Theos-Talk Archives (December 1998 Message tt00144)

As tiring as the endless insult trading has become (and I delete most of it
after reading only a few lines) there is a real issue here which few
Theosophists have yet grappled with, because it requires not only a solid
grasp of Theosophical teachings, but a thorough exposure to the very Eastern
books that HPB points to in her works.

Most good Theosophists have read the Voice of the Silence, but have never read
a Buddhist work translated from Sanskrit or Tibetan by anyone other than HPB.
Those who do so quickly come to the realization that there are major
contradictions between different things HPB teaches, and between her and
Eastern teachings.

These contradictions are not, presumably, finally insoluble, but present a
great hurdle for anyone who reads and appreciates Eastern wisdom, as HPB
taught us to.

If I may just briefly lay out a few of these major contradictions:

*  HPB seems to indicate that Buddhism is the highest *exoteric* religion on
the planet at the current time.  She uses Buddhist words and phrases, quotes
Buddhist teachers like Aryasangha, Vasubandhu, Tsong Kh Pa, etc.  Yet HPB
introduces the distinctly un-Buddhist idea of atman.  99.9% of all Budhists,
including the very teachers she quotes, are horrified that the very "self"
which the Lord Buddha strove so hard to dispose of would be reintroduced under
atman.  Many of them speak out directly against atman in their published
writings.  Tsong Kha Pa himself (supposedly the Lord Buddha incarnate) writes
very disparagingly against the atma-view, as Gautama Buddha does in ALL the
Pali records.  This is a major stumbling block for Buddhists accepting
Theosophy.

*When HPB uses foreign terms, she often uses them in her own unique way, which
makes it extremely difficult for those native from such traditions to trust
her.  She lists the 7 perfections of wisdom in her Voice of the Silence, when
in all known Buddhists lists there are only 6 perfections, as she herself
states in a footnote.  She has added a fourth of seven, "Viraga," for reasons
known only to herself.

*  HPB makes vast generalizations that are impossible to substantiate.  For
instance, she calls the Yellow Hats "good" and the Red Hats "bad" in Tibetan
Buddhism.  When I first entered into Tibetan studies I took her very view and
got into lots of trouble.  First of all, most Tibetan teachers follow more
than one practice.  Like the Dalai Lama, they belong to (or lead) the revered
Gelugpa sect founded by Tsong Kha Pa, yet take teachings from the older
schools of Tibet, namely the "red hats."  The Tibetans themselves hold no
prejudices between the two schools, and rarely make a distinction.  Many of
the most respected, altruistic bodhisattva teachers belong to "Red Hat"
lineages, namely Nyingma, Sakyapa and Kargyupa.  Having spoken with a few of
these teachers (not that I have such amazing insight) I felt no trace of evil,
no trace of selfishness.  They are as involved as their Yellow Hat
counterparts in saving Tibetan culture, spreading the very same words of the
Buddha.  Besides, as stated, many teachers belong to more than one school, so
they are BOTH Red Hats and Yellow Hats simultaneously.

I could go on but time presses.  None of this, to my mind, invalidates
Theosophy, and I do not post this as any kind of a slam towards HPB.  We all
knew she was mysterious and the teachings of Theosophy difficult from the
start.  But we really *must* caution ourselves against blind, slavish devotion
to her words, without checking them out for ourselves.  She would never had
wanted our unquestioning assent.  The problems she poses, and the
contradictions she speaks, beg for investigation, not riding roughshod over
each other for taking different viewpoints.  Jerry Schueler appears to speak
more for the native Buddhist view of things (mostly correctly, in my humble
view) while Leon and others take a mostly native Theosophist point of view
(again, mostly correctly, I suspect.)

So why then are we calling each other evil, fallen, ignorant, etc.?  In a
search for truth, different vantagepoints are opportunities to better scale
the mountain, not pull each other down.

Rich Taylor