Theos-Talk Archives (January 1999 Message tt00217)

Jan 18th 1999

Dallas offers:

Could I add my own thoughts to what Leon has offered ?


In the opening pages of vol. 1 (Introductory, p. xix bottom) of
the SECRET DOCTRINE, HPB take opportunity to show the derivation
of "Buddha," "Bodha" and "Buddhi."  All related to the root
"bodh" or wisdom.

Additionally one can secure from her the meanings attached to
those words in the THEOSOPHICAL GLOSSARY.

Gautama, the Buddha never came to establish a religion.  He came
to assist the masses of India who had been kept in ignorance by
the Brahmin caste - which had obscured and abstracted many of the
great ethical and esoteric texts from the reach of the multitude.

PALI is the people's language of that day. Sanskrit was the
language in which the ancient texts had been recorded by the
Brahmins.

It is a common error (I think) to say that Buddha came to
"establish" a "religion."  He did no such thing, any more than
HPB came to establish Theosophy as a "religion," although the
function of any reform is to unite (religiere) those who desire
wisdom through study and thinking, and, to unite in their
self-generated desire to verify the accuracy and value of any
teaching.

Dallas

> From: "Leon Maurer" <leonmaurer@aol.com>
> Sent:	Sunday, January 17, 1999 11:42 PM
> Subject: Re: Obstructionism and BUDHISM (one D).

In a message dated 1/18/99 12:50:14 AM, Richtay@aol.com writes:

>How very interesting that HPB identifies BUDHISM (the esoteric
wisdom
>religion) with the pronoun "his."  Perhaps we should say, along
with HPB,
>that Buddha was the founder of a new exoteric religion, AND the
revealer of
>a very ancient "BUDHISM," and that BOTH have been preserved by
his Initiates
>beyond the Himalayas.  And how interesting that so many of the
secret books
of
>Tibet are now coming to light, from the very same "Books of
Kiu-Ti" that the
>S.D. isdrawn from (see SD xliii, SD vol. 3 pp. 405 ff).  And how
strange that
>none of the self-appointed defenders of HPB have seen fit to
comment on the
>significance of this FACT.

Is it also a FACT, then, that this revelation of the ancient
Tibetan (not
necessarily Buddhist) books of the Kiu-Ti, (Also called, I think
by HPB, "The
Book of the Golden Precepts"--from which the Book of Dzyan was,
admittedly,
extracted) has little  relationship to the exoteric Buddhism, and
its rituals,
as taught from the standard Buddhist canons, and practiced by
those spoken of
by HPB as "ignorant Lamas", and their equally ignorant, I
presume, Sanghas?

(Hoping to set the record straight, and establish the basis of
our arguments
that Buddhism, as an exoteric organized religion taught and
practiced in Tibet
(or India, etc.), cannot be the basis of any arguments against
theosophy or
the credibility of its teachers.)

LHM

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