Blavatsky H.P. - Footnotes to A Cis-Tibetan Ramble: Difference between revisions

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{{HPB-CW-comment|[Captain A. Banon gives an interesting account of his travels in the Gungotri Valley and his visit to Thuling, in Tibet, where there is a lamasery belonging to the red-cap monks. He says: “The Thuling Lamas are great sorcerers; and can kill people at a distance by simply willing it.” H. P. B. comments on this:]}}

Not by the high Lamas, or “Yellow-Caps,” who will never perform anything before a promiscuous crowd. But there will be “religious mysteries” in every great and small Lamasery, and the “Panchhen Rimpoche” or the High Lama of Tashi-Lhünpo, with all his gen-dun (clergy), will be investing newly-initiated gelungs with ngo-dhüb, or spiritual powers: for this year marks the end of an important cycle. But this is never performed publicly, but only behind the impassable barrier of the private sanctuaries of the Lamaseries, the Lha-khang, or inner temple.

Again, an error based upon the European ignorance about the real state of affairs in Tibet. In the first place, the Gelukpas, or Yellow-Caps, would rather submit to any sacrifice than to kill people—even their greatest enemies; such brutality is left to the Dug-pa sorcerers. Then it was not “at the beginning of the present century,” that the Nepaulese army sacked and pillaged the great Lamasery of Tashi-Lhünpo, but in 1792; and in that year the Tashi-Lama was a child hardly ten years old, and his Regent, Chan-tyu Kusho, the brother of the late Tashi-Lama, was no “miracle-producing” Lama, but a layman; and, in the presence of a “Reincarnation,” or a reincarnated Bodhisattva (such as was the Tashi-Lama’s successor), no subordinate Lama, however high may be his powers, can, under their laws, take the responsibility of any initiatory step in a difficult political medley, unless the Tashi-Lama gives personally his orders—and the little Lama did not give any. The details are well known. and the reasons plain.

Again, these Lamas were probably of the Dug-pa sects and were not Tibetans, since they were Chinese, and our belief is that it would be difficult to find any “Yellow-Cap” guilty of such a crime. Therefore, this is no case in point.