To Japan, also, the Theosophical revival spread. Col. Olcott's visit to Japan February 9th to May 5th, 1889, was warmly welcomed by the Japanese and fiercely opposed by Christian missionaries. The Tokyo newspaper Dandokai reported, "The arrival of Colonel Olcott has caused great excitement among the Christians in Japan. They say that he is an adventurer, a man of bad principles, and an advocate of a dying cause. How mean and cowardly they are!" Another issue of the Dandokai wrote,
Since Colonel Olcott's arrival in Japan, Buddhism has wonderfully revived. We have already stated that he has been travelling to all parts of the empire. He has been everywhere received with remarkable enthusiasm. He has not been allowed a moment of leisure. He has taught our people to appreciate Buddhism, and to see our duty to impart it to all nations. Since his discourses in Tokyo, the young men of the Imperial University and High Schools have organized a Young Men's Buddhist Association, after the model of the Young Men's Christian Association, to propagate our religion….[23]
The Theosophical revival of Buddhism in the East had its arc in the West as well, and it wasn't long before Blavatsky's Sri Lankan student Anagarika Dharmapala founded a branch of his Mahabodhi Society in London, and began his tireless campaign for the restoration of the Mahabodhi Temple in Bodh Gaya to Buddhist control.[24] Likewise, the first Buddhist Society in England was founded by Theosophists in 1926, who found the parent body of the Theosophical Society by that time too wide-ranging and diluted. Early members included Buddhologists Christmas Humphreys and Edward Conze.[25] Among many other Western writers, Alan Watts also came to Buddhism through Theosophy, and writes, that "Even though I now remonstrate, mildly, against some of [Humphrey's] interpretations of Buddhism, I shall love him always as the man who really set my imagination going and put me on my whole way of life."[26] The impact of Blavatsky and her Theosophy upon Buddhism East and West is an important chapter of Buddhist studies, strangely ignored, however. Donald S. Lopez writes "The influence of Theosophy on the study of Buddhism in Europe and America remains a largely unexplored topic," and adds, "Links between Theosophists and Tibetan Buddhism also merit a book-length study."[27]
Thus, despite harsh criticism of Blavatsky by the majority of Western Buddhist scholars, practising Buddhists in both the East and West often admire HPB and her pioneering influences even when they have no interest in Theosophy per se. For example, Tricycle magazine recently honored Blavatsky in its Buddhist "Ancestors" column, followed a few issues later by Olcott.[28] Several high Tibetan lamas as well seem to respect Blavatsky's work, especially for one of her last productions, The Voice of the Silence (1889).[29] The XIVth Dalai Lama wrote the forward to the 1989 Centenary edition of The Voice of the Silence, saying, in part,
I believe that this book has strongly influenced many sincere seekers and aspirants to the wisdom and compassion of the Bodhisattva Path. I very much welcome this Centenary Edition and hope that it will benefit many more.[30]
This is not unprecedented, since in 1927 the staff of the 9th Panchen Lama helped Theosophists put out the "Peking Edition" of The Voice of the Silence.[31] The 9th Panchen Lama (Panchen Lobzang Tub-ten Cho-gyi Nyima) personally wrote a message as welclass="underline"
And in November of 1988, Sakya Trizin, the head of the Sakya school of Tibetan Buddhism, while visiting the University of Sydney said "I have read little of the writings of Madame Blavatsky, but from the little I have read, I believe that Madame Blavatsky either had direct contact with Tibetan teachings or had read some reliable texts on Tibetan Buddhism."[32]
What then are we to make of such disparate views of H.P. Blavatsky and her relationship with Indo–Tibetan Buddhism? Surely it is no coincidence that those who despise Blavatsky's writings are Western scholars and nonpractitioners of Buddhism, while those who look upon HPB favorably are often involved in Buddhist practice. What are scholarly critics seeing that practitioners are not? Scholars appear to be reacting in part to Blavatsky's melange of vocabulary and meshing of academically quite separate religious movements: H.P.B. in her writing draws from Vedantin, Madhyamika, Theravadin, Gnostic, Platonic, Hebrew, Chaldean, Meso-american and other sources quite indiscriminately. In this way, scholarly indignation appears justified. No one can be an expert in all these fields, and the vocabulary and concepts generated by these religious and mystical traditions are deeply embedded in specific socio-historical contexts. But one typical example of Blavatskyan abandon will suffice:
The Svastica, the most sacred and mystic symbol in India, the "Jaina-Cross" as it is now called by the Masons, notwithstanding its direct connection, and even identity with the Christian cross, has become dishonored… It is the "devil's sign," we are told by the Indian missionaries. "Does it not shine on the head of the great Serpent of Vishnu, on the thousand headed Sesha-Ananta, in the depths of Patala, the Hindu Naraka or Hell"? It does: but what is Ananta? As Sesha, it is the almost endless Manvantaric cycle of time, and becomes infinite Time itself, when called Ananta, the great seven-headed Serpent, on which rests Vishnu, the eternal Deity, during Pralayic inactivity. What has Satan to do with this highly metaphysical symbol? The Svastica is the most philosophically scientific of all symbols, as also the most comprehensible. It is the summary in a few lines of the whole work of creation, or evolution, as one should rather say, from Cosmo-theogony down to Anthropogony, from the indivisible unknown Parabrahm to the humble moneron of materialistic science, whose genesis is as unknown to that science as is that of the All-Deity itself. The Svastica is found heading the religious symbols of every old nation. It is the "Worker's Hammer" in the Chaldean Book of Numbers, the "Hammer" just referred to in the Book of Concealed Mystery (Ch. I, §§ 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), "which striketh sparks from the flint" (Space), those sparks becoming worlds. It is "Thor's Hammer," the magic weapon forged by the dwarfs against the Giants, or the pre-cosmic Titanic forces of Nature…" etc. etc.[33]
Without stopping to justify or contextualize any of her refences, Blavatsky blazes ahead, seeing the evolutionary symbol of the svastika in the Hermetic Smaragdine Tablet, the myth of Prometheus, the Ignis of the Latins and the Vishvakarman of the Veda. Learned HPB may be, but difficult to take seriously in an academic sense.
But there are three things yet more offensive about Blavatsky, particularly to her contemporaries of the late 19th century. First, HPB was a woman, a fiercely independent and eccentric woman. This in itself was a problem. HPB left her husband, General Nikifor Blavatsky, at the age of 18, and traveled alone, from 1848 to 1873 through eastern Europe to Egypt, up to western Europe, across America to the west coast and down through South America, then across the ocean to Sri Lanka, India and back to Europe.[34] Additionally, Blavatsky smoked cigars, swore like a pirate, and spoke her mind bluntly, with little regard for the perceptions of others or the mores of the time. In short, Blavatsky's entire personality and independence from male control was an offense in Victorian Europe and its colonies.
23
Quoted in Olcott,
29
Interestingly,
30
31
32
According to Prof. John Cooper of U. Sydney, in an interview with Theosophical student Nicholas Weeks, 1989.