UNIVERSALISMS
Blavatsky was more of a universalist than Olcott. She wanted discussion of all religions, Christianity included. Responding to a question regarding advertisements that would be accepted by the Tbeosophist --are advertisements for freethinking literature acceptable, and what about anti-Christian advertisements? -- she wrote,
I, as an Editor, will never permit Christ to be attacked personally, no more than Buddha. But I must insist upon being allowed to remain entirely impartial in the dissection as in the praise of all and every religion the world over, without pandering to people's personal emotional prejudices. This will never do in a Universal Brotherhood [emphasis in original].104
The commitment to gathering together all human beings in the Theosophical Society was essential to Blavatsky, but the vocabulary itself was inchoate. Olcott was more focused on creating a brotherhood of all human beings than bringing Christian doctrine into the Theosophical fold. Sojourning in India meant dealing with others who were "racially" different. Settled in Bombay, they began to develop the notion of universal brotherhood -- "wherein all good and pure men of every race shall recognize each other as the equal effects (upon this planet) of the one Un-create, universal, Infinite and Everlasting Cause.'105
They found India unprepared for their message. They tried to join forces "with the Arya Samaj, oblivious to the fact that Dayananda Saraswati was not the universalist they were. Nor was the Indian elite ready:
When the founders of the Society landed at Bombay in 1879, they did not find even half a dozen Indians ready to receive their idea of an Universal Brotherhood, and not even the idea of an Indian Brotherhood .... The Theosophists were not only to be brothers among themselves, but also brothers to all men with whom the world brought them in contact. Theosophists in India, therefore, began to look about them to see if they could not ameliorate the lot of their fellows. 106
The founders soldiered on, continuing" studying occult science" as the society's chief aim, but now addressing two new objectives. One was a formula", Hon of universal brotherhood and the other the study of Oriental literature and philosophy. 107
The society's motto said nothing about Buddhism or the Asian religions furnished most of its ideology. It read, "There is no religion higher Truth," and because truth can be found in all religions, the society's was to draw together people of all religions in its investigation of the esoteric truths accessible in those religions, even if now obscure. The message of inclusion and equality appealed to South Asians accustomed to the condescension, hierarchy, and racist attitudes of the British Raj, on the rise after the events of 1857, when Indian troops rebelled against British officers, raising the prospect of a oncoming struggle for independence. That appeal transcended the ideological charms of Theosophy itself. Olcott had no anti-imperial motives in his work in India and regarded the Theosophical Society as nonpolitical. The founders brought two other people with them to India, a Mr. Wimbergh and a Miss Bates, and Blavatsky innocently thought that because they were "respectable" English people, their presence would reduce government suspicion about their motives as non-Britons working in India. 108 Olcott was more than apolitical, and, his feelings about brotherhood aside, he was hesitant to pursue social change in India. He was even unwilling to see panchama (Dalit) Indians gathered into the Buddhist fold until doctrinal evidence -- the first-century CE Buddhist poet Asvaghosh came to the rescue -- could be produced to show that they were not converting to a new religion but reverting to their ancient faith, Buddhism.109
Even a short time in India led Olcott to recognize the invidious attitudes of British officials:
To us who know the Hindus, it is hardly credible how little is known of this side of their character (i.e., their intelligence) by their official superiors.... How could they possibly expect to be on terms of good understanding with high-caste men (i.e. gentlemen) whom they treat in official intercourse with unconcealed disdain, commonly classifying them as "niggers," without caring at all whether it comes to the insulted gentlemen's ears or not? It is inexpressibly sad to me to see this awful waste of good opportunity to bind the Indian empire to the British throne with silken bands of love.110
The equation of gentlemanly behavior with high caste reveals Olcott's own prejudice -- he preached equality while treating his servants with something less -- but to his credit, he became more committed to the idea of brotherhood as he spent more time in India.111 By 1898 he was arguing that it was the first objective of the society.112
In 1897 a Thai monk living in Colombo wrote to Olcott urging him to concern himself with the disorder and corruption that had befallen the local monkhood. A member of the royal family with considerable knowledge of the world, Jinavaravamsa was no ordinary monk. He attributed Lankan disarray to the British government's giving control over substantial amounts of monastic lands to the incumbents of temples. The incumbents of the two Kandyan orders of the Siyam Nikaya said the same thing, complaining to Olcott of the disobedience of their own subordinates. Without a proper Buddhist king, monks who controlled sources of wealth were able to defy monastic authority, leading to what Olcott called "an atmosphere of personal bickering, childish sectarian squabbles, ignorance of the world about them, and incapacity to fit themselves to the ideals which the Lord Buddha had depicted for the government of his Sangha."113 Jinavaravamsa proposed addressing the corruption problem as it had been handled in traditional times, first unifying the monkhood, then reforming it by royal decree.114 But the Prince priest had a transnational vision that no one ever dreamed of -- first unify the Sinhala sangha, join it to the Burmese sangha, and then ally both the Thai sangha under the authority of the Thai king. The last Buddhist king would surely welcome that mandate.
On his way to Europe, King Chulalongkorn stopped in the island, and Jinavaravamsa and Olcott used his visit as an occasion to solicit his support. Things went terribly wrong in Kandy when the king was denied the right to hold the tooth relic. Although others had been given that privilege in the recent past -- including Christians -- a Kandyan aristocrat denied the king access, who went away in a huff. He agreed to consider the union of the monkhoods, which Anne Blackburn calls "the Lankan proposal," linking it to Hikkaduve. The proposal had a lot to do with Olcott and Jinavaravamsa.115 Later Jinavaravamsa attended the annual meetings in Adyar. He asked not to speak because of his status as a samanera, giving Olcott a letter to read to the group:
If Theosophy is the medium through which negotiation for the peace between all men proceeds ... I am heart and soul with it .... If Theosophy would undertake, in addition to the work of bringing men together into one Universal Brotherhood, the duty of leading men by example and practice ... so that they might be either true Christians or Hindus, or Buddhists, etc, whatever be their religion, and not hypocrites as they now appear to be, it would be conferring the greatest of all boons of the century .... Personally ... I think that all the elements necessary for the basis of a Universal religion are found in Buddhism.116
The careful language suggests the monk's earlier life as a diplomat -- he . saw the advantage of working with the Theosophists, but he would not join their movement.
Once the proposal for union reached Bangkok, the Council of Elders of the Thai monkhood discussed the issue for some three hours, rejecting the proposal on the grounds that Sri Lanka "is a separate country and the various Lanka people and factions were hostile to one another."117 One Thai prince noted another problem: the island was a British colony. Jinavaravamsa and Olcott kept at it, sailing to Burma in 1899 with Annie Besant; In Rangoon Besant and Olcott gave a number of lectures before' Olcott and Jinavaravamsa traveled upriver to Mandalay to meet the ranking Buddhist monks of Burma on the topic of education and "the union of the Buddhists of Burma, Ceylon, and Siam in one great religious fraternity under the patronage of H.M. the King of Siam."118 In view of Jinavaravarnsa's initiating the proposal, his recruiting Olcott to the cause, and their carrying on with the project after the idea lapsed in Lanka, I would give the Prince Priest majority ownership of the proposal -- whatever the interest of high-ranking Sinhala monks -- and note the transnational character of the Theosophical Society's involvement and the connection to unity. At the very least, there was a Theosophical subtext in this case.
Olcott's efforts to unify the monkhood make an instructive contrast with Dharmapala's disinterest in unifying either monks or laypeople. The diaries do not speak of his motivations, but several circumstances constrained him. One was his caste. His father was Goyigama and his mother Durava, but what brought them together was their social class, their origins in the Southern Province, the timber business, and their piety.119 His complicated origins could have been a motive for seeking unity among monks of different castes, but it could equally well have furnished reason to avoid the caste issue altogether. He mentioned caste sporadically in the diaries, and he had his own prejudices, but he never mentioned his mother's caste. His disinterest in caste reform might also have derived from his being considerably more knowledgeable of Sinhala society than Olcott, and thus more realistic. Since Dharmapala's time, the monkhood has grown to more than thirty communities. A final motivation, needless to say, was his assumption that recovering Bodh Gaya was more important than monastic reform.
Universal brotherhood came to Olcott in both Theosophical and Buddhist form. He wrote that the visit of the master to Blavatsky in 1881 had· a bearing on bringing the idea to the fore in the Theosophical Society. 120 Doing so had structural implications for the society, for as soon as brotherhood became more prominent, Olcott decided to create an Esoteric Section as the highest level of membership in the society. He directed his own energies toward worldly projects, and the initiatives often had a Buddhist purpose -- the Buddhist Catechism and the Buddhist flag were vehicles for exoteric ends, most important, establishing Buddhist doctrine common to all Buddhist countries so that there might be more social unity. Dharmapala pursued his share of worldly projects in the Buddhist cause. His 1892 trip to meet the chief lama of Sikkim was prompted by a desire to bring Buddhists together-at least for the sake of recovering Bodh Gaya -- and at this early point in his career Dharmapala wrote glowingly of opening the way for brotherly intercourse.121 His trips to Burma and Japan can be read in the same light. Late in his life Dharmapala gave a talk arguing that "Buddhism is not racial or national, but international" (Diary, December 8, 1925). He urged Buddhists to forgive Gandhi because Theosophy teaches the equality of all religions.122 He also took pleasure in knowing that the Vidyodaya pirivena, which his family had established, educated monks of all Nikayas and served laypeople of castes other than the dominated Goyigama.123
Dharmapala did not make much of the universal brotherhood idea that lay at the center of Olcott's plans. It is true that he called his publication the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society and the United Buddhist World. l14 The last message Olcott received from the mahatmas, and the only one he received directly (as opposed to receiving their messages via Blavatsky), called for the Society to work for unity:
Cease from such turmoil and strife, and from causing such disturbance in the Unity of Brotherhood, and thus weakening its strength; but instead work together in harmony, to fit yourselves to be useful instruments to aid us, instead of impeding our work .... Hold together in brotherly love, since you are part of the Great Universal Self.125
Dharmapala understood the "United Buddhist World" not as an end in itself ' but as a constituency that would enable him to make Bodh Gaya Buddhist " once again. After many trips around the Buddhist world, he left behind no " bureaucratic structure to sustain whatever unity he had created, and in contrast with Olcott's interest in human solidarity and equality, he was satisfied with "brotherly intercourse."
The Theosophical practice that interested Dharmapala centered on the mahatmas, and Koot Hoomi in particular authorized a set of associated practices -- dhyana meditation, celibacy, vegetarianism, and what he calls variously lokottara (otherworldly) culture, uttari manussa dhamma (the, morality of the higher man), and parama vijnana (highest insight). Following practices associated with Koot Hoomi gave him the moral authority to separate himself from all the important communities in his life. It allowed him to critique Western scholars (who he thought could not understand Dhamma because they did not practice asceticism), Sinhala monks (whose lack of discipline and commitment drew his fire), and the local elite, including his own family (who he thought were Europeanized "elephants"). Koot Hoomi provided him with a paradigm for his own isolation because, even as he complained that others had abandoned him -- and he did so with great frequency-their indifference to him allowed him to see his life as a matter of suffering. Koot Hoomi gave him a cause, serving humanity, and pursuing it gave meaning to both his wandering and his solitude.
In his own understanding, Dharmapala lived alone. He chose the name Anagarika (homeless) for a reason: "The world was my home .... The Buddhists were all against me" (Diary, April 10, 1926). Yet despite the universalism implied by saying that the world was his home, he spent forty years in Calcutta, and he owned a number of residences there. He owned at least a share of several homes in Sri Lanka, most important his family's home on Aloe Avenue and the house he purchased in Kandy to use as a seminary for training missionary monks, but the homelessness and solitude of his own self-understanding trumped everyday reality. He employed servants. On an average day, he saw visitors and acquaintances who joined him for breakfast, took a stroll with him or went for a ride at the end of the day, and frequently he had people living with him. In Calcutta Devapriya lived with him for several decades. 126 Failing to make the trek to the Himalayas, Dharroapala found solitude among others, and that solitude was the foundation of his identity: "Buddha has no friends in India. Neither do I," he wrote, and "Helpless, neglected, abandoned by all, I am struggling on" (Diaries, April 1 and September 30, 1918, from Sarnath Notebook no. 27, "Diaries 1915-1919"). The practical source of his isolation was of his own doing. He was hypercritical. He understood criticism as both a public responsibility and privilege he had earned by way of his asceticism and philanthropy:
Bro. Wickramaratna has gone to the High Priest to find fault against me for using the work [sic] "Anagarika." All this opposition agst me simply because I want to maintain the sublimity of the Dharma. Everywhere opposition. The Dharma will protect me. My father writes a letter which is enough to drive a fool mad; in the same tone did King Suddhodhana utter of [sic] words of reprobation to the Supreme Buddha (Diary March 10, 1898).
The life of the arhat, fully realized, makes one enlightened. The life of the Bodhisat makes one a Buddha. Dharmapala had his gaze fixed on the latter.
RENOUNCER IN THE WORLD
Dharmapala described himself variously as a chela, a brahmacarya of the bodhisattva path, and an anagarika, all of these roles entailing celibacy. Renunciation required discipline in several contexts, but celibacy posed the great challenge. 127 His commitment to celibacy was regularly tested abroad , especially on his trips to Japan, where he was in close contact with hotel personnel, and the United States, where relations between men and women were considerably more casual than in Sri Lanka. Throughout his adult life he wrote of being troubled by lustful thoughts (referring to them as kama chanda nivarana and kama bahu dukkha, "nighttime aberrations" and "physical weakness"). In Colombo he had a tempestuous relationship with Madame Marie de Souza Canavarro. She appeared in Colombo to work at the Sanghamitta Convent after a ceremony in New York City by which Dharmapala made her an upasika (pious Buddhist laywoman).128 The diary reveals Canavarro pressed Dharmapala for a closer relationship:
"Better to embrace a red-hot iron ball than embrace a woman." I will remain pure. The Upasika wrote a loving letter offering me the "highest sacrifice." I read it thrice, then burnt it; and to my surprise I found a bit of a remnant left. In it were the words "1 cannot permit ... the act. It will pass away," this was strange. I will be burnt to death; I prefer, but let me remain pure. "Oh, let all go, only O Lord let me save that blessed life." Buddha saved me. May I become Buddha. I showed my power to the Upasika. I will shake the foundation of the world. I had a rainwater bath. (Diary, November 23, 1898; emphasis in original)
Receiving no encouragement from him, Canavarro stormed off to Calcutta.129
Once Dharmapala thought he had broken his brahmacarya vow, and he returned to the incident from time to time. It is not clear exactly what occurred, but it involved a Japanese woman who gave him a massage in a Japanese hotel.130 Summing up his life, he returned to the incident:
In 1886 March made the Renunciation. Lead [sic] a purifying life of spirituality till 1902 May. Since 1902 May the Brahmachari life was made impure. I allowed women to touch my body. Since 1902 May sensualizing tendencies began to "influence me. Impure associations in 1903 -- at San Francisco, Green Acre, Boston, and New York. In 1904 the effects of 1903 were visible. (Diary, September 17, 1904)
He said he formed "an attachment to a woman in the USA," remembering events that occurred twenty years earlier (Diary, October 8, 1925). The woman was Gudrun Friis Holm, a Danish American Theosophist he met at a chautauqua while on tour in 1904. She worked as a physician in the United States, and she too gave him a massage. The treatment had made him feel better, but it "awakened sensations which go to show the truth of the Great Law of Dependent Origination .... How easy to go under the clutches of Mara .... In the evening Miss Holm treated me and put me to sleep. She is very kind" (Diary, August 6, 1903).
It is hard to know what to make of a celibate renouncer contemplating a life with a woman while pursuing the bodhisat life. His first reference to the idea followed something Honganji officials suggested when he was considering staying on in Japan and working as a missionary. If he planned to stay for ten years, his hosts advised him, he should take a companion. He wrote that he had the perfect candidate, a Miss Otake, who had been kind to him and wanted to work for Buddhism (Diary, June 27, 1902). He vowed to "keep her in the place of my younger sister," which is to say he planned to pursue religious work with her and live platonically. Whatever one makes of his even contemplating female companionship needs to begin with one certitude -- that his diaries show no signs that he ever imagined breaking his commitment to celibacy. He mentioned Miss Otake twice in the diaries, but Holm was a more serious matter. With her he remained in contact for more than twenty years, and as late as 1908 he held onto hopes that she would join him in India. They corresponded as late as 1926 (Diary, November 10, 1926). When he convalesced in Switzerland that summer, he made plans to visit her in Denmark.
[x]
[i]3. Dharmapala on world tour, Eliot, Maine, 1901. Seated on chair, Sarah Farmer, his hostess at Green Acre. Standing, left, Mirza Abu'l Fadl.
Chautauquas were nondenominational camps committed to lectures, study, and companionship in the cause of promoting human growth, and they often had their own universalizing programs. Dharmapala spent time at several, including one at Green Acre in Eliot, Maine, as did Swami Vivekananda, Jacob Riis, Annie Besant, Clarence Darrow, Booker T. Washington, Paul Carus, Countess Canavarro, W. E. B. DuBois, and Mirza Abu'l Fadl.131 The spirit was cosmopolitan and high minded, devoted to religious argument, although there was a lot more Theosophy in the air than Buddhism. The founder of Green Acre was Sarah Farmer, who had attended the World's Parliament of Religions, and Farmer's frequent visitor there was Sara Bull, who entertained Dharmapala in Cambridge and provided much of Vivekananda's support in the United States. In.a letter of 1902 Vivekananda told Sara Bull his views of marriage:
A race must first cultivate a great respect for motherhood, through the sanctification and inviolability of marriage, before it can attain to the ideal of perfect chastity. The Roman Catholic and the Hindus, holding marriage sacred and inviolate, have produced great chaste men and women of great power .... As you have come to see that the glory of life is chastity, so my eyes also have been opened to the necessity of great sanctification for the vast majority in order that a few lifelong chaste powers may be produced.132
Theosophy shared Vivekananda's ideas about "spiritual marriage" as the formula that would allow both human growth and traditional companionship.
Shortly after Vivekananda's letter to Sara Bull, Dharmapala met Holm at Green Acre, although his diaries are not forthcoming about what transpired between them. He spoke of her as his "spiritual companion," who would work with him in India. The textual context comes from the stream of articles that appeared in the Theosophist of the time, raising questions about traditional marriage and imagining alternatives such as spiritual marriage. When Dharmapala reached the US West Coast after his visit to Japan in 1902, he had an invitation to stay at the home of Josephine Holmes in Los Angeles. That visit exposed him directly to a spiritual marriage:133
Miss Josephine Holmes of Los Angeles is now the spiritual wife of Arthur Steele. How hard it is for man and woman to live together for any length of time in a pure condition. Contact produces sensation. Sensation produce selfish desires. Self-desires-clinging, produces existence of sex desires etc. (Diary, January 21, 1904)
Keeping company with well-to-do Americans with surprising ideas about marriage spoke to Dharmapala's commitment to celibacy, providing a transidiomatic rationale for what he knew all along, that spiritual development requires sexual restraint; a "man and woman living together" required more restraint and produced more progress.
There are some thirty references to Holm in the diaries, most of them referring to her as "Amara." She first presented herself to Dharmapala in a way that put him in mind of Mara, the women who tempted the Buddha just before enlightenment. "When' Amara' offered me her body," he wrote, "I told her that I shall not bring shame on her, but asked her to be my eternal companion" (Diary, March 7, 1904).134 The articles that appeared over the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the Theosophist address the tension between animal passions and spiritual growth in the context of marriage, reconfiguring the relationship between husband and Wife. Several of the articles considered abstinence in marriage in the context of the historical moment. G.N. Chakravarti's article reflected on the example of Rukhmabai, the Hindu wife who refused to live with her husband, and praised her abstinence in a time when "marriage has degenerated into a contract for physical happiness."135
Another article made the argument for the married person's having higher spiritual power than a world renouncer, as long as his marriage is "spiritual":
A celibate [renouncer] who has no temptation and who has no one to care for but himself, has undoubtedly superior advantages for meditation and study .... A [married] man who is surrounded by [temptations] is every day and every hour under the necessity of exercising his willpower to resist their surging violence .... When he rises up to a higher state in his next incarnation, his will-power will be more developed, and he will be in the possession of the password, which is CONTINENCE.136
When he was a volunteer for the Theosophical Society, Dharmapala saw those articles, and he later heard similar talk at chautauquas about the power of spiritual marriage. Sexual restraint in marriage has a Hindu warrant, but he came to it under Theosophical auspices.
Dharmapala's struggles with sexual urges continued into old age. He thought about sexuality in ways that moved un-self-consciously between mahatmas and Mara. In Buddhist logic, self-abnegation was its own reward and moved him along the path that led to bodhisat status and nirvana. But Theosophy offered a chela something more. In return for a life of celibacy, dietary discipline, and indifference to luxury, he could expect the mahatmas' assistance in pursuing humanitarian projects. He was a member of a brotherhood that included advanced human beings in service to humankind, but only if they disciplined their sexual instincts:
When mother in 1902 March used unmotherly language, I kept cool and left the place. Conscientiously and with strenuous energy I exerted to be pure. Since the affections began with Amara these sudden Kama impulses come to me. In August last we pledged ourselves to each other to be eternal companions. May I keep myself pure and teach her purity as well? In FebYl894 when I was talking to Prince Bhanuransi in his own palace in Bangkok I heard the voice say "My son, in your purity lies your strength" -- that was ten years ago. In the secrecy of my chamber I have tried to be pure. Practicing the Paramitas, as an Anagarika since 1886 I have lived the Bodhisat life. Wealth, worldly decoration, sense pleasures and amusements I have not had since my 19th year. Having sacrificed everything I gave up my life to the Mahatmas as they were followers of the Buddha. When Mrs. Besant began to preach of Krishna the Mahatma idea underwent change (Diary, March 23, 1904)
The "pure" life that he wanted to pursue had its own transidiomatic sources.
His thinking that he could live as renouncer while accompanied by a spiritual companion was not his own innovation. Nor was it a way for him to devote his life as a layman to the Buddhist cause. Marriage as a spiritual discipline had Theosophical sources, but it reminded the society's South Asian members of the spiritual greatness of their ancient ancestors.137 Dharmapala had enough affection for Gudrun Holm to envision her coming to India to work with him: "I told Gudrun that I shall expect her later on. She said she will come. She is good and generous, and I will treat her as my sister" (Diary, January 13, 1904). He imagined something on the order the relationship between Maud Gonne and W. B. Yeats.138 As had Canavarro, Holm initiated the relationship: "I told her that it is wrong for me to give pain to another & treated her as a sister," Dharmapala wrote (Diary, March 7, 1904). The pain harks back to his mother's pain when she lost an infant daughter and the vow he made when he was seventeen: "I shall not be the cause of giving pain to a woman." In the United States Holm was involved in medical studies, moved from coast to coast, and after serving as the Maha Bodhi Society representative in San Francisco until the 1920s, eventually returned to Denmark to practice holistic medicine. Although they corresponded for several years, she never joined him in India, and he never visited her in Denmark.
My intuition is that his involvement with Otake, Holm, and, much later, Vera Wickremasinghe needs to be seen in that light -- the imaginings of a man who considered several life courses, rejected most of them, and soldiered on, looking for ways to achieve spiritual growth in Japan, the United States, and England, where he was freer than he would have been at home. His encounter with "spiritual marriage" takes the same form as his contemplating staying in Japan and working as a Shinshu missionary. Whatever conclusion one reaches, Dharmapala's interest in spiritual companionship complicates his role as either a brahmacarya or a Protestant Buddhist. But it fits nicely with the turn-of-the-century world he inhabited.
When he was troubled by the contradictions of renunciation and life in this world, he called on the mahatmas for guidance. 139 They provided him with a link between his life as a Buddhist and Theosophist, and Koot Hoomi was central to that linkage. That seamlessness marks much of his writing -- he begins with the Buddha and then without benefit of a logical transition moves on, writing suddenly about the mahatmas. Before he realized that the mahant was not going to sell the Maha Bodhi temple, Dharmapala invoked the Buddha's blessing on the mahant:
The divine Lord conquered the world by the fulfillment of the Paramitas ten and for the last five days I invoked his powerful Name that I should succeed in His work. I invoked his blessings on the Mahant more than .a thousand times so that he may give the plot of land and that his heart may be changed. How true the words of the blessed Master, H.P.B.'s Gun -- "You have still to learn that so long as there are Three Men worthy of our Lords blessing in the Theosophical Society -- it can never be destroyed." Ah! How difficult to realize even for those who are trying to lead the Life the truth of the utterances of the Masters. The devoted followers of Gautama Buddha ... This is the 17th day since I put my foot on Gaya. Great works require time for their accomplishment. Self sacrifice is the secret of success. The divine Teacher, Bhagavan was the embodiment of absolute self sacrifice, we his humble and devoted followers, if we are to succeed in His work, should lovingly and faithfully imitate His Great Example. Brother Bhikhari and I went to meet the Mahant. The land was at last given .... The Voice speaks in solitude. (Diary, August 17, 1891; emphasis in original)
Throughout the last full decade of his life and the terminus of his diary keeping, Dharmapala was as much a Theosophist as ever, but he was also as much a Buddhist. His life had been marked by the patronage of Theosophical women -- Blavatsky, Besant, and Foster, Countess Wachmeister, Canavarro, Holmes, Sara Bull, Alma Senda, Mabel Eaton, Iona Davey, and Alice Cleather. In the 1920s only a few remained. He could not mistake Besant for a Buddhist, but his relationship with Mary Foster was another thing altogether. He framed that relationship in a Buddhist way:
"Brahmachari of the Bodhisatva Path" -- That shall be my future appellation. There is none other except the Dharma to look up to. Strict adherence to Dharma has been my principle. The Dharma protects me. The Dharma brought me in contact with Mrs. Foster. (Diary, December 13, 1917)
Foster was a Theosophist when she went down to Honolulu harbor to meet him upon returning home from the World's Parliament of Religions.140 And in spite of the predominance of his role as a representative of Buddhism on that occasion, days earlier he had spoken as a Theosophist at the Theosophical preliminary conference he attended. 141 Late in life he came to understand that Foster had also given financial support to at least two Hindu gurus.142
The mahatmas stood behind several of Dharmapala's projects, but most of all they called him to India, where Koot Hoomi wanted him to reestablish the sasana:
Got up at 5. The Sinnett letters from KH brought me in touch with the Himalayan Brother-hood. In 1884 I was absorbed in KH. In 1924 I am again thinking of the Masters. The two Adepts are trying to revive the Sasana. How they love each other. M says of KH. "My brother, the light of my soul." In this life I have not succeeded, but in the next life I hope to be born physically strong to climb the Himalayas and to study the sacred science. (Diary, May 9, 1924)
He had recognized this mandate decades earlier. "The two Masters wished the Religion of the Lord Buddha to be reestablished in India," he wrote. "Subba Row and his clique conspired against the scheme" (Diary, September 24, 1930). The problem was the chelas: "The Mahatmas Letters are full of inspiration, and yet everyone who became a Chela went wrong. The TS under Mrs. Besant is a Christianized necromancy" (Diary, August 14, 1924). At the end of his diary keeping, he was still fixed on the decline of his fellow chelas:
Out of the millions upon millions born in India only the two Adepts M & KH are followers of the Lord Buddha. All their disciples who became Buddhist at first later on became Apostates .... Damodar, Babajee, Paddhah, Bhavani Shanker, Ananda, Nivaran, Balai Ch. Malik, Leadbeater, Hartmann, Brown were known as "Chelas & lay Chelas." They all went wrong. (Diary, November 17, 1930)
In the 1920s he purchased new copies of the Mahatma Letters and The Light of Asia and reread the Secret Doctrine and Mahatma Letters, making diary entries as his reading proceeded (Diary, April 17, 1924, and March 12, 1926 ). "The two Brothers," he said at one point, "tried to help the Western world and failed" (Diary, August 20, 1924). Reading the letters again reminded him of his long struggle with celibacy: "Today an evil thought came to my mind, 'When shall I leave this place,' 'Be reasonable' were the words I heard. That was 41 years ago and am still struggling to be passionless" (Diary, August 12, 1925). An earlier entry summarized his high aspirations:
Reading "Mahatma Letters." They are very interesting. This incarnated body of mine to reach the summit of Samadhi failed for certain reasons .... I built a Vihara, a Dharmasala, and so on but failed to acquire the transcedent [sic] powers. The abhijynas, due to want of a Kalyana Mitra. (Diary, June 10, 1924; emphasis in original)
He does not say just who might have served as his kalyana mitra (friend who leads one on the right path). Gudrun Holm's name comes to mind, and it if was her, Dharmapala reveals his rationale for spiritual marriage. It helps man achieve "transcendent powers."
Dharmapala's engagement with the masters was more than interior monologue. He gave a public lecture entitled "Mahatmas and Buddhism" in 1924 (Diary, August 15, 1924).143 When he lectured at Town Hall in New York City in 1925, he characterized his talk as his attempt to deliver "the Message as it is the result of 40 years' experimental studies," and the reference to experimental studies is a reference to Theosophy.144 Preparing to give that lecture, he met a Miss Chamberlain, who pressed a ten-dollar bill on him. Not wanting to take her money, he bought her a copy of the Mahatma Letters with the money (Diary, December 10, 1925). Most of all he used the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society to engage publicly with the Some of the articles were not written by Dharmapala, but he remained managing editor through 1925, and many of the articles reflect not broad Buddhist interests but his own distinctive concerns. And they all follow the same logic, arguing that the Theosophical Society forgot its values when Blavatsky left:
It is evident that the T.S. no longer represents H. P. Blavatsky's work, and that the Masters have long since abandoned it to its fate .... There are still clean-minded altruistic people in the T.S. who desire that the pure Trans-Himalayan teachings should be revived. But it would seem as if no real scholars and mystics are left in it, but only dabblers in psychism who mislead many.145
The problem lay not in Theosophy, but the anti-Buddhist turn the movement had taken.
After Dharmapala gave up his membership in the Theosophical Society in 1905, the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society ignored Theosophy for a time. When he published articles in the journal, they were accounts of the Maha Bodhi temple or Sarnath, denunciations of Buddhist apathy, or calls· for monks and brahmacaryas to propagate Buddhism in non-Buddhist countries. l46 As the years passed, there appeared articles under his name that suggest more Theosophy than Buddhism. In I9I4 he argued that Buddhism had an esoteric aspect, and in 1925 he made the same argument in another form.147 In the first article he wrote that the Buddha laid out the teaching in two parts, the uttari manussa dhamma for monks and the manussa dhamma for laypeople. The line between the two moralities is hard and fast. A monk will be dismissed from the monkhood should he even exhibit his phenomenal powers (iddhi) to laypeople. But acquiring those powers is what the monk seeks. Likewise the Buddha preached two kinds of truth, one kind for monks and the other for laypeople. By the end of the article he shifted his attention to his own life course: "This is the Uttari manussa dhamma which is supra-normal and only confined to the Brahmacharis, who have renounced the fetters of lay life."148 In the later article he describes the brahmacarya's path, keyed this time not to the ten iddhi but jhanic states as Buddhaghosa explicated them in the Visuddhimagga. In the Buddhist tradition, the expression "brahmachari" represents "the spiritual or holy life that monks follow." He uses it to represent the life course of a renouncer who observes the uttari manussa dhamma.
Although Dharmapala does not speak of the mahatmas in these two articles, he struggled with the Theosophical side of his worldview. Using the expression "brahmachari" allowed him to explain his own religious course, because he was not a bhikkhu but a brahmacarya, living out his commitment to the uttari manussa dhamma.149 Another set of articles appeared in the 1920S, and they spoke directly to Theosophy, Blavatsky, and the mahatmas. Some appeared without attribution, some were written by Theosophists such as Basil Crump and S. Haldar of the Blavatsky party. One continuing article on "The Bodhi-Dharma or Wisdom Religion" began with its author, Alice Leighton Cleather, saying that Dharmapala had asked her to contribute the series. 150 All of these articles convey his understandings even absent his name.151 They reach much the same conclusion:
Theosophy has become a misnomer, for the word was originally Greek for Divine Wisdom. But the Sanskrit name for the Wisdom-Religion is Bodhidharma which is understood throughout the East. It is that archaic doctrine, Esoteric Buddhism, of which the Trans-Himalayan Masters are the custodians for the human race.152
That the Adyar Theosophical Society had lost its way did not diminish the virtues of the Himalayan Brotherhood and their chelas, still working for the good of humanity because of their love for the Lord Buddha.
In the early I920S, a flurry of articles appeared in the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society concerned with issues of peculiar interest to Dharmapala -- the life of an artagarika. Only one appeared under his name, and it made reference to Theosophy.153 I suspect he wrote several of these articles and encouraged articles from supporters about issues of particular interest to a man who by then had been an anagarika for some forty years. Devapriya was a fledging anagarika, Harischandra Valisinha assumed the role, and other men -- Anagarika Govinda and a latter-day Anagarika Dhammapala -- followed suit in subsequent years. But practically speaking, Dharmapala was the sole token of the type. Decades after his public falling out with the Buddhist Theosophical Society, and Besant, the pages of the Journal of the Maha Bodhi Society show so many of his cognitive interests -- in the uttari manussa dhamma, esoteric Buddhism, the brahmacarya life -- that it is plain that he was exercising editorial control when not writing the articles.
A pair of articles that appeared in 1922 will make the point. 154 The begins by saying, "The sacred science of transcendentalism in Buddhism is called 'Uttarimanussa dhamma"' and adds that the Buddha intended this pathway to arhatship for brahmacaryas and bhikkhus, but that the brahmacarya must become a bhikkhu "to lead the holy life in completeness." The writer gives a summary history of the Theosophical Society, quotes a message from the Maha Chohan (the mahatma who was the guru of Koot Hoomi), saying that the Theosophical Society should perish before restricting the occult life to the few while ignoring the many. He urges Westerners to take up the study of Abhidhamma. A Burmese U Kyaw Dun responded to this article by critiquing it as a Buddhist. The monastic law prohibits monks from showing laypeople the powers they have acquired by following the uttari manussa dhamma, but the higher form of the Buddha's teaching is open to laypeople to follow.155 It is thus a monkly privilege in the end and requires the layperson who pursues it to eventually join the monkhood for the realization of that knowledge. Against this backdrop Dharmapala's own life course -- following the uttari manussa dhamma as a brahmacarya for most of his days and ending his life as a monk -- acquires new meaning as his growing spiritual accomplishments moved him from one role to another.
Dharmapala did not need to redefine terms or locate new ones becase the language that Theosophy and Buddhism shared was already transidiomatic -- he needed only to reidentify himself. The world renouncer who claimed both identities emphasized the Buddhist part of his identity in public contexts but spoke in his diaries of his regard for Blavatsky, Master Koot Hoomi, and the uttari manussa dhamma. He had every reason to discard his membership in the Theosophical Society -- his alienation from Olcott, his growing suspicion of Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom the Theosophical Society began to promote as a messiah figure, and the practice of Theosophists in India claiming to be arhats, as well as his troubles with Theosophists in Colombo. In urging the Colombo Theosophists to drop "Buddhist" from their group's name, Dharmapala tried to redescribe others against their will. By contrast it was easy to discard his own Theosophical identity -- his rejoining the Society in 1914 aside -- and to hold onto his old vocabulary, its Buddhist meanings now foregrounded. Those expressions were, after all, ones Blavatsky had taken from Buddhism in the first place.
The irony was that the one Theosophical notion that he cared most about was furnished by the mahatmas, and the Himalayan adept notion was simply not transidiomatic with Buddhism. That expression did not derive from Buddhist texts or tradition, and it makes little sense introduced into a Buddhist context. He never ceased to admire Blavatsky, even after he reread the Secret Doctrine and suspected her of plagiarism. He never ceased to talk about his regard for Koot Hoomi, calling himself long after 1905 a "chela of the Masters." I doubt that he spoke of the masters before Sinhala audiences, but he wrote about the uttari manussa dhamma for English readers, whether Sinhala, Asian, or Western. In his diaries he steered away from the expression "mahatma," preferring the equivalent but less markedly Theosophical and Hindu "Masters." But it was his continuing regard for them, the uttari manussa dhamma, and the brahmacarya life that made his Buddhism more complicated than Theravada and anything but Protestant.