Theos-Talk Archives (October 1999 Message tl00090)

>>Power's book, Introduction to Tibetan
Buddhism, is where theosophists should start.  Then they should study the
difference between lam rim and sudden paths.>>

Good suggestion. I am a believer in the sudden path, but only
because that is the one that works for me.  Early Theosophical
writers (I am especially thinking of de Purucker here) were
of the gradual school.

>.Then, they will have the
information base to understand the difference between the Nyingmapa Highest
Yoga Tantra, Ati Yoga or Dzog chen, and the rest of the lam rim of graduated
path Highest Yoga Tantras.>>

As Rich once said, most Theosophists get their Buddhism solely
through Blavatsky.

>>  HPB's Central Asian and western
Tibet/Bhutan/Kashmir contacts would have most likely have been Dzog chen.
As
I posted here over a year ago. >>

I said things to this effect back when this list began, but at that
time no one knew what I was talking about.

>> The Stanzas of Dyzan are identifiably a bad
paraphrase (from memory?) of the Central Asian Dzog chen root text that is
used by the Kalmucks (with whom HPB had early contact in the Caucasus) and
Mongols.  Also, that the Stanzas of Dyzan are of Dzog chen origin was stated
by the Dalai Lama in 1992.>>

OK.

>>Although, if Power's is correct that the Bon religion is not really the
indigenous pagan religion of Tibet but a reworking of it by an earlier
non-Buddhist form of Dzog chen (that also influenced alchemical Taoism),
then
some things HPB says about the 8th or 9th(?) sphere may indicate she got the
pre-Buddhist/pre-Nyingmapa form of Dzog chen.  If so, one would naturally
find reincarnation into animal form absent as well as the Buddhist doctrines
of anatman/sunyata absent, which is what we do find in HPB.>>

If true, this would explain much.

>>Grigor V. Ananikian (one who spent last 30 years, off/on, in Afghan and
Tibetan monasteries of Kalugpa, Nyimapa, and Bon lineages as practitioner of
Mahamudra/Dzog chen).<<

I am delighted to have someone on this list who understands Tibetan
Buddhism.

>>P.S. Dzog chen also infiltrated Naqshibandi Sufism of Dagestan, Armenian
Zoroastrianism, Uigherian Manichaeaism, and Northern Complete Reality School
of Taoism through Liu I-ming.  As Chogyal Namkhai Norbu has recently
suggested, Dzog chen may reflect a very ancient spiritual path that
pre-dates
Buddhism and is to be found under a variety of religious guises.
G.V.A>>

It may, in fact, be the "esoteric tradition" that Blavatsky keeps talking
about.

Jerry S.