Theos-Talk Archives (July 1996 Message tt00029)

Rodolfo Don wrote:

Thank you Eldon for your posting.  Nobody could disagree with
what you say.  Some of the things that you mention though are
beyond our control.  I can't control if somebody decides to see
'racism' behind the 'root races philosophy', even though we keep
repeating that a 'root race' has nothing to do with ethnic
divisions.  Or if somebody decides that the term 'brotherhood' is
not politically correct because its root comes from 'brother'
(male connotation).  I doesn't matter if the term is clearly
described: "To form a nucleus of Universal Brotherhood of
Humanity without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or
color'; some people simply won't accept it.  I wouldn't waste my
time,the little time we have like you said, in trying to convince
those people by working with semantics.

After reading many post on this semantics problem, I agree with
what you say.  I have taken time to learn what the more common
Sanskrit words mean and find a whole concept in each one that
would be very hard to translate into English equivilents without
loosing the intrinsic meaning.  I have no problems with
Brotherhood in the context of Theosophy as I understand where it
originated and what the word is meant to convey.  Any English
words we may chose have already got connotations imbedded in
them, that could cause more confusion than sticking to the
originals.  How would one describe sishtas in English and still
retain the entire concept that the word holds? Remainders,
left-overs etc are poor substitutes as they already have meanings
of their own in our minds and those meanings will overlay the
ones we are trying to fit into them.

> The only thing that we can do, and nobody can stop us from doing
> it, is to transform ourselves.  It is very difficult to write
> about this because we would be touching things that are sacred,
> but I can say that there is no more important subject for anyone
> who wishes to serve mankind.  We need a place to meet.  A place
> that we can communicate among ourselves, a common language, a
> common goal.  How can we do that since we are fragmented? We need
> to be able to establish a lodge where we can all touch each
> other.
>
> Do you understand what I mean?

Most definitely.  At the risk of getting shouted at :-) I bring
up the Tourist/Pilgrim idea and suggest you are referring to
pilgrims who have made the commitment to theosophy.  I think the
pilgrims will hang in somehow because their life is at stake,
more or less, and it will probably be them that, in small groups,
keep the light burning in the Lodges.  They have committed to
serving mankind as far as they are able rather than their own
welfare so whatever they do within the Lodges, is for humanity at
large and the possible future pilgrims and perhaps not so much
for the politics and disagreements going on in many places.
Being a pilgrim can be a lonely business so this may be just the
cause that keeps the Lodges intact as meeting places.

> Rudy

Regards Bee