The Kalachakra teaching is considered the special doman of the Panchen Lama and his monastery, Tashi-lhunpo, located adjacent to Shigatse, making that area the major center for Kalachakra studies in Tibet. The Mahatmas responsible for giving H.P. Blavatsky much of the material found in The Secret Doctrine are also known [according to Blavatsky] to have had their abodes in that locale.[104]
Further, HPB specifically elevated the Panchen Lama over the Dalai Lama, unlike most scholars last century (and this) who virtually ignore the Panchen Lama and the long scholarly tradition of that office. She writes,
It is curious to note the great importance given by European Orientalists to the Dalai Lamas of Lhassa, and their utter ignorance as to the Tda-shu (or Teshu) [Panchen] Lamas, while it is the latter who began the hierarchical series of Buddha-incarnations, and are de facto the "popes" in Tibet; the Dalai Lamas are the creations of Nabang-lob-Sang, the Tda-shu Lama, who was Himself the sixth incarnation of Amita, through Tsong-Kha-Pa, though very few seem to be aware of that fact.[105]
In summary, while a few Western sources by Blavatsky's time had made brief mention of the existence of a Kalachakra Tantra and the existence of a "Gyut" section of the Buddhist canon, Blavatsky gave significantly more information, which has turned out to be correct. (1) Tibetan tradition does in fact have a record of more extensive and explanatory Tantras, which do not exist in the Tibetan Canon. (2) The Kalachakra system is largely cosmological and deals with the creation of the universe from space, through six elements, with extremely complex numerology and astrology. This is the subject of the entire volume one of Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. (3) The Kalachakra is associated with the scholarly tradition of the Panchen Lamas, who are in fact considered the tutors of the Dalai Lamas.[106] None of this proves that there is in fact a secret Mula Kalachakra Tantra, or that Blavatsky (or her teachers) had access to it. But it does suggest that Blavatsky knew what the Buddhist Tantras were, knew their content and philosophical import better than any Western contemporary, and knew bona fide Tibetan traditions surrounding them. This alone gives strong reasons not to dismiss her claims out of hand.
Some care has been taken to demonstrate that Blavatsky is something of what she claimed to be, a revealer of hidden, 'esoteric' Buddhist teachings. There is sufficient evidence, by way of vocabulary and textual references unique in the 19th century, to suggest that Blavatsky was indeed in touch with a living tradition, either directly or through one or more Mahayana Buddhist teachers. This study of Blavatsky and Buddhism is not a partisan one, however, and the less flattering side of Blavatsky's work cannot be overlooked.
In many places, and on many occasions, Blavatsky's work contains the ideas, and sometimes even the exact words, of previously published Western-language sources on Buddhism, without acknowledgement. It may be that Blavatsky meant to give citations, or had given them and somehow they were lost in the process of editing and printing. Alternatively, Blavatsky may have been intending to comment on the works of the "exoteric" authors whom she so despised by incorporating their writings into her own in order to expand upon them, reword them, or contradict them. For example, Blavatsky writes,
The Lassens, Webers, Wassiljews, the Burnoufs and Juliens, and even such "eye-witnesses" of Tibetan Buddhism as Csoma de Koros and the Schlagintweits, have hitherto only added perplexity to confusion. None of these has ever received his information from a genuine Gelugpa source: all have judged Buddhism from the bits of knowledge picked up at the Tibetan frontier lamaseries, in countries thickly populated by Bhutanese and Leptchas, Bhons, and red-capped Dugpas, along the line of the Himalayas… hence they have gone on, gravely discussing the relative merits and absurdities of idols, "soothsaying tables," and "magical figures of Phurbu" on the "square tortoise." None of these have anything to do with the real philosophical Buddhism of the Gelugpa, or even of the most educated among the Sakyapa and Kadampa sects. All such "plates" and sacrificial tables, Chinresig magical circles, etc., were avowedly got from Sikkhim, Bhutan, and Eastern Tibet, from Bhons and Dugpas.[107]
Here, the reader can tell by the quotes that HPB is referring to certain unnamed works by the scholars she has listed (but to condemn). Nevertheless, quite frequently the work of another writer appears within the main text and footnotes of Blavatsky's writing without any acknowledgement whatsoever, and this can carry on for a number of pages in a row without once mentioning the author she is actually quoting. Sometimes this appropriation involves critical Buddhist teaching, which in the absence of quotation marks, citations or references to the author, would appear to be intended as Buddhist teachings emanating directly from Blavatsky or her teachers. For considerations of space we will examine only Blavatsky's relationship with The Buddhism of Tibet by Emil Schlagintweit (1863).[108] Of the many appropriations Blavatsky appears to make, I will mention only a few. Underlining in the following quotes will demonstrate verbatim appropriations made by Blavatsky from this text, published a full quarter century before her own Secret Doctrine.
On pages 51-2 of his text, Schlagintweit writes,
The Buddhists believe that each Buddha when preaching the law to men, manifests himself at the same time in the three worlds which their cosmographical system acknowledges. In the world of desire, the lowest of the three to which the earth belongs, he appears in human shape. In the world of forms he manifests himself in a more sublime form as Dhyani Buddha. In the highest world, the one of the incorporeal beings, he has neither shape nor name. The Dhyani Buddhas have the faculty of creating from themselves by virtue of Dhyana, or abstract meditation, an equally celestial son, a Dhyani Bodhisattva, who after the death of a Manushi Buddha is charged with the continuance of the work undertaken by the departed Buddha till the next epoch of religion begins, when again a subsequent Manushi Buddha appears.
Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, volume three (1897):
Buddhists of the Mahayana mystic system teach that each Buddha manifests Himself (hypostatically or otherwise) simultaneously in three worlds of Being, namely, in the world of Kama (concupiscence or desire – the sensuous universe or our earth) in the shape of a man; in the world of Rupa (form, yet supersensuous) as a Bodhisattva; and in the highest Spiritual World (that of purely incorporeal existences) as a Dhyani-Buddha. The latter prevails eternally in space and time, i.e., from one Maha-Kalpa to the other-the synthetic culmination of the three beings Adi-Buddha,* the Wisdom-Principle, which is Absolute, and therefore out of space and time. Their interelation is the following: The Dhyani-Buddha, when the world needs a human Buddha, "creates" through the power of Dhyana (meditation, omnipotent devotion), a mind-born son – a Bodhisattva – whose mission it is after the physical death of his human, or Manushya-Buddha, to continue his work on earth till the appearance of the subsequent Buddha. The Esoteric meaning of this teaching is quite clear… [HPB's footnote:]… What is given here is taken from the secret portions of Dus Kyi Khorlo (Kala Chakra, in Sanskrit, or the "Wheel of Time," or duration.[109]
104
Reigle, "New Light on the
105
106
It might be argued that Blavatsky gained much of her material on the
108
I am indebted to Daniel Caldwell for first making known to me HPB's dependence on Schlagintweit's work.