Theos-Talk Archives (October 1998 Message tt00163)

>
>I would humbly suggest that, if one is to draw inspiration from Buddhist
>teachings, as our above correspondents seem to do, there is a place for
both
>perspectives in Mahayana Buddhism and in Theosophy.
>

Of course there is.


>Jerry S. seems to hold strictly to a "Madhyamika" view, that really nothing
>positive can be asserted, because it can easily by shown to lead,
eventually,
>to absurdity.  So emptiness (which is not a position) is the only thing one
>can truthfully postulate about the world or the self.
>

Yes, I do hold to that view. I adhere to the "Great Perfection" school of
Tibetan Buddhism, which explains much of my own experiences.


>However, there is another school of Buddhism, one more favored by HPB,
called
>"Yogacara," where, as Darren states, all may be emptiness, but there is the
>perception of emptiness.

These two schools are not necesarily at odds. The Great Perfection school
tries to be inclusive. The view that one perceives emptiness is true. When
I combined this with HPB's globes and planes model, I found that both
views can be explained. Emptiness with a perciever is nirvana; the upper
three planes of our 7-plane system. Emptiness without a perceiver (non-
duality) is outside the 7-plane system.  The "goal" of most Buddhists
schools is to enter nirvana, which Great Perfection says is still maya.
The lower four planes of our solar system comprise samsara. The upper
three comprise nirvana (roughly). Great Perfection is said to go farther
than
other schools by including nirvana within maya, and by teaching that the
real
and ultimate goal lies outside of the 7-plane system altogether.


>  Tibetan and other adherents of Yogacara actually
>assert, in both Scripture and Commentary, that while there is no real
"self"
>(in the sense of personal ego, eternally existing thing) there is a *REAL*
>Buddha-nature, waiting to manifest, and (another way of putting this) a
*REAL*
>luminous essence of mind, compared with "clear light" (See Tulku Namkhai
>Norbu).  In this school of thought, perception, and "mind" (or essence of
>mind) is real, permanent, self-existing, etc.
>

Agreed. I see this "essence of mind" as pure consciousness itself.
The idea of a real buddha-nature is found in all schools of Buddhism,
and as far as I can tell, it is equivilent to HPB's divine Monad.


>It may be this Yogacara position which HPB would wish to utilize in
defending
>her presentation of the Monad.
>
>Rich


It is. She deliberately said almost nothing about the three upper planes.
She only fully described the lower 4.  I think she felt that the Great
Perfection teaching was too much for folks to grasp during her time.
This is no longer true because of all the Tibetans now writing excellent
books about it in English.

Jerry S.