An Asian Worldview
What then are we to make of such disparate views of H.P. Blavatsky and
her relationship with Indo - Tibetan Buddhism? Surely it is no coincidence
that those who despise Blavatsky's writings are Western scholars and nonpractitioners
of Buddhism, while those who look upon HPB favorably are often involved
in Buddhist practice. What are scholarly critics seeing that practitioners
are not? Scholars appear to be reacting in part to Blavatsky's mélange
of vocabulary and meshing of academically quite separate religious movements:
H.P.B. in her writing draws from Vedåntin, Mådhyamika, Theravådin,
Gnostic, Platonic, Hebrew, Chaldean, Meso-american and other sources quite
indiscriminately. In this way, scholarly indignation appears justified.
No one can be an expert in all these fields, and the vocabulary and concepts
generated by these religious and mystical traditions are deeply embedded
in specific socio-historical contexts. But one typical example of Blavatskyan
abandon will suffice:
The Svastica, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the
"Jaina-Cross" as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding
its direct connection, and even identity with the Christian cross, has
become dishonored …. It is the "devil's sign," we are told
by the Indian missionaries. "Does it not shine on the head of the
great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand headed Sesha-Ananta, in
the depths of Pâtâla, the Hindu Naraka or Hell"?
It does: but what is Ananta? As Sesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric
cycle of time, and becomes infinite Time itself, when called Ananta,
the great seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the eternal Deity,
during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly
metaphysical symbol? The Svastica is the most philosophically scientific
of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a
few lines of the whole work of creation, or evolution, as one should
rather say, from Cosmo-theogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible
unknown Parabrahm to the humble moneron of materialistic science,
whose genesis is as unknown to that science as is that of the All-Deity
itself. The Svastica is found heading the religious symbols of every
old nation. It is the "Worker's Hammer" in the Chaldean Book
of Numbers, the "Hammer" just referred to in the Book
of Concealed Mystery (Ch. I, §§ 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), "which
striketh sparks from the flint" (Space), those sparks becoming worlds.
It is "Thor's Hammer," the magic weapon forged by the dwarfs
against the Giants, or the pre-cosmic Titanic forces of Nature …"
etc. etc.(33)
Without stopping to justify or contextualize any of her refences, Blavatsky
blazes ahead, seeing the evolutionary symbol of the svastika in the
Hermetic Smaragdine Tablet, the myth of Prometheus, the Ignis of
the Latins and the Vishvakarman of the Veda. Learned HPB may be,
but difficult to take seriously in an academic sense.
But there are three things yet more offensive about Blavatsky, particularly
to her contemporaries of the late 19th century. First, HPB was a woman,
a fiercely independent and eccentric woman. This in itself was a problem.
HPB left her husband, General Nikifor Blavatsky, at the age of 18, and traveled
alone, from 1848 to 1873 through eastern Europe to Egypt, up to western
Europe, across America to the west coast and down through South America,
then across the ocean to Sri Lanka, India and back to Europe.(34) Additionally,
Blavatsky smoked cigars, swore like a pirate, and spoke her mind bluntly,
with little regard for the perceptions of others or the mores of the time.
In short, Blavatsky's entire personality and independence from male control
was an offense in Victorian Europe and its colonies.
Secondly, Blavatsky was stridently and vocally opposed to the gender, race
and class prejudices of her day. One of her primary interests was to found
"the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction
of race, creed, sex, caste or color." (35) This was not merely a passing
fancy, but formed the first object in the charter of the Theosophical Society
in 1875, and was considered the essential feature of Theosophy until Blavatsky's
death. A letter purporting to be from the Guru of her Gurus, the "Mahåchohan,"
dated 1881, states,
If Theosophists say: "… the lower classes and inferior races
cannot concern us and must manage as they can," what becomes of our
fine professions of benevolence, reform, etc.? … Should we devote
ourselves to teaching a few Europeans, fed on the fat of the land, many
of them loaded with the gifts of blind fortune, the rationale of bell-ringing,
cup-growing, spiritual telephone, etc., etc., and leave the teeming millions
of the ignorant, of the poor and the despised, the lowly and the oppressed,
to take care of themselves, and of their hereafter, the best they know
how? Never! Perish rather the Theosophical Society …(36)
By the end of HPB's life the central platform of brotherhood appeared
to be based on nothing other than the Mahåyåna doctrine of the
bodhisattva's path:
Yea; on the Arya Path thou art no more Srotapatti, thou art a Bodhisattva.
The stream is cross'd. 'Tis true thou hast a right to Dharmakaya vesture;
but Sambhogakaya is greater than a Nirvanee, and greater still is a Nirmanakaya-the
Buddha of Compassion.
Now bend thy head and listen well, O Bodhisattva-Compassion speaks and
saith: "Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt
thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?" (37)
Brotherhood in the abstract no doubt appealed to the Christian powers
which had colonized India as elsewhere, but the actual membership of the
Theosophical Society was largely Indian, and this offended not only racial
sensibilities but the very justification by which England ruled its Indian
colony-that of the inability of the Indians to organize responsibly, and
hence, to rule themselves.
Thirdly, and possibly the heart of the matter, Blavatsky had a Weltanschauung
far more similar to Asian mythological worldviews than to missionary monotheism
or atheistic rationalism. She neither championed a single religion or religious
leader, nor did she attempt to discredit Asian philosophy, demythologize
it, or reconstruct it along Western categories, like Beal, Müller,
Rhys-Davids, or Oldenberg.(38) In contradistinction, much European scholarship
on Asian thought during Blavatsky's time was pursued for the express purpose
of ruining it. Samuel Beal writes in 1871,
In knowledge of the existence of this large and complete collection
of the Buddhist Scriptures [the Chinese Canon], it is singular that so
little use has been made of it, by missionaries or scholars generally.…
it must be evident that so long as we are ignorant of the details of their
[Buddhist] religion, they will not be induced to listen to our denunciation
of it; nor can we expect that our indifference to their prejudices will
tend to remove them.(39)
How frustrating then, that HPB spread her teachings for the express purpose
of ruining Christian progress in Asia, as well as blocking the inroads being
made the world over by scientific materialism! In 1888 she wrote,
Verily, the fiendish spirits of fanaticism, of early and mediaeval Christianity
and of Islam, have from the first loved to dwell in darkness and ignorance;
and both have made
"______ the sun like blood, the earth a tomb,
The tomb a hell, and hell itself a murkier gloom!"
Both creeds have won their proselytes at the point of the sword: both
have built their churches on heaven-kissing hecatombs of human victims.
Over the gateway of Century I of our era, the ominous words "the karma
of ISRAEL," fatally glowed. Over the portals of our own, the future
seer may discern other words, that will point to the Karma for cunningly
made-up HISTORY, for events purposely perverted, and for great characters
slandered by posterity, mangled out of recognition, between the two cars
of Jagannâtha-Bigotry and Materialism; one accepting too much, the
other denying all.(40)
Blavatsky saw Asian modes of thought as superior to all others, and in
many ways "mythologized" herself and her work (from a Western
perspective) just as Asian religious traditions did. Blavatsky's mythologization
took many forms, all of which have parallels in Buddhism. She referred to
esoteric texts like the Books of Kiu-Ti and the Stanzas of Dzyan,
forbidden to the profane-similar to certain sections of Tibetan Tantras
which require initiation, not to mention the Tibetan tradition of hidden
texts called "terma."(41) HPB claimed inspiration and visions
from hidden gurus, as have many yogis, including the "Great Fifth"
Dalai Lama, and Maitreyanåtha's secret instruction of Asanga, founder
of the Yogåcåra school of Mahåyåna Buddhism. She
proposed a complex, mythological origin for the human race, causing ancient
humanity to descend from godlike ancestors, not unlike the origin myths
of nearly all ancient traditions. Blavatsky wrote about invisible hierarchies
of intelligences behind the phenomenal world, not unlike the Buddhist någas,
dakinis, yak?as, råk?as (and their kings), not to mention bodhisattvas
of various grades, supervised by myriads of Buddhas. She claimed her teaching
was derived from an ahistorical, perennial philosophy, similar to Hindu
claims of a Sanatanadharma or the Buddhist doctrine of the timelessness
of the True Law. On the other hand, HPB often gave allegorical explanations
for popular myths and stories, as do some modern lamas. Sogyal Rinpoche,
for example, explains the six (kåma-dhåtu) grades of
incarnation in the Buddhist universe in sociological and economic terms,
picturing the devas as "tall, blond surfers, lounging on beaches and
in gardens flooded by brilliant sunshine …" (42)
It is important to state for the record that it may well be the case that
none of Blavatsky's claims are true. Though many of her biographers, even
her enemies, admit that her Mahatmas may have been real people-this too
may be a myth or a lie. (43) For the purposes of this paper, it matters
not a whit whether HPB forged letters from her hidden gurus, whether HPB
ever visited Tibet, or whether her perennial philosophy really exists. The
important issue at hand is how far, and in what way, Blavatsky has represented
Buddhist ideas, teachings, and methods, and what significance this may hold
for modern interpreters of Buddhism in the West.
But this was not the interest of scholarly observers of Blavatsky last century.
For promiscuously and ahistorically conflating world religions; for undermining
the missionaries; for mocking scientism and its materialistic methods; for
disdaining the "middle ground" of the Spiritualists; for aiding
and abetting the natives; worst of all, for writing and mythologizing like
native traditions - for all these reasons (and most of them not scholarly),
I propose that Blavatsky was labelled an amateur, an adventuress, and a
fraud by her colonialist contemporaries, and the judgment has since stuck,
particularly among academics. No trained scholar has looked in depth at
Blavatsky and her Buddhistic teachings since the nineteenth century. Buddhist
practitioners this century, however, discovering Blavatsky for themselves
as part of a religious search, have been for the most part unaware of the
academic contempt in which HPB has been held; thus they have received her
more favorably than scholars, on the whole, as Buddhist practitioners largely
share the same Weltanschauung which motivated HPB. This explains,
at least in part, the great divide in public opinion regarding H. P. Blavatsky.
But in light of the extensive additions to, and revisions in, Western Buddhology
over the past century, it is high time for a re-examination of Blavatsky
and Buddhism. Buddhist scholars today (one assumes) no longer share Victorian
sensibilities, while having the additional advantage of a far more comprehensive
access to native Buddhist traditions, especially in Tibet. HPB need no longer
be judged on the basis of her personality, her anti-Christian zeal, or the
danger her activities present to colonialism. Controversial and flamboyant
she was, no doubt: the subject of over 30 positive and negative biographies
and countless topical studies (the latter mostly written by Theosophists).
Yet the focus of all of these works has been in investigating her supposed
psychic powers; chronicling her cultural legacy; producing commentaries
to her works; or attacking or defending Theosophy as a valid spiritual path.
No modern study has yet evaluated H.P. Blavatsky's works purely on the basis
of their merit as accurate or inaccurate representations of Buddhism, judged
by the teachings of bona fide Buddhists themselves, in native and
now translated primary documents. Specifically, while one very useful volume
gathers up Blavatsky's statements about Buddhism (44), no scholar
has yet attempted a systematic study of H.P.B.'s literary oeuvre
and compared it to undisputed Buddhist doctrine contained in the Påli,
Sanskrit, and Tibetan S¨tras, Íåstras and Tantras. This
paper purposes, for the first time, to undertake such a systematic investigation. |