Theos-Talk Archives (March 2004 Message tt00625)

Hallo Pedro and all,

My views are:

I did like Chuck's take on the question.

Their Buddhism was a Trans-Himalayan one.
But Masters are really teacher of the Wisdom Tradition and are not really
subscribed to any physical or heretical sect.


Pedro --- Have you ever read this one ??? :
http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/grigor1.htm

"Sixth, Kabir and the Sikhs arise and encourage and reinforce this same
mindset that all faiths descend from one Wisdom Tradition. Sikh groups
certainly stilled believed this in HPB's time and were politically engaged
in a way that HPB might have sympathesized with and maybe misread. But some
Sikhs combined the Buddhist/Hindu cosmology of higher bodies with the idea
of an emotional body of the imagination drawn from Sufi and Central Asian
sources (the hurqalyi through them, I hypothesize, becomes HPB's astral
body). "

This teaching was also promoted by the Khwajgan (ie. "The Masters"). The
Sufi masters (early or esoteric Khwaja Naqshbandi) from Persia-Tibet
Kashmir.

from
M. Sufilight with peace and love...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Pedro Oliveira" <prmoliveira@yahoo.com>
To: <theos-talk@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2004 1:24 PM
Subject: Theos-World Were the Mahatmas Buddhists?


> One of the puzzles in theosophical history and
> literature is that HPB's Teachers, the Mahatmas,
> declared themselves to be Buddhists, as in this
> well-known passage from the Mahatma Letters:
>
> "Therefore, we deny God both as philosophers and as
> Buddhists." (ML 88, chronological)
>
> And yet, the system they taught, sometimes called
> "Aryan-Arhat Esoteric Doctrine", includes as one of
> its pivotal points Atma, or the seventh principle, the
> One Self, as well as Soul.
>
> Apparently, there are no known school in Buddhism that
> accepts Atma as a fundamental reality. The denial of
> Atma is one of the cardinal principles in Buddhist
> philosophy. Two well-known scholars explain why:
>
> "Buddhism stands unique in the history of human
> thought in denying the existence of such a Soul , Self
> or Atman. According to the teaching of the Buddha,
> the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which
> has no corresponding reality." (Walpola Rahula, "What
> the Buddha Taught")
>
> "Sakkayaditthi (Substance-view) is avidya (ignorance)
> par excellence, and from it proceed all passions.
> Denial of Satkaya (atman or Substance) is the very
> pivot of the Buddhist metaphysics and doctrine of
> salvation." (T.R.V. Murti, "The Central Philosophy of
> Buddhism - A Study of the Madhyamika System")
>
> Can someone explain which Buddhism the Mahatmas
> subscribed to?
>
> Pedro
>
>
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