Blavatsky on Buddhism in America

[Lhug-Pa]

It seems you've missed my point. If you read my post again carefully you'll see that I'm not saying that technology necessarily indicates Enlightenment (plus I edited my post after you quoted it).

To clarify what I'm saying:

Good technology, or no technology at all, could be the outcome of Enlightenment.

Bad technology, or no technology at all, could be the outcome of un-enlightenment.

What we have now on this planet is bad technology for the most, due to our collective ignorance.

[Pero]

It seems you've missed my point.

I'm not so sure, unless I missed it again haha (sorry if so).

Good technology, or no technology at all, could be the outcome of Enlightenment.

Bad technology, or no technology at all, could be the outcome of un-enlightenment.

Could being the important word.

What we have now on this planet is bad technology for the most, due to our collective ignorance.

But like you say even if we had "good" technology we could still be totally ignorant. Which is why there is no reason to assume some alien race with advance space flight capability would be more "enlightened" than us and hence friendly to us.

[Lhug-Pa]

Well I'm not saying that good technology could result from ignorance. Although I am saying that bad technology (complicated or not), the latter of which we have on this planet right now mostly (as complicated as our technology is), could result from ignorance.

Seems to me that only good technology, or no technology at all, would result from Enlightnment.

Any civilization that isn't capable of producing good technology based on Enlightenment, would most likely destroy itself before getting to the capability of intergalactic travel.

[kirtu]

Well we don't have have to have technology to be enlightened, but we would have to be enlightenend in order to have advanced technology that's worthwhile.

Kalachakra Tantra

Kirt

[Pero]

Any civilization that isn't capable of producing good technology based on Enlightenment, would most likely destroy itself before getting to the capability of intergalactic travel.

I don't think so. Your "good" technology just needs people able to work together, share a common goal, ethics and care for the environment. None of which have anything to do with enlightenment really.

[kirtu]

Any civilization that isn't capable of producing good technology based on Enlightenment, would most likely destroy itself before getting to the capability of intergalactic travel.

I don't think so. Your "good" technology just needs people able to work together, share a common goal, ethics and care for the environment. None of which have anything to do with enlightenment really.

Deep ethics and deeply caring for the environment means that people understand or at least have a well-developed perception that all beings are intimately interrelated. So it's not enlightenment but it is a radical reduction in duality.

Kirt

[padma norbu]

If you stick to the assumption that Satan is Mara, in the sense of being the Lord of Kamaloka, it does not follow from it that he is a Saviour! Or you could also see Mara a Saviour in the sense of saving you back to the realm of sense desires, in the case you were about to escape from it.

I have read what Wikipedia says about Lucifer, but I understand it differently.

Lucifer has absolutely NOTHING to do with Satan whatsoever except for a mistranslation in the King James Version of the New Testament in a passage about a human Babylonian king. There is absolutely no correlation between the two names of Lucifer and Satan. Scholars realize this and Blavatsky realized this. Therefore, the Luciferian Doctrine of the Theosophical Society does not suggest Satan is the savior.

[Lhug-Pa]

I don't think so. Your "good" technology just needs people able to work together, share a common goal, ethics and care for the environment. None of which have anything to do with enlightenment really.

Well can we agree that if technology isn't coming from a place of Enlightenment, that it's probably better to not have technology at all?

Then again we are using the internet for example, and the chain of events that led to the existence of the internet are probably very similar to the chain of events that led to the current sad state of the world that it is now in (Kali Yuga) in general.

But since we do have things like the internet, we might as well make the best of them, such as with Webcasts for people who don't have the means to travel to retreats.


And to share information such as this:

:twothumbsup: Kalachakra Tantra

[padma norbu]

so, has the Book of Dzyan ever been published?

[Lhug-Pa]

I don't know, but David Reigle would most likely know:

http://prajnaquest.fr/blog/

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22David ... 0l0l0ll0l0

[Will]

so, has the Book of Dzyan ever been published?

Only the excerpts found in The Secret Doctrine of Blavatsky, so far as I know.

[Aemilius]

If you stick to the assumption that Satan is Mara, in the sense of being the Lord of Kamaloka, it does not follow from it that he is a Saviour! Or you could also see Mara a Saviour in the sense of saving you back to the realm of sense desires, in the case you were about to escape from it.

I have read what Wikipedia says about Lucifer, but I understand it differently.

Lucifer has absolutely NOTHING to do with Satan whatsoever except for a mistranslation in the King James Version of the New Testament in a passage about a human Babylonian king. There is absolutely no correlation between the two names of Lucifer and Satan. Scholars realize this and Blavatsky realized this. Therefore, the Luciferian Doctrine of the Theosophical Society does not suggest Satan is the savior.

Thank you! I perfectly agree.
In the previous post Dharmakara made this confusion about Satan and Lucifer, I was trying to clear it up, (may be unsucccessfully, but it was my intention).

[Blue Garuda]

Haven't read the whole thread, so aplogies if this link has been posted before.

Stanzas of Dyzan (Two Books) online:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/misti ... htm#secret

[Anders]

What makes them disturbing is what comes across as the wholesale bastardization (to lower quality or character; debase) every tradition she encountered, for example this one, also from The Secret Doctrine:

"The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are yet all of one and the same stock -- the Fifth Root-Race -- and spring from one single progenitor, (...) who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago -- at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the great continent of Atlantis."

I am definitely using Blavatsky to source my inspiration the next time I am running a pulp roleplaying game. This is awesome fiction.

[Lhug-Pa]

H.P. Blavatsky's defense of her positions against conventional, or what she sometimes referred to as profane, science are not to be taken lightly. Many people may not agree with her, however when you actually read H.P. Blavatsky's explanations of such things as Atlantis, they're not so easy to write off as mere fiction. Many of Buddhism's claims would just as easily get laughed off by profane science, so I think that H.P. Blavatsky's ideas deserve a fair chance too.

[Jikan]

H.P. Blavatsky's defense of her positions against conventional, or what she sometimes referred to as profane, science are not to be taken lightly. Many people may not agree with her, however when you actually read H.P. Blavatsky's explanations of such things as Atlantis, they're not so easy to write off as mere fiction. Many of Buddhism's claims would just as easily get laughed off by profane science, so I think that H.P. Blavatsky's ideas deserve a fair chance too.

OK, here's another opportunity to give it a fair chance. Would you please summarize or quote some of Blavatsky's defense of her positions against outside criticisms of her claims on Atlantis, the root races, &c?

[Aemilius]

It seems you've missed my point. If you read my post again carefully you'll see that I'm not saying that technology necessarily indicates Enlightenment (plus I edited my post after you quoted it).

To clarify what I'm saying:

Good technology, or no technology at all, could be the outcome of Enlightenment.

Bad technology, or no technology at all, could be the outcome of un-enlightenment.

What we have now on this planet is bad technology for the most, due to our collective ignorance.

Technology develops as an imitation of enlightenment. In earlier times Bhagavan Shakyamuni and other great meditators were able to move in the air, move in space, through their state of meditation. They had developed telepathy and clairaudience, they could see distant worlds and world systems. They could hear them, and visit them.

Because of these things in the past we now have airplanes, space probes and satellites, telescopes and microscopes. We have radio, telephone and television.

They all replace the qualities of enlightenment, they represent the qualities of enlightenment. They are the qualities of enlightenment for our present world culture.

[Lhug-Pa]

OK, here's another opportunity to give it a fair chance. Would you please summarize or quote some of Blavatsky's defense of her positions against outside criticisms of her claims on Atlantis, the root races, &c?

Well that's actually a pretty big undertaking, one of which isn't a priority at the moment. However if I have time, I'd like to meet your challenge.

I was mainly just saying in passing that even if H.P. Blavatsky were to turn out to not be correct, her work cannot be so easily written off by sarcastic remarks.

[Lhug-Pa]

Aemilius, I think I get what you're getting at; however in our relative condition, the fact is that much of the technology that currently exists is harmful and destructive (i.e. pollution, the military-industrial complex, etc.).

[Jikan]

OK, here's another opportunity to give it a fair chance. Would you please summarize or quote some of Blavatsky's defense of her positions against outside criticisms of her claims on Atlantis, the root races, &c?

Well that's actually a pretty big undertaking, one of which isn't a priority at the moment. However if I have time, I'd like to meet your challenge.

I was mainly just saying in passing that even if H.P. Blavatsky were to turn out to not be correct, her work cannot be so easily written off by sarcastic remarks.

I agree especially with your second point. Blavatsky is an important figure historically. If you want to understand the contours of spirituality in the English-speaking world, which impacted the ways in which Buddhism has been translated and transplanted, you ignore Blavatsky at your peril.