Theos-Talk Archives (September 1999 Message tt00097)

Many thanks, Dallas, for a (relatively) concise and thought-provoking 
response.  I will avoid boring the list and take issue with only one 
paragraph.

In a message dated 9/7/99 11:59:50 PM, dalval@nwc.net writes:

<<  "...at any time, any one its (the Lodge, which contains within its
boundaries all real Masters, students, guides, and Gurus, of whatever
race or creed) real teachers or disciples will gladly help any other
teacher or disciple.  But we are not to conclude that...we, who call
ourselves chela-aspirants or known chelas of any certain person whom
we call Guru, can place ourselves at the same moment under the direct
tutelage of more than one Guru.."  W. Q. Judge,  LETTERS THAT HAVE
HELPED ME,  Letter XIII,  p. 43 (ULT Edition). >>

Dallas is (perhaps legimately) concerned that these Tibetans are "posers" and 
distract us from our true Masters, and from self-reliance, with their 
hodge-podge of rituals, dances, mandalas, and other distasteful "outer" 
manifestations.  "Useless" Dallas calls them at one point.  So we should rely 
on our invisible Gurus and wait for them to send more light.

Again, the "joke" I told -- God already sent a jeep, a boat, and a 
helicopter. 

It seems to me a VERY cruel joke, beyond irony, that the very people who pray 
in the fashion Dallas indicates (as I have done for years) are now unable to 
recognize that their prayers have been answered.

HPB declared herself a Buddhist, BOTH esoterically AND exoterically.  Not in 
form alone (taking pansil or Buddhist refuse in Sri Lanka in 1880 along with 
Olcott) but in practice, spreading the literal and "inner" Buddha-Dharma in 
the West, using specific and exclusively Buddhist terminology at the heart of 
her teachings.  It is known that both her principal Masters were working in 
Tibet, apparently heads of monasteries as their EXOTERIC employment.  It is 
known that HPB sought out Tibet at each and every opporunity in her life, and 
it was this "trans-Himalayan" source which was more than once called by her 
the fountainhead of occult wisdom in our current age.

Now, the Tibetan masters have come West, to answer our prayers -- and we 
reject them as foreign gods and idols.  What Dallas says, I am discovering is 
quite, quite true.  We have so poorly assimilated the teachings given by our 
reverend Teachers that we can't identify a Master when he shows up on our 
doorstep.  In fact, we rudely send him away with unkind remarks as to his 
"ritualism."

Anyone who thinks that studying with qualified Tibetan lamas is placing 
oneself under a DIFFERENT Master than HPB's Masters is sadly deluded.  Sadly, 
because it is a precious opportunity that wasn't available last century, and 
sadly because it probably won't be available next century, as the Tibetan 
culture and spirit is systematically crushed by the Chinese government and 
the resultant assimilation of Diaspora.  The "time for acquisition" is indeed 
limited, and the genuine teachers are rapidly dying out.  Soon, the 
pale-faced Westerners will take over responsibility for carrying on the 
Tibetan Buddhist lineages, and we all know what happens after that.  We know 
for a certainty, because we have the gradual desecration of our own tradition 
as a living object-lesson.

Rich

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