30. How does Buddha's Teaching Relate to Theosophy?

Question: “How does Buddha's teaching relate to Hinduism, the Upanishads and Blavatsky's Theosophy?

The answer to this question is partly given in what was said in the last issue in connection with Annie Besant's book “The Four Religions”. The original Brahman teaching, which is expressed in Hinduism and the Upanishads, was given a form in Buddha's teaching that was appropriate to the people's understanding. Buddhism was to turn a doctrine that was more focused on knowledge into one that served to elevate and purify moral strength and to lead a direct life. This is not to say that Buddhism taught something fundamentally new or even different from ancient Brahmanism. Rather, everything that Buddha taught was already present in Brahmanism. And anyone who understood Brahmanism correctly can be said to have been a Buddhist before the Buddha. It is as if someone were to describe a plant that many others had already described; the only difference is that he emphasizes certain characteristics that his predecessors did not feel the need to discuss in particular. Brahmanism is based on a world view. The Buddha showed how one should live in order to live in accordance with this world view. A person can live in accordance with a world view without fully understanding it. Indeed, he will understand it better later if he has already lived in accordance with it. This is what Buddha wanted to achieve in those who followed him. If he refused to speak about the supernatural, it was not because he considered it unknowable or even denied it; but because he wanted to first point people to a life that would then enable them to penetrate the supernatural. He did not deny the eternity of the soul; but he did not want his followers to engage in speculations about this eternity before they had arrived at the conclusion, through observing his rules of life, that their own lives fit into the spiritual order of the world. One could say that Buddha's teachings are Hinduism applied to practical life for people who are not yet able to grasp the connection between this life and the highest mysteries. Man has his destiny in the eternal; but only if he sees the temporal, the transitory, in the right light, is he also able to relate to the eternal in the right way. This is what characterizes Buddha's goal. That is why he refrained from teaching higher truths in his outer teachings, and taught the doctrine of the causes of earthly life and of its proper purification through the eightfold path.

Thus, all Indian worldviews, including Buddhism, are based on the doctrine of a spiritual, higher world, to which man belongs just as much as to the earthly one. And this teaching is no different from that which forms the basis of all great religious systems and world views. It is the one that is also contained in theosophy. For it corresponds to the one human nature, which, depending on the circumstances of life, develops differently in form, but which is essentially, in its basis, one. Anyone who knows the deeper foundations of Christianity also knows that this ancient wisdom is contained and active within it. And anyone who can penetrate to this ancient wisdom through true, spiritual Christianity (compare Annie Besant's “Esoteric Christianity” and Rudolf Steiner's “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”) does not need Hinduism or Buddhism. Yes, the same spiritual doctrine is also effective in modern science, but it remains attached to the most external truths and thereby distorts the spiritual. This is the case, for example, with the materialistic view of Darwinism. If one wants to penetrate to the spiritual basis of truth through this modern science, one needs a far greater power than on the path of religion. — Now, in an age that was completely devoted to outward, material knowledge, H.P. Blavatsky was initiated into the secrets of wisdom research by great teachers of the East. It was only natural that these teachers expressed themselves in the terms of their own race. And it was in this form of expression that Mrs. Blavatsky communicated what she had received to the world. However, it must be clear that this form of expression is of little importance. The point is to penetrate the content. Whether this content is then communicated in the forms of Hinduism, Buddhism or Christianity, or in the formulas borrowed from modern Western science, depends solely on the person to whom the content is to be communicated. Our great masters never tire of admonishing us again and again not to fall into rigid dogmatism, not to turn the search for wisdom into mere word wisdom. Under certain circumstances it is even un-theosophical to teach the Hindu or Buddhist formulas in the Occident. For the theosophist should not force anything alien upon anyone, but should lead everyone to the truth in his own way. Why, for example, should one teach Buddhist formulas of thought to Christians, when the core of truth is also based on their own formulas? Theosophy should not be Buddhist propaganda, but rather a help for everyone to achieve a true understanding of their own inner world.