TIBETAN BUDDHISM

Buddhism was late in coming to Tibet. Long after the countries to the south and east of it had yielded to Buddhist missionaries, Tibet remained unaffected. At last about 630 A.D., a Tibetan prince, Srong Tsan Gam Po, sent emissaries to northern India, for the purpose, in part, of securing the introduction of Buddhism into his realm. Likely his two wives, princesses from China and Nepal respectively, acquainted him with their own religion, Buddhism, and expressed their desire to practice it in Tibet. Yet Srong's introduction of Buddhism into Tibet was not successful. The native demonolatry was too strong for it; and besides, the Tibetans found it hard to understand. It would take another century before the true founder of Buddhism in Tibet came up from Bengal. He was Padma-Sambhava, a vigorous teacher of the corrupt Buddhism of 8th century northern India. This Buddhism, with it Tantric infusion of sex symbolism, took root, and ultimately, after various vicissitudes and "reforms," became the religion of Tibet.

The clergy of Tibet have had an interesting history. They early acquired the name of "lamas," a term of respect meaning "one who is superior." For a thousand years they lived in thick-walled monasteries. These were originally of the unmilitary Indian model, but finally developed into fortresses of a distinctly Tibetan style, with massive walls rising firmly from the foundation rocks to overhanging roofs far above. The climate, with its extreme cold and its long winters, made necessary the building of walled structures with plenty of room in them for winter stores. In the early days, the life that went on there was more that of princely magicians than of monks. The Tantric Buddhism that was practiced encouraged the lamas to take spouses. Celibacy, at least among the higher clergy, became a rarity. The monasteries therefore often had hereditary heads, the abbots passing their offices on to their sons.

In the second half of the 14th century, the conditions were created for the final "reform" of Lamaism by the great Tibetan monk Tsong-kha-pa. He organized the so-called Yellow Church, whose executive head is the Dalai Lama. Its monks are popularly known as Yellow Hats, for their hats and girdles are yellow--an evidence of Tsong's attempt to purify Lamaism and take it back in theory and practice toward early Buddhism. The monasteries that resisted reform continued the use of red and constitute the "Red" sects.

Tsong's reform was in part an imposition of a stricter monastic discipline. There was to be less alcohol and more praying. But what counted most and had the greatest future consequences was the reintroduction of celibacy. The practice of celibacy had the obvious and immediate effect of ending hereditary rule in the Yellow Hat monasteries; the abbots had no sons. But another result ultimately followed (about century later) which gave the Yellow Church its world-famous theory of reincarnation of the head lamas in their successors.

Born 6 July 1935, Lhamo Dondrub is the 14th Dalai Lama. He was the fifth of seven children in a farming family in the village of Taktser. His first language was, in his own words, "a broken Xining language which was (a dialect of) the Chinese language" as his family did not speak the regional Amdo dialect. He was proclaimed the tulku or rebirth of the 13th Dalai Lama at the age of two. In 1950 the army of the People's Republic of China invaded the region. One month later, on 17 November 1950, he was enthroned formally as Dalai Lama: at the age of fifteen, he became the region's most important spiritual leader and political ruler.

In 1951 the Chinese military pressured the Dalai Lama to ratify a seventeen-point agreement which permitted the People's Republic of China to take control of Tibet. He fled through the mountains to India soon after the failed 1959 uprising, and the effective collapse of the Tibetan resistance movement. In Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, India, he established a government-in-exile. The most influential member of the Gelugpa or Yellow Hat sect, he has considerable influence over the other sects of Tibetan Buddhism.

Today, Tibetan Buddhism is adhered to widely in the Tibetan Plateau, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Kalmykia (on the northwest shore of the Caspian), Siberia (central Russia, specifically Buryatia and Chita Oblast), and the Russian Far East (concentrated in Tuva). The Indian regions of Sikkim and Ladakh, both formerly independent kingdoms, are also home to significant Tibetan Buddhist populations. In the wake of the Tibetan diaspora, Tibetan Buddhism has gained adherents in the West and throughout the world. Celebrity practitioners include Brandon Boyd, Richard Gere, Adam Yauch, Jet Li, Sharon Stone, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, among others.

THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

In early adolescence, J. Krishnamurti had a chance encounter with prominent occultist and high-ranking Theosophist C.W. Leadbeater on the grounds of the Theosophical Society headquarters at Madras. He was subsequently raised under the tutelage of Annie Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, the current leaders of the Society, who believed him to be the likely "vehicle" for an expected World Teacher whose coming the Theosophists had predicted.

But what is theosophy and the Theosophical Society? To begin with, theosophy is an occultist, synthetic religion, drawing upon all faiths but originating in an esoteric form of Buddhism. Its doctrines, however, are primarily a free adaptation of Hinduism. Its aim is the establishment of a true brotherhood among all peoples dependent on an esoteric, ancient wisdom, expressed in the Vedanta, and transmitted through "masters" or "Mahatmas" who appear from age to age. These "great souls" have occult powers which give them unique control over their own bodies and over natural forces. Under their guidance, humanity, bound to the ever-turning wheel of reincarnation by the Law of Karma, will someday gain happiness, in a world that will "drink as one from the one wonderful Fountain of Wisdom from which all religions have drawn their hitherto partial truths."

The Theosophical Society was founded in New York City in 1875 by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), a Russian born spiritualist, in company with an American, Colonel H. S. Olcott (1832-1907), her partner in numerous occult and spiritualist activities. With them as well, another American, W. Q. Judge (1851-1896), and thirteen other interested people. Theosophy appealed to a Western elite disenchanted with Christianity and open to new ideas, especially from the East. The Society was established on the thesis that there is an Ageless Wisdom, the tread of which can be traced through all cultures and mythologies, through religion, philosophy, and science. The Society's headquarters were transferred from New York to Bombay in 1879, and were permanently established four years later in the town of Adyar, now a suburb of Madras. The Society today has national centers in some sixty countries.

Colonel Olcott was named the first president of the Society, to be followed by Annie Besant (1847-1933), and Englishwoman and one-time freethinker who renounced her citizenship and became an Indian. A dynamic and eloquent lecturer, Mrs. Besant joined the freedom movement against the British and was elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1918. She also founded the Hindu college in Benares which has grown into the present Benares Hindu University. It was Mrs. Besant's close associate and fellow Theosophist, the Reverend Charles Leadbeater, a former Anglican clergyman, who, in 1909, personally "discovered" Krishnamurti. Mrs. Besant firmly shared Leadbeater's belief that the fourteen-year-old boy from Madras was none other than this age's World Teacher. Krishnamurti renounced this in time and set out on his own.

Madame Blavatsky was the Society's founder. Alan Watts, skeptical of her, writes, "Her story was that, as a young woman, she had gone to Central Asia and Tibet to become the student of supreme gurus Koot Hoomi and Maurya (which are not Tibetan names, and whose alleged photographs look like versions of Jesus), who thereafter wrote her constant letters by psychokinetic precipitation or telepathic amanuensis in a distinctly Russian style of handwriting. Madame Blavatsky's voluminous works reveal only the most fragmentary knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism, but she was a masterly creator of metaphysical and occult science fiction, as well as being a delightful, uninhibited and outspoken old lady who spat and swore and rolled her own cigarettes. Perhaps she was a charlatan, but she did a beautiful job of it, and persuaded a goodly number of British aristocrats and literati to consider the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Buddhist Tripitaka. Those persuaded found them much more interesting and profound than the Bible, especially the Bible as interpreted by the run-of-the-mill Catholic and Protestant clergy at the end of the nineteenth century."

Despite regular growth, the Society has been marked by a number of schisms. W. Q. Judge left in 1895 due to a difference of opinion with his colleagues and formed a separate Theosophical Organization. At least three other schismatic groups may be counted: There are separate Theosophical Societies in Pasadena, California, and in Unterlengenhardt, Germany, and the United Lodge of Theosophists in Los Angeles (with several foreign branches). A major schism was led by Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Germany, who, after an argument with Annie Besant, formed the Anthroposophical Society in 1912. Attempts at reunification have so far been unsuccessful.

J. KRISHNAMURTI

Jiddu Krishnamurti was born into a Telugu Brahmin family on 11 May 1895 in Madanapalle, a small town in what was then colonial India. In early adolescence, he had a chance encounter with prominent occultist and high-ranking Theosophist C.W. Leadbeater on the grounds of the Theosophical Society headquarters at Adyar, called Madras at the time. He was subsequently raised under the tutelage of Annie Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, the current leaders of the Society, who believed him to be the likely "vehicle" for an expected World Teacher whose coming the Theosophists had predicted. To prepare the world for this coming, a world-wide organization called the Order of the Star in the East was formed and the young Krishnamurti was made its head.

In 1929, however, Krishnamurti renounced the role that he was expected to play, dissolved the Order with its huge following, and returned all the money and property that had been donated for this work. He declared allegiance to no nationality, caste, religion, or philosophy, and spent the rest of his life traveling the world as an individual speaker, speaking to large and small groups, as well as with interested individuals. His subject matter included psychological revolution, the nature of the mind, meditation, human relationships, and bringing about positive change in society. He constantly stressed the need for a revolution in the psyche of every human being and emphasized that such revolution could not be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.

He authored a number of books, among them The First and Last Freedom, The Only Revolution, and Krishnamurti's Notebook. In addition, a large collection of his talks and discussions have been published. His last public talk was in Madras, India, in January 1986, a month before his death at his home in Ojai, California.

Alan Watts describes in his autobiography the first time he met Krishnamurti. It was in 1936 at the home of psychiatrist Eric Graham Howe who hosted a discussion group on an ongoing basis of intellectuals and scientists. This was in London before Watts emigrated to America. Howe invited Krishnamurti, who was visiting London at the time, to their group and Krishnamurti accepted.

"That evening," Watts says, "Krishnamurti made the following points, which are still the main themes in his dialectic teaching: Why--and again why--do you want to know whether there is a God, whether there is life after death, or what method you should follow to become enlightened, liberated, or realized? Could it be that you identify yourself with a merely abstract ego based on nothing but memories, that therefore you are not alive and aware in the eternal present, and thus worry interminably about your future? Furthermore, don't you realize that when you accept someone as a spiritual teacher, you do so by your OWN authority and choice? You yourself license the Bible, the Koran, or the Bhagavad-Gita as infallible. Wake up!...and, without putting it into words, watch what is, now. You thus realize that there is no 'feeler' apart from feelings, and no grandular, billiard-ball 'self' confronting the universe."

Watts says that Krishnamurti was one of the most elegant men in the world. He wore clothes from Saville Row and used to zoom about the country in Alfa-Romeo and Mercedes-Benz sports cars. By courtesy of wealthy aristocrats he was supported palatially in Ojai, California; in Gstaad, Switzerland; or in London. He didn't drink alcohol, eat meat, or have any genital sex life because, according to him, he was polymorphously erotic and got the ecstasy through every nerve-end on his skin.

After they both settled in America, Watts and Krishnamurti met again many times. Watts describes a talk they had in 1953 in Krishnamurti's home in aforementioned Ojai, California, north of Los Angeles. They were discussing the art of meditation. Watts said that Krishnaji, as he was often called, "picked up two cushions from the couch and said 'Look. On the one hand there must be the understanding that there is nothing, nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing you can do to improve, transform, or better yourself. If you understand this completely you will realize that there is no such entity as YOU.' He then moved his hands from the first cushion to the second, and went on. 'Then if you have totally abandoned this ambition, you will be in the state of true meditation which comes over you spontaneously in wave after wave after wave of amazing light and bliss.'"

Krishnamurti established The Krishnamurti Foundation of America in Ojai in 1969. There are also Krishnamurti foundations in England (Krishnamurti Foundation Trust); India (Krishnamurti Foundation India); Canada (Krishnamurti Educational Centre); and Spain (the Fundacion Krishnamurti Latinoamericana). The mission of the KFA is, in part, to establish, organize, and hold classes, lectures, courses, schools, seminars and study groups for the exploration of Krishnamurti's teachings.

SWAMI PRABHAVANANDA

Born in India, Prabhavananda joined the Ramakrishna Order after graduating from Calcutta university in 1914. He was initiated by Swami Brahmananda. In 1923, he was sent to the United States of America. Initially he worked as an assistant minister of the Vedanta Society of San Francisco. After two years, he established the Vedanta Society of Portland. In December 1929, he moved to Los Angeles where he founded the Vedanta Society of Southern California in 1930.

Under his administration the Vedanta society of Southern California became the largest Vedanta Society in the West, with monasteries in Hollywood and Trabuco Canyon and convents in Hollywood and Santa Barbara.

Swami Prabhavananda was a scholar who authored a number of books on Hindu culture. He was assisted on several of the projects by Christopher Isherwood or Frederick Manchester. His comprehensive knowledge of philosophy and religion attracted such disciples as Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard.

Swami Prabhavananda died on July 4th 1976.

In his book My Guru and His Disciple (1980) Christopher Isherwood describes his thirty years as a student and friend of Prabhavananda. He writes: "I first met the Hindu monk called Swami Prabhavananda in 1939, soon after I settled in Los Angeles. I last saw him in 1976, only a short while before he died. Throughout that period, as his often backsliding disciple but always devoted friend, I observed him lovingly but critically. Thus I quickly became convinced that he was neither a charlatan nor a lunatic, and then, much more slowly, became aware of a Presence within him which was altogether other than his usually charming, sometimes cantankerous, sometimes absurd Bengali self. It was a Presence to which Gerald Heard, fastidiously avoiding the word 'God,' would refer to as 'This Thing.'"

Alan Watts in his autobiography In My Own Way (1972) describes one of his meetings with Prabhavananda. It occurred at a tea party gathered by Prabhavananda at his apartment at the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood and reveals much about the relationship between the two men and their points of view. Watts writes:

We were joined by Huxley, Isherwood, and many of the Swami's distinguished lay disciples. Very soon it became apparent that I had been put on the path of the razor's edge: that on the one hand, the Swami wanted to demonstrate the error of my views, and that on the other, I did not want to embarrass him in front of his disciples.

The trouble started when one of the sisters (nuns, who were serving the tea) said, rather too innocently, "Oh, Mr. Watts, I'd be so interested to know what you think about (author, speaker) Krishnamurti."
"Well," I replied, "I must say that I find his work very fascinating, because I think that he is one of the few people who have come to grips with such basic problems of the spiritual life as trying to make oneself unselfish."
"Yes, Krishnamurti is a very fine man," the Swami chipped in. "I don't think any of us can doubt the greatness of his character. But his teaching is very misleading. I mean, he seems to be saying that one can attain realization without any kind of yoga or spiritual method, and of course that isn't true."
"No, indeed," I countered, "if in fact there is something to be attained. Your Upanishads say very plainly, tat tvam asi, 'You ARE That,' so what is there to be attained?"
"Oh, no, no!" the Swami protested. "There's all the difference in the world between being merely informed, in words, that this is so and realizing it truly, between understanding it intellectually and really knowing it. It takes a great deal of work to go from one state to the other."
"But so far as I can see," I went on, "the more people consider themselves to have made progress in such work, the greater their spiritual pride. They are putting legs on a snake--congratulating themselves for bringing about, by their own efforts, a state of affairs that already IS."
"Well, I wonder," mused Aldous (Huxley), "isn't it rather curious that there has always been a school of thought in religion that attributes salvation or realization to an unmerited gift of divine grace rather than personal effort?"
"Of course," said the Swami, "there are those exceptional cases of people who seem to be born--or suddenly endowed--with realization. But we mustn't leave out of account the work that must have gone into it in their former lives."
"But that virtually cuts out the principle of grace altogether," I said. "When Christians say that something comes about by the grace of God, Hindus and Buddhists say that it is so already and always has been. The self, atman, is the Godhead, Brahman. It has always been so from the very beginning, so that your very TRYING to realize it is pushing it away, refusing the gift, ignoring the fact."
"But this is ridiculous," the Swami objected. "That amounts to saying that an ordinary ignorant and deluded person is just as good, or just as realized, as an advanced yogi."
"Exactly," I said. "And what advanced yogi would deny it? Doesn't he see the Brahman everywhere, and in all people, all beings?"
"You are saying," said the Swami, "that you yourself, or just any other person, can realize that you are the Brahman just as you are, without any spiritual effort or discipline at all!"
"Just so. After all, one's very not realizing is, in its turn, also the Brahman. According to your own doctrine, what else is there, what else is real other than the Brahman?"
"Oh!" he exclaimed. "There was someone who came to Sri Ramakrishna with such talk. He said, 'If that is your Brahman, I spit on it!' Don't fool me. If you were truly one with the Brahman and truly in samadhi, you would be beyond suffering. You would not be able to feel a pinch."
"You mean that the Brahman cannot feel a pinch?"
"Of course not!"
At that moment I had one of the great temptations of my life, and resisted it. Instead, I said something like, "I don't think your Brahman is very sensitive," laughed and changed the subject. Yet, in a way, I regret it. I felt, in retrospect, that I should have honored the Swami by going the whole way, pinching him hard, and seeing what he would have done, for although he may be shrugged off by those who see him as representing the idle romanticism of Hollywood Swami-Land, he has nonetheless given thousands of people that startling and disquieting question: "Who, what, do you think you really are? Absolutely, basically, deeply within?"

RAMAKRISHNA MONASTERY IN TRABUCO CANYON

The Ramakrishna Monastery in Trabuco Canyon had its beginning in 1942 when Gerald Heard, a British writer and a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, founded the Trabuco College of Prayer on 300 acres in what was then a remote area of the Santa Ana mountains, about sixty miles south of Los Angeles. The property was rugged, consisting mainly of rolling hills and ravines covered with native grasses, chaparral and live oak trees. Assisting him in the planning were Aldous Huxley and Eugene Exman, religious editor of Harper & Brothers, along with others of his friends and students. Heard had the buildings beautifully designed in the style of an Italian monastery, complete with oversized bricks for the walls, tile roofs, bell tower and heavy beams. The purpose of the college was to provide a place for prayer and the study of Eastern and Western mysticism. When Gerald realized, however, that his experiment was impractical, he persuaded the college board members to deed the property over to the Vedanta Society.

The Trabuco College of Prayer was thus formally rededicated as the Ramakrishna Monastery in 1949. A number of young postulants were assigned by Swami Prabhavananda to reside at the new monastery. Swami Aseshananda, who had come to assist Swami Prabhavananda, also lived there most of the time. Besides doing the daily chores of the monastery, the young monks also conducted a noon ritualistic worship and an evening arati service in the chapel.

Swami Prabhavananda had admired the statue of Swami Vivekananda sculpted by Malvina Hoffman for the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center in New York. He thus commissioned a copy of the statue to be made for the Trabuco monastery. It was installed in the courtyard, with a lily pond in front of it and a sweeping view of the valley and hills behind. On July 4, 1951, the statue was dedicated with a special worship, attended by over three hundred people. Since then, there has been a yearly tradition of a special ritualistic worship and open house on every 4th of July.

Sunday lectures for the public were started in the early 1950s, drawing people from San Diego and various cities of Orange and Los Angeles counties. The lectures were dropped during periods when there were not enough speakers, but were permanently resumed in 1977.

In the mid-sixties the monks built a cottage for the visits of Swami Prabhavananda and guest swamis. In the 1970s, a shrine trail consisting of seven rustic, outdoor shrines to different religions was constructed by the monks in order to visually portray the Vedantic ideal of the harmony of religions. In recent years a small bookstore was also opened. Additionally, the monastery has served as a place for men to go on retreat. During their stays they often contribute their skills and energy by assisting the monks in the work of the monastery.

As Orange and Los Angeles counties have become increasingly developed over the last few decades, more and more visitors are finding their way to the still rural and scenic monastery, which has become known as a refuge of peace and tranquility in the midst of the urban sprawl and hectic pace which characterize Southern California.


www.vedanta.org/vssc/centers/trabuco.html