Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00399)

Rich:<Well, H.P.B. is not alone in her "error," all
the Tibetan Buddhists and Hindus believe that each
evolution gains greater and greater awareness, in the
same way each reincarnation is said to evolve the
inner person.>
 Dear, dear, Rich. Would you please, just for me,
give one (yes, just one) quote from a Buddhist
(especially Tibetan) text that clearly asserts such a
notion. I would love to read it. Buddhists don't
even believe in monads, Rich. How could they
possibly believe in 'evolutionary progress' without a
monad or soul or 'entity' that is progressing? Only
a person's 'skandas' reincarnate. Remember the
famous Zen koan that suggests what happens to a
person after death is exactly what happpens to a fist
when the hand is opened? Both ego and soul are
social fictions - they are no-thingness or as the
Buddha taught, they are aggragates.

 Anyway, I don't want to belabor this point, but
what I am saying here is that the human mind desires
some kind of meaning from a life of mortality.
Evolution through reincarnation is a model that gives
the mind a meaning. I personally find HPB's Divine
Breath of evolution and involution to be a
satisfactory model. But to suggest (as the early
theosophists did) that such evolution--involution
leads to a "higher" or more developed monad (how can
perfection ever become more perfect?) is a fiction
(albeit a nice one - I too believed it for years).
And, it is pure theosophy - not found in any religion
or philosophy that I am aware of (and certainly not
in Buddhism). I don't think that you will find it in
Taoism, Hinduism, or Vedanta, either. It is purely
a Western idea, born out of the desire of ego to
have some kind of meaningful purpose to existence.

 Jerry S.