Of course, I didn't have to look far, as I have two favorites... Anagarika Dharmapala and Jiddu Krishnamurti, deciding to select the latter, as he difinitely has more to offer in an exploration than the occult leanings of HPB.
There's an excellent examination of Krishnamurti's connection to Buddhism to be found on BuddhaNet, excerpted below.
You can read the full article here:In many ways Krishnamurti's message is similar to the one that Buddhism teaches. Both point to the ease and susceptibility of the human mind to succumb to conditioning as the origin of all our human problems. Both doctrines, therefore, prescribe the use of an intense awareness of all of our mental processes, thoughts, memories, beliefs, hopes, and fears in order to gain that state of enlightenment which Krishnamurti calls insight or complete and unconditional freedom.
On the surface there appears to be conflict between Krishnamurti and Buddhism on some points. To Krishnamurti the process of enlightenment takes place instantaneously, like a sudden awakening. To most Buddhists enlightenment would take place only after years of painstaking meditative practice and countless rituals.
In the preceding we examined the nature of human psychological time. Time is measured by humans usually through a process of increase or decrease. We sense that time is passing because we are growing older or earning more money or waiting to be promoted to a higher rank. More precisely, psychological time is our perception of the process of increase or decrease and nothing more. Without that perception there would be no sense of passage of time.
When we talk of working and meditating over a period of years to achieve enlightenment it is the same as saying, "I will create the passage of time by undergoing a process of 'increase' from a lower to a higher spiritual level". By taking this approach we will have avoided taking the discontinuous leap into enlightenment, and instead we will have created our own delay in achieving enlightenment. As we mentioned earlier, the human ego is involved with this process. In fact, one could say that the human ego is this process, i.e. perception (increase/decrease) = psychological time = ego.
It stands to reason that any Buddhist authority who urges others to work real hard over a long period of time in order to achieve enlightenment is selling an ego package. Yet, we sometimes hear such advice coming from Buddhists. Krishnamurti's view of enlightenment is not that of a gradual one which increases slowly over years of hard work, because that sort of ego-related process creates its own delay and thus insures that the end is never attained. In Krishnamurti's view enlightenment comes by its own accord where and when it chooses, and there is little that we can do about it. It comes to us at auspicious times like a major discontinuity in our lives, and it reminds us of some Buddhist accounts of awakening which were induced by an unexpected slap to the face or a blow to the body. Ego involvement in enlightenment (or meditation for that matter) is no more than an interference which will negate the process.
It is the author's opinion that Krishnamurti's views provide us with more insight into The Sutra of the Heart of Transcendent Knowledge than most explanations available from the Buddhist world. In the Sutra, Avalokitesvara states that there is no birth and no cessation, ... no decrease and no increase, ... It is the exact same process which Krishnamurti dwells upon in volume after volume of his works. Enlightenment is a state that is timeless which means that its chief attribute is one of no-time, meaning no involvement with ego or ego-created time. Once an acknowledgment is made by the ego that time is required to attain enlightenment, the search has gone off on a hopeless tangent and will end in failure. The ego has to surrender its jurisdiction in the matter of enlightenment and allow something which is infinite and unknowable to take its course.
To Krishnamurti any process of thought is unsacred. Thoughts of the dharma or Buddha are as unsacred as any other type of thought. The only thing remaining sacred in Krishnamurti's view is that which thought is incapable of capturing or the unknowable. All thoughts are mere human creations of the human brain stem and are forever incapable of capturing that which is infinite and unknowable.
At first it seems that most Buddhists would agree with the foregoing paragraph. But there is plenty of Buddhist literature available which encourages Buddhists to meditate upon sacred images or thoughts or The Eight-Fold path or some mandala or mantra. It is self-evident that a state of complete emptiness is impossible as long as any images whatsoever persist in the mind. The Sutra says that emptiness is form and all form is emptiness, yet many Buddhist leaders keep on encouraging others to fill this vast, wonderful emptiness with a product of the human nervous system as if that product is sacred enough to occupy space as long as it has received the authorized stamp of approval from a duly appointed Buddhist authority.
Some Buddhist groups conduct prayer meetings. Prayer is an obvious exercise of the ego, a deliberate, calculating way to gain an increase over a period of time. There are some who feel that more prayer results in more gain. It is another attempt to attain something despite the fact that there is no attainment.
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