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THE historical
Buddha, as known to the custodians of the Esoteric Doctrine, is a
personage whose birth is not invested with the quaint marvels popular
story has crowded round it. Nor was his progress to adeptship traced by
the literal occurrence of the supernatural struggles depicted in
symbolic legend. On the other hand, the incarnation, which may outwardly
be described as the birth of Buddha, is certainly not regarded by occult
science as an event like any other birth, nor the spiritual development
through which Buddha passed during his earth-life a mere process of
intellectual evolution, like the mental history of any other
philosopher. The mistake which ordinary European writers make in dealing
with a problem of this sort lies in their inclination to treat exoteric
legend either as a record of a miracle about which no more need be said,
or as pure myth, putting merely a fantastic decoration on a remarkable
life. This, it is assumed, however remarkable, must have been lived
according to the theories of Nature at present accepted by the
nineteenth century. The account which has now been given in the
foregoing pages may prepare the way for a statement as to what the
Esoteric Doctrine teaches concerning the real Buddha, who was born, as
modern investigation has quite correctly ascertained, 648 years before
the Christian era, at Kapila-Vastu near Benares.
Exoteric conceptions, knowing nothing of the laws which govern the
operations of Nature in her higher departments, can only explain an
abnormal dignity attaching to some particular birth by supposing that
the physical body of the person concerned was generated in a miraculous
manner. Hence the popular notion about Buddha, that his incarnation in
this world was due to an immaculate conception. Occult science knows
nothing of any process for the production of a physical human child
other than that appointed by physical laws; but it does know a good deal
concerning the limits within which the progressive “one life,” or
“spiritual monad,” or continuous thread of a series of incarnations, may
select definite child-bodies as their human tenements. By the operation
of Karma, in the case of ordinary mankind, this election is made,
unconsciously as far as the antecedent, spiritual Ego emerging from
Devachan is concerned. But in those abnormal cases where the one life
has already forced it-self into the sixth principle — that is to say,
where a man has become an adept, and has the power of guiding his own
spiritual Ego, in full consciousness as to what he is about, after he
has quitted the body in which he won adept-ship, either temporarily or
permanently — it is quite within his power to select his own next
incarnation. During life, even, he gets above the Devachanic attraction.
He becomes one of the conscious directing powers of the planetary system
to which he belongs; and great as this mystery of selected
re-incarnation may be, it is not by any means restricted in its
application to such extraordinary events as the birth of a Buddha. It is
a phenomenon frequently reproduced by the higher adepts to this day, and
while a great deal recounted in popular Oriental mythology is either
purely fictitious or entirely symbolical, the re-incarnation of the
Dalai and Teshu Lamas in Tibet, at which travelers only laugh for want
of the knowledge that might enable them to sift fact from fancy, is a
sober scientific achievement. In such cases the adept states beforehand
in what child, when and where to be born, he is going to re-incarnate,
and he very rarely fails. We say very rarely, because there are some
accidents of physical nature which cannot be entirely guarded against;
and it is not absolutely certain that, with all the foresight even an
adept may bring to bear upon the matter, the child he may choose to
become, in his re-incarnated state, may attain physical maturity
successfully. And, meanwhile, in the body, the adept is
relatively helpless. Out of the body he is just what he has been ever
since he became an adept; but as regards the new body he has chosen to
inhabit, he must let it grow up in the ordinary course of Nature, and
educate it by ordinary processes, and initiate it by the regular occult
method into adeptship, before he has got a body fully ready again for
occult work on the physical plane. All these processes are immensely
simplified, it is true, by the peculiar spiritual force working within;
but at first, in the child’s body, the adept soul is certainly cramped
and embarrassed, and, as ordinary imagination might suggest, very
uncomfortable and ill at ease. The situation would be very much
misunderstood if the reader were to imagine that re-incarnation of the
kind described is a privilege which adepts avail themselves of with
pleasure.
Buddha’s birth was a mystery of the kind described, and by the light
of what has been said it will be easy to go over the popular story of
his miraculous origin, and trace the symbolic references to the facts of
the situation in some even of the most grotesque fables. None, for
example, can look less promising as an allusion to anything like a
scientific fact than the statement that Buddha entered the side of his
mother as a young white elephant. But the white elephant is simply the
symbol of adept-ship, — something considered to be a rare and beautiful
specimen of its kind. So with other ante-natal legends pointing to the
fact that the future child’s body had been chosen as the habitation of a
great spirit already endowed with superlative wisdom and goodness. Indra
and Brahma came to do homage to the child at his birth; that is to say,
the powers of Nature were already in submission to the Spirit within
him. The thirty-two signs of a Buddha, which legends describe by means
of a ludicrous physical symbolism, are merely the various powers of
adept-ship.
The selection of the body known as Siddhartha, and afterwards as
Gautama, son of Suddhodana, of Kapila-Vastu, as the human tenement of
the enlightened human spirit, who had submitted to incarnation for the
sake of teaching mankind, was not one of those rare failures
spoken of above; on the contrary, it was a signally successful
choice in all respects, and nothing interfered with the accomplishment
of adeptship by the Buddha in his new body. The popular narrative of his
ascetic struggles and temptations, and of his final attainment of
Buddhahood under the Bo-tree, is nothing more, of course, than the
exoteric version of his initiation.
From that period onward, his work was of a dual nature; he had to
reform and revive the morals of the populace and the science of the
adepts, — for adeptship itself is subject to cyclic changes, and in need
of periodical impulses. The explanation of this branch of the subject,
in plain terms, will not alone be important for its own sake, but will
be interesting to all students of exoteric Buddhism, as elucidating some
of the puzzling complications of the more abstruse “Northern doctrine.”
A Buddha visits the earth for each of the seven races of the great
planetary period. The Buddha with whom we are occupied was the fourth of
the series, and that is why he stands fourth in the list quoted by Mr.
Rhys Davids, from Burnouf,—quoted as an illustration of the way the
Northern doctrine has been, as Mr. Davids supposes, inflated by
metaphysical subtleties and absurdities crowded round the simple
morality which sums up Buddhism as presented to the populace. The fifth,
or Maitreya Buddha, will come after the final disappearance of the fifth
race, and when the sixth race will already have been established on
earth for some hundreds of thousands of years. The sixth will come at
the beginning of the seventh race, and the seventh towards the close of
that race.
This arrangement will seem, at the first glance, out of harmony with
the general design of human evolution. Here we are in the middle of the
fifth race, and yet it is the fourth Buddha who has been identified with
this race, and the fifth will not come till the fifth race is
practically extinct. The explanation is to be found, however, in the
great outlines of the esoteric cosmogony. At the beginning of each great
planetary period, when obscuration comes to an end, and the human
tide-wave in its progress round the chain of worlds arrives at the shore
of a globe where no humanity has existed for milliards of years, a
teacher is required from the first for the new crop of mankind about to
spring up. Remember that the preliminary evolution of the mineral,
vegetable, and animal kingdoms has been accomplished in preparation for
the new round period. With the first infusion of the life-current into
the “missing link” species the first race of the new series will begin
to evolve it is then that the Being, who may be considered the Buddha of
the first race, appears. The planetary spirit;, or Dhyan (Chohan, who is
— or, to avoid the suggestion of an erroneous idea by the use of a
singular verb, let us defy grammar and say, who are — Buddha in all his
or their developments, incarnates among the young, innocent, teachable
forerunners of the new humanity, and impresses the first broad
principles of right and wrong and the first truths of the esoteric
doctrine on a sufficient number of receptive minds to insure the
continued reverberation of the ideas so implanted through successive
generations of men in the millions of years to come, before the first
race shall have completed its course. It is this advent in the beginning
of the round period of Divine Being in human form that starts the
ineradicable conception of the anthropomorphic God in all exoteric
religions.
The first Buddha of the series in which Gautama Buddha stands fourth
is thus the second incarnation of Avaloketiswara, — the mystic name of
the hosts of the Dhyan Chohans, or planetary spirits, belonging to our
planetary chain; and though Gautama is thus the fourth incarnation of
enlightenment by exoteric reckoning, he is really the fifth of the true
series, and thus properly belonging to our fifth race.
Avaloketiswara, as just stated, is the mystic name of the hosts of
the Dhyan Chohans; the proper meaning of the word is manifested wisdom,
just as Addi-Buddha and Amitabha both mean abstract wisdom.
The doctrine, as quoted by Mr. Davids, that — “every earthly mortal
Buddha has his pure and glorious counterpart in the mystic world, free
from the debasing conditions of this material life, or rather that the
Buddha under material conditions is only an appearance, the reflection,
or emanation, or type of a Dhyani Buddha,” is perfectly correct. The
number of Dhyani Buddhas, or Dhyan Chohans, or planetary spirits,
perfected human spirits of former world periods, is infinite, but only
five are practically identified in exoteric and seven in esoteric
teaching; and this identification, be it remembered, is a manner of
speaking which must not be interpreted too literally, for there is a
unity in the sublime spirit-life in question that leaves no room for the
isolation of individuality. All this will be seen to harmonize perfectly
with the revelations concerning Nature embodied in previous chapters,
and need not in any way be attributed to mystic imaginings. The Dhyani
Buddhas, or Dhyan Chohans, are the perfected humanity of previous
Manwantaric epochs, and their collective intelligence is
described by the name “Addi-Buddha,” which Mr. Rhys Davids is mistaken;
in treating as a comparatively recent invention of the Northern
Buddhist. Addi-Buddha means primordial wisdom, and is mentioned in the
oldest Sanskrit books. For example, in the philosophical dissertation on
the “ Mandukya Upanishad,” by Gowdapatha, a Sanskrit author contemporary
with Buddha himself, the expression is freely used and expounded in
exact accordance with the present statement. A friend of mine in India,
a Brahmin pundit of first-rate attainments as a Sanskrit scholar, has
shown me a copy of this book, which has never yet, that he knows of,
been translated into English, and has pointed out a sentence bearing on
the present question, giving me the following translation: “Prakriti
itself, in fact, is Addi-Buddha, and all the Dharmas have been existing
from eternity.” Gowdapatha is a philosophical writer respected by all
Hindu and Buddhist sects alike, and widely known. He was the guru, or
spiritual teacher of the first Sankaracharya, of whom I shall have to
speak more at length very shortly.
Adeptship, when Buddha incarnated, was not the condensed, compact
hierarchy that it has since become under his influence. There has never
been an age of the world without its adepts; but they have sometimes
been scattered throughout the world; they have sometimes been isolated
in separate seclusions; they have gravitated now to this country, now to
that; and finally, be it remembered, their knowledge and power has not
always been inspired with the elevated and severe morality which Buddha
infused into its latest and highest organization. The reform of the
occult world by his instrumentality was, in fact, the result of his
great sacrifice; of the self-denial which induced him to reject the
blessed condition of Nirvana to which, after his earth-life as Buddha,
he was fully entitled, and undertake the burden of renewed incarnations
in order to carry out more thoroughly the task he had taken in hand, and
confer a correspondingly increased benefit on mankind. Buddha
re-incarnated himself, next after his existence as Gautama Buddha, in
the person of the great teacher of whom but little is said in exoteric
works on Buddhism, but without a consideration of whose life it would be
impossible to get a correct conception of the position in the Eastern
world of esoteric science, — namely, Sankaracharya. The latter part of
this name, it may be explained— acharya — merely means teacher. The
whole name as a title is perpetuated to this day under curious
circumstances, but the modern bearers of it are not in the direct line
of Buddhist spiritual incarnations.
Sankaracharya appeared in India — no attention being paid to his birth,
which appears to have taken place on the Malabar coast — about sixty
years after Gautama Buddha’s death. Esoteric teaching is to the effect
that Sankaracharya simply was Buddha in all respects, in a new
body. This view will not be acceptable to uninitiated Hindu
authorities, who attribute a later date to Sankaracharya’s appearance,
and regard him as a wholly independent teacher, even inimical to
Buddhism, but none the less is the statement just made the real opinion
of initiates in esoteric science, whether these call themselves
Buddhists or Hindus. I have received the information I am now giving
from a Brahmin Adwaiti, of Southern India, — not directly from my
Tibetan instructor, — and all initiated Brahmins, he assures me, would
say the same. Some of the later incarnations of Buddha are described
differently as over-shadowings by the spirit of Buddha, but in the
person of Sankaracharya he reappeared on earth. The object he had in
view was to fill up some gaps and repair certain errors in his own
previous teaching; for there is no contention in esotoric Buddhism that
even a Buddha can be absolutely infallible at every moment of his
career.
The position was as follows: Up to the time of Buddha, the Brahmins
of India had jealously reserved occult knowledge as the appanage of
their own caste. Exceptions were oocasionally made in favor of Tshatryas,
but the rule was exclusive in a very high degree. This rule Buddha broke
down, admitting all castes equally to the path of adeptship. The change
may have been perfectly right in principle, but it paved the way for a
great deal of trouble, and as the Brahmins conceived for the degradation
of occult knowledge itself; that is to say, its transfer to unworthy
hands, — not unworthy merely because of caste inferiority, but because
of the moral inferiority which they conceived to be introduced into the
occult fraternity, together with brothers of low birth. The Brahmin
contention would not by any means be that because a man should be a
Brahmin it followed that he was necessarily virtuous and trustworthy;
but the argument would be: It is supremely necessary to keep out all but
the virtuous and trustworthy from the secrete and powers of initiation.
To that end it is necessary not only to set up all the ordeals,
probations, and tests we can think of, but also to take no candidates
except from the class which, on the whole, by reason of its hereditary
advantages, is likely to be the best nursery of fit candidates.
Later
experience is held on all hands now to have gone far towards vindicating
the Brahmin apprehension, and the next incarnation of Buddha, after that
in the person of Sankaracharya, was a practical admission of this; but
meanwhile, In the person of Sankaracharya, Buddha was engaged in
smoothing over, beforehand, the sectarian strife in India which be saw
impending. The active opposition of the Brahmins against Buddhism began
in Asoka’s time, when the great efforts made by that ruler to spread
Buddhism provoked an apprehension on their part in reference to their
social and political ascendency. It must be remembered that initiates
are not wholly free in all cases from the prejudices of their own
individualities. They possess some such god-like attributes that
outsiders, when they first begin to understand something, of these, are
apt to divest them, in imagination, even too completely of human
frailties. Initiation and occult knowledge held in common is certainly a
bond of union among adepts of all nationalities, which is far stronger
than any other bond. But it has been found on more occasions than one to
fail in obliterating all other distinctions. Thus the Buddhist and
Brahmin initiates of the period referred to were by no means of one mind
on all questions, and the Brahmins very decidedly disapproved of the
Buddhist reformation in its exoteric aspects. Chandragupta, Asoka’s
grandfather, was an upstart, and the family were Sudras. This was enough
to render his Buddhist policy unattractive to the representatives of the
orthodox Brahmin faith. The struggle assumed a very embittered form,
though ordinary history gives us few or no particulars. The party of
primitive Buddhism was entirely worsted, and the Brahmin ascendency
completely reestablished in the time of Vikramaditya, about 80 B.C.
But Sankaracharya had traveled all over India in advance of the
great struggle, and had established various mathams, or schools
of philosophy, in several important centres. He was only engaged in this
task for a few years, but the influence of his teaching has been so
stupendous that its very magnitude disguises the change wrought. He
brought exoteric Hinduism into practical harmony with the esoteric
“wisdom religion,” and left the people amusing themselves still with
their ancient mythologies, but leaning on philosophical guides who were
esoteric Buddhists to all intents and purposes, though in reconciliation
with all that was ineradicable in Brahmanism. The great fault of
previous exoteric Hinduism lay in its attachment to vain ceremonial and
its adhesion to idolatrous conceptions of the divinities of the Hindu
pantheon. Sankaracharya emphasized, by his commentaries on the
Upanishads, and by his original writings, the necessity of pursuing
gnyanam in order to obtain moksha; that is to say, the
importance of the secret knowledge to spiritual progress, and the
consummation thereof. He was the founder of the Vedantin system, — the
proper meaning of Vedanta being the final end or crown of knowledge, —
though the sanctions of that system are derived by him from the writings
of Vyasa, the author of the “Mahabharata,” the “Puranas,” and the “Brahmasutras.”
I make these statements, the reader will understand, not on the basis of
any researches of my own, — which I am not Oriental scholar enough to
attempt, — but on the authority of a Brahmin initiate who is himself a
first-rate Sanskrit scholar as well as an occultist.
The Vedantin school at present is almost coextensive with Hinduism,
making allowance, of course, for the existence of some special sects
like the Sikhs, the Vallabacharyas, or Maharajah sect, of very unfair
fame, and may be divided into three great divisions, — the Adwaitees,
the Vishishta Adwaitees, and the Dwaitees. The outline of the Adwaitee
doctrine is that brahmum or purush, the universal spirit,
acts only through prakriti, matter; that everything takes place
in this way through the inherent energy of matter. Brahmum, or Parabrahm,
is thus a passive, incomprehensible, unconscious principle, but the
essence, one life, or energy of the universe. In this way the doctrine
is identical with the transcendental materialism of the adept esoteric
Buddhist philosophy. The name Adwaitee signifies not dual, and
has reference partly to the non-duality or unity of universal spirit, or
Buddhist one life, as distinguished from the notion of its operation
through anthropomorphic emanations; partly to the unity of the universal
and the human spirit. As a natural consequence of this doctrine, the
Adwaitees infer the Buddhist doctrine of Karma, regarding the future
destiny of man as altogether depending on the causes he himself
engenders.
The Vishishta Adwaitees modify these views by the interpolation of
Vishnu as a conscious deity, the primary emanation of Parabrahm, Vishnu
being regarded as a personal god, capable of intervening in the course
of human destiny. They do not regard yog, or spiritual training,
as the proper avenue to spiritual achievement, but conceive this to be
possible chiefly by means of Bhakti, or devoutness. Roughly
stated in the phraseology of European theology, the Adwaitee may thus be
said to believe only in salvation by works, the Vishishta Adwaitee in
salvation by grace. The Dwaitee differs but little from the Vishishta
Adwaitee, merely affirming, by the designation he assumes, with
increased emphasis, the duality of the human spirit and the highest
principle of the universe, and including many ceremonial observances as
an essential part of Bhakti.
But all these differences of view, it must be borne in mind,
have to do merely with the exoteric variations on the fundamental idea,
introduced by different teachers with varying impressions as to the
capacity of the populace for assimilating transcendental ideas. All
leaders of Vedantin thought look up to Sankaracharya and the Mathams he
established with the greatest possible reverence, and their inner faith
runs up in all cases into the one esoteric doctrine. In fact, the
initiates of all schools in India interlace with one another. Except as
regards nomenclature, the whole system of cosmogony as held by the
Buddhist-Arhats, and as set forth in this volume, is equally held by
initiated Brahmins, and has been equally held by them since before
Buddha’s birth. Whence did they obtain it? the reader may ask. Their
answer would be, From the Planetary Spirit, or Dhyan Chohan, who first
visited this planet at the dawn of the human race in the present round
period, —more millions of years ago than I like to mention on the basis
of conjecture, while the real exact number is withheld.
Sankaracharya founded four principal Mathams: one at Sringari, in
Southern India, which has always remained the most important; one at
Juggernath, in Orissa; one at Dwaraka, in Kathiawar; and one at Gungotri,
on the slopes of the Himalayas in the North. The chief of the Sringari
temple has always borne the designation Sankaracharya, in addition to
some individual name. From these four centres others have been
established, and Mathams now exist all over India, exercising the utmost
possible influence on Hinduism.
I have said that Buddha, by his third incarnation, recognized the
fact that he had, in the excessive confidence of his loving trust in the
perfectibility of humanity, opened the doors of the occult sanctuary too
widely. His third, appearance was in the person of Tsong-kha-pa the
great Tibetan adept reformer of the fourteenth century. In this
personality he was. exclusively concerned with the affairs of the adept
fraternity, by that time collecting chiefly in Tibet.
From time immemorial there had been a certain secret region in
Tibet, which to this day is quite unknown to and unapproachable
by any but initiated persons, and inaccessible to the ordinary people of
the country as to any others, in which adepts have always congregated.
But the country generally was not in Buddha’s time, as it has since
become, the chosen habitation of the great brotherhood. Much more than
they are at present were the Mahatma in former times distributed about
the world. The progress of civilization, engendering the magnetism they
find so trying, had, however, by the date with which we are now dealing
— the fourteenth century — already given rise to a very general movement
towards Tibet on the part of the previously dissociated occultists. Far
more widely than was held to be consistent with the safety of mankind
was occult knowledge and power then found to be disseminated. To the
task of putting it under the control of a rigid system of rule and law
did Tsong-kha-pa address himself.
Without reestablishing the system on the previous unreasonable basis
of caste exclusiveness, he elaborated a code of rules for the guidance
of the adepts, the effect of which was to weed out of the occult body
all but those who sought occult knowledge in a spirit of the most
sublime devotion to the highest moral principles.
An article in the “Theosophist” for March, 1882, on “Re-incarnations
in Tibet,” for the complete trustworthiness of which in all its mystic
bearings I have the highest assurance, gives a great deal of important
information about the branch of the subject with which we are now
engaged, and the relations between esoteric Buddhism and Tibet, which
cannot be examined too closely by any one who desires an exhaustive
comprehension of Buddhism in its real signification.
“The regular system,” we read, “of the Lamaic incarnations of ‘Sangyas’(or
Buddha) began with Tsong-kha-pa. This reformer is not the incarnation of
one of the five celestial Dhyans, or heavenly Buddhas, as is generally
supposed, said to have been created by Sakya Muni after he had risen to
Nirvana, but that of Amita, one of the Chinese names for Buddha. The
records preserved in the
Gon-pa (lamasery) of Tda-shi Hlum-po (spelt by the English Teshu
Lumbo) show that Sangyas incarnated himself in Tsong-kha-pa, in
consequence of the great degradation his doctrines had fallen into.
Until then there had been no other incarnations than those of the five
celestial Buddhas and of their Buddhisatvas, each of the former having
created (read overshadowed with his spiritual wisdom) five of the last
named. . . . It was because, among many other reforms, Tsong-kha-pa
forbade necromancy (which is practiced to this day, with the most
disgusting rites, by the Bhöns, — the aborigines of Tibet, with whom the
Red Caps, or Shammars, had always fraternized) that the latter resisted
his authority. This act was followed by a split between the two sects.
Separating entirely from the Gyalukpas, the Dugpas (Red Caps), from the
first in a great minority, settled in various parts of Tibet, chiefly
its borderlands, and principally in Nepaul and Bhootan. But, while they
retained a sort of independence at the monastery of Sakia-Djong, the
Tibetan residence of their spiritual (?) chief, Gong-sso Rimbo-chay, the
Bhootanese have been from their beginning the tributaries and vassals of
the Dalai Lamas.
“The Tda-shi Lamas were always more powerful and more highly
considered than the Dalai Lamas. The latter are the creation of the
Tda-shi Lama, Nabang-lob-sang, the sixth incarnation of Tsong-kha-pa,
himself an incarnation of Amitabha, or Buddha.”
Several writers on Buddhism have entertained a theory, which Mr.
Clements Markham formulates very fully in his “Narrative of the Mission
of George Bogle to Tibet,” that whereas the original scriptures of
Buddhism were taken to Ceylon by the son of Asoka, the Buddhism, which
found its way into Tibet from India and China, was gradually overlaid
with a mass of dogma and metaphysical speculation. And Professor Max
Muller says; “The most important element in the Buddhist reform has
always been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories.
That moral code, taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the
world has ever known; and it was this blessing that the introduction of
Buddhism brought into Tibet.”
“The blessing,” says the authoritative article in the “Theosophist,”
from which I have just been quoting, “has remained and spread all over
the country, there being no kinder, purer-minded, more simple or
sin-fearing nation than the Tibetans. But for all that, the popular
lamaism, when compared with the real esoteric or Arahat Buddhism of
Tibet, offers a contrast as great as the snow trodden along a road in
the valley, to the pure and undefiled mass which glitters on the top of
a high mountain peak.”
The fact
is that Ceylon is saturated with exoteric, and Tibet with esoteric,
Buddhism, Ceylon concerns itself merely or mainly with the morals Tibet,
or rather the adepts of Tibet, with the science, of Buddhism.
These explanations constitute but a sketch of the whole
position. I do not possess the arguments nor the literary leisure which
would be required for its amplification into a finished picture of the
relations which really subsist between the inner principles of Hinduism
and those of Buddhism. And I am quite alive to the possibility that many
learned and painstaking students of the subject will have formed, as the
consequences of prolonged and erudite research, conclusions with which
the explanations I am now enabled to give may seem at first sight to
conflict. But none the less are these explanations directly gathered
from authorities to whom the subject is no less familiar in its
scholarly than in its esoteric aspect. And their inner knowledge throws
a light upon the whole position which wholly exempts them from the
danger of misconstruing texts and mistaking the bearings of obscure
symbology. To know when Gautama Buddha was born, what is recorded of his
teaching, and what popular legends have gathered round his biography is
to know next to nothing of the real Buddha, so much greater than either
the historical moral teacher or the fantastic demi-god of tradition. And
it is only when we have comprehended the link between Buddhism and
Brahmanism that the greatness of the esoteric doctrine rises into its
true proportions.
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