Sylvia Cranston – USA
[Condensed from Reincarnation, The Phoenix Fire Mystery, pp. 102-03, Theosophical University Press, 1998 edition.. This excerpt is reproduced on Theosophy Forward in a slightly revised format to fit the magazine’s template. Permission is granted to reprint one time this article written and published by Anita Atkins (aka-Sylvia Cranston) to Jan Nicolaas Kind, publisher of Theosophy Forward. Copyright Owner: Dr. Caren M. Elin, September 5, 2017].
Writing of mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James quotes several passages from H. P. Blavatsky’s The Voice of the Silence, a translation of a portion of “The Book of the Golden Precepts.” Commenting, James says: “There is a verge of the mind which these things haunt; and whispers therefrom mingle with the operations of our understanding, even as the waters of the infinite ocean send their waves to break among the pebbles that lie upon our shores.” [New York: Longmans, Green, 1925, p.421].
Of the same work D. T. Suzuki remarked: “I saw The Voice of the Silence for the first time when at Oxford. I got a copy and sent it to Mrs. Suzuki (then Miss Beatrice Lane) at Columbia University, writing to her: ‘Here is the real Mahayana Buddhism.’ ” [The Middle Way, August 1965, p. 90], Later reviewing William Kingsland’s biography, The Real H. P. Blavatsky [London: John Watkins, 1922], Dr. Suzuki again called The Voice of the Silence “true Mahayana doctrine,” and added:
“Undoubtedly Madame Blavatsky had in some way been initiated into the deeper side of Mahayana teaching and then gave out what she deemed wise to the Western world as Theosophy ... There is no doubt whatever that the Theosophical Movement made known to the general world the main doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism, and the interest now being taken in Mahayana in the Western world has most certainly been helped forward by the knowledge of Theosophy ... As Mr. Kingsland says, ‘She did more than any other single individual to bring to the West a knowledge of Eastern religious philosophy.’ ” (The Eastern Buddhist (old series), editor, D. T. Suzuki, Vol. 5, p.572.)
The original 1889 edition of the Voice was reissued in English in 1927 by the Chinese Buddhist Research Society in Peking at the personal request of the then Tibetan Panchen Lama who for some time had been in China on a mission, and was en route to Inner Mongolia. The Panchen Lama – who with the Dalai Lama were the crown of the Tibetan hierarchy – was born in 1883 and died in 1937. (While the duties of the Dalai Lama were governmental and religious, those of the Panchen Lama pertained chiefly to spiritual matters and extended to China, Mongolia, and other Mahayana Buddhist countries, where he was highly revered as a unifying power in northern Buddhism.) He penned in Tibetan calligraphy a short Sutra for the new edition, and his suite together with several Chinese scholars verified Madame Blavatsky’s translations of Tibetan words. The new Foreword mentions that this Russian noblewoman studied for a considerable period at Tashi-lhum-po, the seat of the Panchen Lama in Shigatse, Tibet, and knew the previous Lama very well. The present Dalai Lama is familiar with the original (1889) edition of the Voice and signed Christmas Humphrey’s copy in 1956 when they both were in India at the twenty-five-hundredth anniversary of the Buddhist era. [The Middle Way, Aug. 1965, p.90.] When in 1973 the Dalai Lama visited the Buddhist Society in London, he was shown a copy of the Peking edition, and was fascinated by the photograph it contains of the just- mentioned Panchen Lama. [Letter of Christmas Humphreys to one of the editors, dated April 10, 1974.] Madame Blavatsky writes in the preface to her rendition:
“The Book of the Golden Precepts... contains about ninety distinct little treatises. Of these I learned thirty- nine by heart, years ago Therefore... the work of translating (a few of these) has been relatively an easy task for me The original Precepts are engraved on thin oblongs; copies very often on discs. These discs, or plates, are generally preserved on the altars of the temples attached to centers where the so-called ‘contemplative’ or Mahayana (Yogacharya) Schools are established.”
(These) maxims and ideas, however noble and original, are often found under different forms in Sanskrit works... This is but natural, since most, if not all, of the greatest Arhats, the first followers of Gautama Buddha, were Hindus and Aryans, not Mongolians, especially those who emigrated into Tibet.”
The subject matter of this small volume concerns the steps on the path of discipleship and the goal to be achieved. Thus, the selections on karma, rebirth, and an enduring Self in man have an intimate bearing on the journey depicted, although owing to space limitations much that might prove helpful in finding the Way, had to be omitted. The word “Alaya” which appears several times is defined as “the Universal Soul or Atma, each man having a ray of it in him and being supposed to be able to identify himself with and to merge himself into it.”...
The excerpt above was previously published in The Eclectic Theosophist 1982 i71 Sept-Oct p5.