Blavatsky H.P. - Tibetan Teachings: Difference between revisions

  | alternatives = [http://www.katinkahesselink.net/blavatsky/articles/v6/yxxxx_001.htm KH]; [https://www.blavatsky.net/index.php/tibetan-teachings B]; [https://theosophytrust.org/570-tibetan-teachings TT]

<center>A LONG-DELAYED PROMISE FULFILLED</center>

{{HPB-CW-comment|[In an article entitled “Esoteric Axioms and Spiritual Speculations” (The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 4. January, 1882, pp. 92-93), H. P. B. made some pertinent comments upon a review of Arthur Lillie’s book, Buddha and Early Buddhism, written by “M. A. (Oxon),” the pseudonym of Rev. Stainton Moses, the famous Spiritualist. H. P. B. took exception to certain statements of the reviewer contradicting the assertions made by Theosophists, and disagreed with views expressed with regard to the character and teachings of the Buddha, as allegedly permeated with what the reviewer called “uncompromising Spiritualism.” She wrote in part: “We will not try to personally argue out the vexed question with our friend . . . we will tell him what we have done. As soon as his able review reached us, we marked it throughout, and sent both the numbers of the magazine containing it, to be, in their turn, reviewed and corrected by two authorities . . . these two are: (1) H. Sumangala Unnanse, Buddhist High Priest of Adam’s Peak, Ceylon . . . the most learned expounder of Southern Buddhism; and (2) the Chohan-Lama of Rinch-cha-tze (Tibet) the Chief of the Archive-registrars of the secret Libraries of the Dalai and Ta-shü-hlumpo Lamas-Rimboche . . . the latter, moreover, is a ‘Pan-chhen,’ or great teacher, one of the most learned theologians of Northern Buddhism and esoteric Lamaism . . .” The Chohan-Lama promised to write a reply in due course of time.}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|As is apparent from the very first paragraph of the present essay, the latter unquestionably contains the reply of the Chohan-Lama, or at least a portion of it. It is impossible to say why this reply was not published in The Theosophist at the time, even if it was not received until a number of months later. As appears from the Editorial Note appended at the end of this essay, “this study of ‘Tibetan Teachings’ is taken from a series of articles originally prepared for The Theosophist, but, for some reason or other, set aside, and never published,” until the two installments appeared in Lucifer of 1894. The Editors of Lucifer, moreover, express the hope “to be able to continue the series for some months.”}}

{{HPB-CW-comment|This essay is published in the present volume merely as a {{Page aside|95}}provisional place for it, seeing that no definite date can be ascribed to it, beyond its unquestionable connection with the article of H. P. B. spoken of above, and the fact that she speaks of it as being “a long-delayed promise fulfilled.” This might well indicate that the reply of the Chohan-Lama was not made available immediately after the request.—Compiler.]}}

 

“They who are on the summit of a mountain can see all men; in like manner they who are intelligent and free from sorrow are enabled to ascend above the paradise of the Gods; and when they there have seen the subjection of man to birth and death and the sorrows by which he is afflicted, they open the doors of the immortal.”

{{Style P-Align right|—From the Tched-du brjod-pai-tsoms of the BKAH-HGYUR.}}

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In the January number of The Theosophist for 1882, we promised our readers the opinions of the Venerable Chohan-Lama—the chief of the Archive-registrars of the libraries containing manuscripts on esoteric doctrines belonging to the Ta-loï and Ta-shühlumpo Lamas Rim-boche of Tibet—on certain conclusions arrived at by the author of Buddha and Early Buddhism. Owing to the brotherly kindness of a disciple of the learned Chohan, than whom no one in Tibet is more deeply versed in the science of esoteric and exoteric Buddhism, we are now able to give a few of the doctrines which have a direct bearing on these conclusions. It is our firm belief that the learned Chohan’s letters, and the notes accompanying them, could not arrive at a more opportune time. Besides the many and various misconceptions of our doctrines, we have more than once been taken severely to task by some of the most intelligent Spiritualists for misleading them as to the real attitude and belief of Hindus and Buddhists as to “spirits of the departed.” Indeed, according to some Spiritualists “the Buddhist belief is permeated by the distinctive and peculiar note of modern Spiritualism, the presence and guardianship of departed spirits,” and the Theosophists have been guilty of misrepresenting this belief. They have had the hardihood, for instance, to maintain that this “belief in {{Page aside|96}}the intervention of departed human spirits” was anathema maranatha in the East, whereas it is “in effect, a permeating principle of Buddhism.”

The subject which our learned Tibetan correspondent treats is based on a few direct questions offered by us with a humble request that they should be answered, and the following paragraph from Buddha and Early Buddhism:

I have dwelt somewhat at length on this supernaturalism, because it is of the highest importance to our theme. Buddhism was plainly an elaborate apparatus to nullify the action of evil spirits by the aid of good spirits operating at their highest potentiality through the instrumentality of the corpse or a portion of the corpse of the chief aiding spirit. The Buddhist temple, the Buddhist rites, the Buddhist liturgy, all seem based on this one idea that a whole or portions of {{Page aside|97}}a dead body was necessary. What were these assisting spirits? Every Buddhist, ancient or modern, would at once admit that a spirit that has not yet attained the Bodhi or spiritual awakenment cannot be a good spirit. It can do no good thing; more than that, it must do evil things.

“Let me say at once that monks and laymen give the most ridiculously absurd digest of the Law of Faith, the popular beliefs of Tibet. The Capuchin Della Penna’s account of the brotherhood of the ‘Byang-tsiub’ is simply absurd. Taking from the Bkah-hgyur and other books of the Tibetan laws some literal description, he then embelishes them with his own interpretation. Thus he speaks of the fabled worlds of ‘spirits,’ where live the ‘Lha, who are like gods’; adding that the Tibetans imagine ‘these places to be in the air above a great mountain, about a hundred and sixty thousand leagues high and thirty-two thousand leagues in circuit; which is made up of four parts, being of crystal to the east, of the red ruby to the west, of gold to the north, and of the green precious stone— lapis lazuli—to the south. In these abodes of bliss they— the Lha—remain as long as they please, and then pass to the paradise of other worlds.’<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[This excerpt is a translation from pages 54-55 of an account by Fra Francesco Orazio della Penna di Billi, entitled: Breve notizia del regno del Thibet, 1730, republished in Paris, in 1835, with notes by Klaproth, in the Nouveau Journal Asiatique.—Comp.]}}</ref>

 

{{Page aside|98}}In the first place, the sacred canon of the Tibetans, the Bkah-hgyur and Bstan-hgyur, comprises one thousand seven hundred and seven distinct works — one thousand and eighty-three public and six hundred and twenty-four secret volumes—the former being composed of three hundred and fifty and the latter of seventy-seven folio volumes.

“If the efforts of such well-meaning, studious and conscientious men as the authors of Buddhist Records of the Western World, and Buddha and Early Buddhism<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The first work mentioned is Samuel Beal’s translation from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang’s Si-yu-ki. London: Trübner & Co., 1885; the second work is by Arthur Lillie, London: Trübner & Co., 1881— Comp.]}}</ref>—whose poetical hypotheses may be upset and contradicted, one by one, with the greatest ease—resulted in nought, verily then, the attempts of the predecessors and successors of the Abbés Huc, Gabet and others must prove a sorry failure; since the former have not and the latter have, an object to achieve in purposely disfiguring the unparalleled and glorious teachings of our blessed master, Sâkya Thub-pa.

“In The Theosophist for October, 1881, a correspondent correctly informs the reader that Gautama the Buddha, {{Page aside|99}}the wise, ‘insisted upon initiation being thrown open to all who were qualified.’ This is true; such was the original design put for some time in practice by the great Sanggyas, and before he had become the All-Wise. But three or four centuries after his separation from this earthly coil, when Aśoka, the great supporter of our religion, had left the world, the Arhat initiates, owing to the secret but steady opposition of the Brâhmans to their system, had to drop out of the country one by one and seek safety beyond the Himâlayas. Thus, though popular Buddhism did not spread in Tibet before the seventh century, the Buddhist initiates of the mysteries and esoteric system of the Âryan Twice-born, leaving their motherland, India, sought refuge with the pre-Buddhistic ascetics; those who had the Good Doctrine, even before the days of S âkya-Muni. These ascetics had dwelt beyond the Himâlayan ranges from time immemorial. They are the direct successors of those Âryan sages who, instead of accompanying their Brâhman brothers in the pre-historical emigration from Lake Mânasasarovara across the Snowy Range into the hot plains of the Seven Rivers, had preferred to remain in their inaccessible and unknown fastnesses. No wonder, indeed, if the Âryan esoteric doctrine and our Arhat doctrines are found to be almost identical. Truth, like the sun over our heads, is one; but it seems as if this eternal truism must be constantly reiterated to make the dark, as much as the white, people remember it. Only that truth may be kept pure and unpolluted by human exaggerations—its very votaries betimes seeking to adapt it, to pervert and disfigure its fair face to their own selfish ends—it has to be hidden far away from the eye of the profane. Since the days of the earliest universal mysteries up to the time of our great Sâkya Tathâgata Buddha, who reduced and interpreted the system for the salvation of all, the divine Voice of the Self, known as Kwan-yin, was heard but in the sacred solitude of the preparatory mysteries.

“There is a dual meaning, then, even in the canon thrown open to the people, and, quite recently, to Western scholars. I will now try to correct the errors—too intentional, I am sorry to say, in the case of the Jesuit writers. No doubt but that the Chinese and Tibetan Scriptures, so-called, the standard works of China and Japan, some written by our most learned scholars, many of whom — as uninitiated though sincere and pious men—commented upon what they never rightly understood, contain a mass of mythological and legendary matter more fit for nursery folk-lore than an exposition of the Wisdom Religion as preached by the world’s Saviour. But none of these are to be found in the canon; and, though preserved in most of the Lamasery libraries, they are read and implicitly believed in only by the credulous and pious whose simplicity forbids them ever stepping across the threshold of reality. To this class belong The Buddhist Cosmos, written by the Bonze Jin-ch’an, of Peking; The Shing-Tao-ki, or ‘The Records of the Enlightenment of Tathâgata,’ by Wang-Puh, in the seventh century, The Hi-shai Sûtra, or ‘Book of Creation,’ various volumes on heaven and hell, and so forth—poetic fictions grouped around a symbolism evolved as an after-thought.

“But the records from which our scholastic author, the monk Della Penna quotes—or I should rather say, misquotes—contain no fiction, but simply information for future generations, who may, by that time, have obtained the key to the right reading of them. The ‘Lha’ of whom Della Penna speaks but to deride the fable, they who ‘have attained the position of saints in this world,’ were simply the initiated Arhats, the adepts of many and various grades, generally known under the name of Bhanté or Brothers. In the book known as the Avatamsaka Sûtra, in the section on ‘the Supreme Âtman—Self—as manifested in the {{Page aside|101}}character of the Arhats and Pratyeka Buddhas,’ it is stated that ‘Because from the beginning, all sentient creatures have confused the truth, and embraced the false; therefore has there come into existence a hidden knowledge called Alaya Vijñâna. ‘Who is in the possession of the true hidden knowledge?’ ‘The great teachers of the Snowy Mountain,’ is the response in The Book of Law. The Snowy Mountain is the ‘mountain a hundred and sixty thousand leagues high.’ Let us see what this means. The last three ciphers being simply left out, we have a hundred and sixty leagues; a Tibetan league is nearly five miles; this gives us seven hundred and eighty miles from a certain holy spot, by a distinct road to the west. This becomes as clear as can be, even in Della Penna’s further description, to one who has but a glimpse of the truth. ‘According to their law,’ says that monk, ‘in the west of this world, is an eternal world, a paradise, and in it a saint called Ho-pahme, which means Saint of Splendour and Infinite Light. This saint has many distinct pupils who are all called chang-chub,’ which—he adds in a footnote—means ‘the spirits of those who, on account of their perfection, do not care to become saints, and train and instruct the bodies of the reborn Lamas, so that they may help the living.’ [p. 85.]

{{Page aside|102}}“The holy motive prompting a Bodhisattwa, a Sravaka, or Rahat to help to the same bliss those who remain behind him, the living; in which case he will stop to instruct them either from within or without; or, secondly, those who, however pure, harmless and comparatively free from sin during their lives, have been so engrossed with some particular idea in connection with one of the human mâyâs as to pass away amidst that all-absorbing thought; and, thirdly, persons in whom an intense and holy love, such as that of a mother for her orphaned children, creates or generates an indomitable will, fed by that boundless love, to tarry with and among the living in their inner selves.

<center>DOCTRINES OF THE HOLY “LHA.”</center>

“The forms under which any living being may be reborn, are sixfold:—

{{Style P-Align right|—Emil Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Tibet.}}

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{{Page aside|106}}The first error is found in Buddha and Early Buddhism, since this work has given rise to the incorrect notion that spiritualism was at the very root of Buddhism. The second error is found in the Succinct Abstract of the Great Chaos of Tibetan Laws by the Capuchin monk Della Penna and the accounts given by his companions, whose absurd calumnies of Tibetan religion and laws written during the past century have been lately reprinted in Mr. Markham’s Tibet.<ref>{{HPB-CW-comment|[The title of Della Penna’s work, as given here, does not seem to correspond to the Italian original, although there is very little doubt that it is the same work that is meant, as another quoted passage further on clearly shows. As to the second work referred to, it is most likely the one entitled, Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa. Edited by Clements Robert Markham, London, 1876. 8vo. There seems to be no other work on Tibet written by Sir C. R. Markham (1830-1916), the famous geographer and traveller.—Compiler.]}}</ref>

{{Page aside|110}}If the spiritualists, instead of conferring the power of “controlling” and “guiding” living persons upon every wraith calling itself “John” or “Peter,” limited the faculty of moving and inspiring a few chosen pure men and women only to such Bodhisattwas or holy initiates—whether born as Buddhists or Christians, Brâhmans or Mussulmans on earth—and, in very exceptional cases, to holy and saintly characters, who have a motive, a truly beneficial mission to accomplish after their departure, then would they be nearer to the truth than they are now.

“Lamaists believe in the indestructibility of matter, as an element. They reject the immortality, and even the survival of the personal self, teaching that the individual self alone—i.e., the collective aggregation of the many personal selves that were represented by that One during the long series of various existences—may survive. The latter may even become eternal—the word eternity with them embracing but the period of a great cycle eternal in its integral individuality, but this may be done only by becoming a Dhyan-Chohan, a ‘celestial Buddha,’ or what a Christian Kabbalist might call a ‘planetary spirit’ or one of the Elohim; a part of the ‘conscious whole,’ composed of the aggregate intelligences in their universal collectivity, while Nirvâna is the ‘unconscious whole.’ He who becomes a Tong-pa-nyi—he who has attained the state of absolute freedom from any desire of living personally, the highest condition of a saint—exists in non-existence and can benefit mortals no more. He is in ‘Nipang,’ for he has reached the end of ‘Tharlam,’ the path to deliverance, {{Page aside|112}}or salvation from transmigrations. He cannot perform Trulpa—voluntary incarnation, whether temporary or life-long—in the body of a living human being; for he is a ‘Dangma,’ an absolutely purified soul. Henceforth he is free from the danger of ‘Dal-jor,’ human rebirth; for the seven forms of existence—only six are given out to the uninitiated—subject to transmigration have been safely crossed by him. ‘He gazes with indifference in every sphere of upward transmigration on the whole period of time which covers the shorter periods of personal existence,’ says the Book of Khiu-ti.

 

{{Style P-Signature|H. P. BLAVATSKY.}}

This study of “Tibetan Teachings” is taken from a series of articles originally prepared for The Theosophist, but, for some reason or other, set aside, and never published. We hope to be able to continue the series for some months.—Editors, Lucifer.  

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{{Style P-No indent|{{HPB-CW-comment|—Compiler.]}}}}