaiming these lost voices and the tradition of female spirituality. The female esoteric practitioner is twice marginalized in the world’s traditions: 1) the mystics’ direct contact with the divine threatens the hierarchical structures of organized religion and so they are, because of this, sometimes labeled heretical 2) women are often considered by religious traditions incapable, due to their female bodies, to attain an authentic direct mystical contact with the divine.
