[Editorial Note.—This article was published posthumously in Lucifer for September 1894, more than three years after H. P. Blavatsky’s death. Its origin goes back to January 1882, when, in The Theosophist, Blavatsky promised to submit certain statements from Arthur Lillie’s Buddha and Early Buddhism, and in a review of that work by the Spiritualist Stainton Moses (“M. A. Oxon”), to authoritative Buddhist correspondents for correction. Among these she named a learned Chohan-Lama of Tibet. The present article announces itself as the fulfillment of that “long-delayed promise” and incorporates material attributed to a learned Tibetan correspondent. The editors of Lucifer stated that it belonged to a series originally prepared for The Theosophist, but set aside and never published.
Portions of the same or closely related manuscript material later appeared, in revised or parallel form, among the Buddhist papers included in the posthumous Secret Doctrine, Vol. III (1897), especially the group of sections commonly known as “The Mystery of Buddha,” later reprinted in H. P. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, Vol. XIV. The manuscript history of this material is unusually complex. In her Preface to the 1897 volume, Annie Besant stated that the papers left in her hands were unarranged and without an obvious sequence, and that some sections of “The Mystery of Buddha” existed in four or five different versions, which she combined in preparing them for publication. This helps explain both the repetition and the variant forms of passages found in “Tibetan Teachings” and the later volume, and cautions against identifying any surviving section simply as the lost continuation of this article.
Boris de Zirkoff later drew attention to these textual correspondences, while noting that the further installments promised by Lucifer had never been definitively traced. More recent research has continued the investigation. In particular, historian Urs App has subjected the two surviving “Tibetan Teachings” papers to detailed source-critical study, including an examination of their Tibetan terminology and their relationship to nineteenth-century Western works on Tibet and Buddhism. His work has added substantially to the discussion of the origins and composition of these documents, though some of his broader conclusions remain debated.]
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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.—Eds. [Lucifer, 1894]
A Long-Delayed Promise Fulfilled.
“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.”—From the Tched-du brjod-pai tsoms of the Bkah-hgyur.
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-shül-hlumpo 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 the intervention of departed human spirits” was anathema maranatha in the East, whereas it is “in effect, a permeating principle of Buddhism.”
What every Hindu, of whatever caste and education, thinks of the “intervention of departed spirits” is so well known throughout the length and breadth of India that it would be loss of time to repeat the oft-told tale. There are a few converts to modern Spiritualism, such as Babu Peary Chand Mittra, whose great personal purity of life would make such intercourse harmless for him, even were he not indifferent to physical phenomena, holding but to the purely spiritual, subjective side of such communion. But, if these be excepted, we boldly reassert what we have always maintained: that there is not a Hindu who does not loathe the very idea of the reappearance of a departed “spirit” whom he will ever regard as impure; and that with these exceptions no Hindu believes that, except in cases of suicide, or death by accident, any spirit but an evil one can return to earth. Therefore, leaving the Hindus out of the question, we will give the ideas of the Northern Buddhists on the subject, hoping to add those of the Southern Buddhists to them in good time. And, when we say “Buddhists,” we do not include the innumerable heretical sects teeming throughout Japan and China who have lost every right to that appellation. With these we have nought to do. We think but of the Buddhists of the Northern and Southern Churches—the Roman Catholics and the Protestants of Buddhism, so to say.
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 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 awakening cannot be a good spirit. It can do no good thing; more than that, it must do evil things.
“The answer of Northern Buddhism is that the good spirits are the Buddhas, the dead prophets. They come from certain ‘fields of the Buddhas’ to commune with earth.”
Our learned Tibetan friend writes:
“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 descriptions, he then embellishes 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.’
“This description resembles far more—if my memory of the missionary-school-going period at Lahoula does not deceive me—the ‘new Jerusalem coming down from God out of heaven’ in John’s vision—that city which measured ‘twelve thousand furlongs,’ whose walls were of ‘jasper,’ the buildings of ‘pure gold,’ the foundations of the walls ‘garnished with all manner of precious stones’ and ‘the twelve gates were twelve pearls’ than the city of the Jang-Chhub either in the Bkah-hgyur or in the ideas of Tibetans. 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.
“Could they even by chance have seen them, I can assure the Theosophists that the contents of these volumes could never be understood by anyone who had not been given the key to their peculiar character, and to their hidden meaning.
“Every description of localities is figurative in our system; every name and word is purposely veiled; and a student, before he is given any further instruction, has to study the mode of deciphering, and then of comprehending and learning the equivalent secret term or synonym for nearly every word of our religious language. The Egyptian enchorial or hieratic system is child’s play to the deciphering of our sacred puzzles. Even in those volumes to which the masses have access, every sentence has a dual meaning, one intended for the unlearned, and the other for those who have received the key to the records.
“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—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, Shakya Thüb-pa.
“In The Theosophist for October, 1881, a correspondent correctly informs the reader that Gautama the Buddha, 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 Song-gyas, and before he had become the All-Wise. But three or four centuries after his separation from this earthly coil, when Asoka, 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 Shâkya-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 Arahat 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 Shâkya 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.
“Our world-honoured Tsong-kha-pa closing his fifth Dam-ngag reminds us that ‘every sacred truth, which the ignorant are unable to comprehend under its true light, ought to be hidden within a triple casket concealing itself as the tortoise conceals his head within his shell; ought to show her face but to those who are desirous of obtaining the condition of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi’—the most merciful and enlightened heart.
“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 Pekin; 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 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-pahine, which means “Saint of Splendour and Infinite Light.” This saint has many distinct “powers,” 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.”’
“This shows that these presumably dead ‘chang-chubs’ are living Bodhisatwas or Bhanté, known under various names among Tibetan people; among others, Lha, or ‘spirits,’ as they are supposed to have an existence more in spirit than in flesh. At death they often renounce Nirvâna—the bliss of eternal rest, or oblivion of personality—to remain in their spiritualized astral selves for the good of their disciples and humanity in general.
“To some Theosophists, at least, my meaning must be clear, though some are sure to rebel against the explanation. Yet we maintain that there is no possibility of an entirely pure ‘self’ remaining in the terrestrial atmosphere after his liberation from the physical body, in his own personality, in which he moved upon earth. Only three exceptions are made to this rule:
“The holy motive prompting a Bodhisatwa, 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.
“The periods allotted for these exceptional cases vary. In the first case, owing to the knowledge acquired in his condition of Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi—the most holy and enlightened heart—the Bodhisatwa has no fixed limit. Accustomed to remain for hours and days in his astral form during life, he has power after death to create around him his own conditions, calculated to check the natural tendency of the other principles to rejoin their respective elements, and can descend or even remain on earth for centuries and millenniums. In the second case, the period will last until the all-powerful magnetic attraction of the subject of the thought—intensely concentrated at the moment of death—becomes weakened and gradually fades out. In the third, the attraction is broken either by the death or the moral unworthiness of the loved ones. It cannot in either case last more than a lifetime.
“In all other cases of apparitions or communications by whatever mode, the ‘spirit’ will prove a wicked ‘bhûta’ or ‘ro-lang’ at best—the soulless shell of an ‘elementary.’ The ‘Good Doctrine’ is rejected on account of the unwarranted accusation that ‘adepts’ only claim the privilege of immortality. No such claim was ever brought forward by any eastern adept or initiate. Very true, our Masters teach us ‘that immortality is conditional,’ and that the chances of an adept who has become a proficient in the Alaya Vijñâna, the acme of wisdom, are tenfold greater than those of one who, being ignorant of the potentialities centred within his Self, allows them to remain dormant and undisturbed until it is too late to awake them in this life. But the adept knows no more on earth, nor are his powers greater here than will be the knowledge and powers of the average good man when the latter reaches his fifth and especially his sixth cycle or round. Our present mankind is still in the fourth of the seven great cyclic rounds. Humanity is a baby hardly out of its swaddling clothes, and the highest adept of the present age knows less than he will know as a child in the seventh round. And as mankind is an infant collectively, so is man in his present development individually. As it is hardly to be expected that a young child, however precocious, should remember his existence from the hour of his birth, day by day, with the various experiences of each, and the various clothes he was made to wear on each of them, so no ‘self,’ unless that of an adept having reached Samma-Sambuddha—during which an illuminate sees the long series of his past lives throughout all his previous births in other worlds—was ever able to recall the distinct and various lives he passed through. But that time must come one day. Unless a man is an irretrievable sensualist, dooming himself thereby to utter annihilation after one of such sinful lives, that day will dawn when, having reached the state of absolute freedom from any sin or desire, he will see and recall to memory all his past lives as easily as a man of our age turns back and passes in review, one by one, every day of his existence.”
We may add a word or two in explanation of a previous passage, referring to Kwan-yin. This divine power was finally anthropomorphized by the Chinese Buddhist ritualists into a distinct double-sexed deity with a thousand hands and a thousand eyes, and called Kwan-shai-yin Bodhisatwa, the Voice-Deity, but in reality meaning the voice of the ever-present latent divine consciousness in man; the voice of his real Self, which can be fully evoked and heard only through great moral purity. Hence Kwan-yin is said to be the son of Amitabhâ Buddha, who generated that Saviour, the merciful Bodhisatwa, the “Voice” or the “Word” that is universally diffused, the “Sound” which is eternal. It has the same mystical meaning as the Vâch of the Brâhmans. While the Brâhmans maintain the eternity of the Vedas from the eternity of “sound,” the Buddhists claim by synthesis the eternity of Amitabhâ, since he was the first to prove the eternity of the Self-born, Kwan-yin. Kwan-yin is the Vâchishvara or Voice-Deity of the Brâhmans. Both proceed from the same origin as the Logos of the neo-platonic Greeks; the “manifested deity” and its “voice” being found in man’s Self, his conscience; Self being the unseen Father, and the “voice of Self” the Son; each being the relative and the correlative of the other. Both Vâchishvara and Kwan-yin had, and still have, a prominent part in the Initiation Rites and Mysteries in the Brâhmanical and Buddhist esoteric doctrines.
We may also point out that Bodhisatwas or Rahats need not be adepts; still less, Brâhmans, Buddhists, or even “Asiatics,” but simply holy and pure men of any nation or faith, bent all their lives on doing good to humanity.
(To be continued.) [see “Doctrines of the Holy ‘Lha.’”]