Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00475)

G. Barborka, in his hook, H.P Blavatsky: Tibet and Tulku (Adyar, 
India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1966), claimed that she was a 
tulku because she possessed the ability to "transmit spiritual 
truths".(p. 145), allowing the `Masters' to speak, write
through her (p. 300). However this a fictional use of the word tulku, 
and not how the term is used in the Tibetan tradition. 
Cyril Hoskins's claim to be Lobsang Raimpa, made use of exactly the 
same description as Barborka.

The whole Tibetan tradition is based on the "tulku" system and is 
unthinkable without it. The word "tulku" is the phonetic rendering 
of "sprul-sku", which is itself the Tibetan translation of the 
Sanskrit nirmana-kaya, meaning `transfor­mation body'.

According to Indian Mahayana Buddhism, the Buddha had three bodies or 
forms. At the highest level is the dharma-kaya or Dharma body, which, 
in the way that is typical of the Mahayana, is actually neither a 
body nor a form but is identical with emptiness. At the intermediary 
level is the sam­bhoga-kaya or Enjoyment body, which is seen by
Bodhisattvas in the countless non-physical worlds that make up the 
universe. Finally, there is the nirmana­kaya/Transformation body, 
which is a projection into the physical realm of a form that appears 
human hut is in fact an embodiment of dharmic' qualities.

The Tibetan version of this teaching takes these ideas a little 
further. Very advanced Bodhisattvas such as Avalokiteshvara 
(Chenrezi' in Tibetan) or Manjushri (`Jampel' in Tibetan)
are regarded as having such an abundance of dharmic qualities that 
they can manifest them in human form. In other words, certain human 
beings are not `just' human at all hut projections of aspects of
Dharma. These are tulkus. They choose to be reborn and their mere 
presence in the world ensures that the Buddha's Dharma will he
maintained-because they manifest Dharma by the very fact of being 
incarnated. Hence, though the word tulku' is derived from the 
Mahayana doctrine of the Transformation body of the Buddha, tulkus 
are not regarded as incarnations of the Buddha. It is therefore 
inaccurate to refer to them as living Buddhas' (which one often reads 
in the press).

The best-known tulku, of course, is the Dalai Lama.' The present 
Dalai Lama is the fourteenth. What this actually means is that the 
same person'- that is, the same dharmic `force'-supposed
to have incarnated 14 times. (Of course, all beings reincarnate; but 
the difference is that non-tulkus do not choose their incarnation, 
and are therefore reborn willynilly, as it were .Similarly, all the 
main teachers in all four schools-the Nyingma, Sakya, Geluk, and 
Kagyu-are tulkus. I do not know how many there are altogether but it 
must be over a hundred.

Normally, a tulku is recognized when he is a young boy. (There are 
female tulkus but their number is tiny; this is definitely a male 
system.) And of course he is recognized by other, adult tulkus. It is 
in the nature of this system that it repeats itself seriatim, as it 
were: tulku A is recognized as a boy by tulku B, who is perhaps 50 
years old; when tulku B dies 20 years later, it is now tulku A who 
will recognize the child who is tulku B's incarnation and who
will become his pupil; then when tulku A dies in his turn, it will be 
tulku B who will recognize his former teacher. And through all this, 
both tulku A and tulku B will be known by the same name each time: 
tulku A will be the seventh abbot of X, say, and then the eighth 
abbot; tulku B will be known as the tenth incarnation of B and then 
the eleventh and so on. 

But for example from 1757 to 1895, when a succession of Dalai Lamas 
either did not assume power at all (the ninth and tenth died when 
they were still boys) or did so only for a few years (the eighth, 
eleventh and twelfth all died a few years after assuming office). 
According to Tibetan Buddhist belief, all these premature deaths must 
have been for dharmic reasons since a to/ku chooses his death quite 
as much as he chooses his birth. But it is, of course, possible to 
see such events in a more secular light. (gdward v of England, one of 
the two princes in the Tower', also did not live to lead his
country.)

There is also a rivalry, going back several centuries, between the 
Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. Traditionally, the Panehen Lama has 
tended to receive support from the chinese in his political
ambitions in the eighteenth century, fur example, the Emperor made 
the Panchen Lamas rulers of Tsang province and has therefore tended to
support them in his turn. The ninth Panchen Lama fled to China in 
1923 and never returned to Tibet. Be died in 1937 and his successor 
was `found' by the Chinese in 1939; but most people think that he was 
not the real (especially since he was never recognized by the 
fourteenth and present, Dalai Lama though the situation is 
complicated by the fact that they were the same age and therefnre 
children at the same time). The tenth Panchen Lama was thus living in 
China when the Communists came to power in 1949, and he was made 
nominal ruler of Tibet from 1959 (when the Dalai Lama went into 
exile in India) to 1964. When he died in 1989, an extraordinary game 
of tulku bluff ann counter-bluff ensued. The Chinese government 
dispatched a team of Tibetan monks to Tibet in order to find his 
successor. But this team, while pretending to work fur the Chinese, 
in fart collaborated with another, undercover, team that the Dalai 
Lama had sent to Tibet on the same mission. Hence the candidate that 
the Chinese thought would he their appointment in fact turned nut to 
be the Dalai Lama's candidate—the `official' eleventhPanchen Lama
after all. (And having discovered this, the Chinese promptly 
kidnapped' him by taking him from Tibet and installing him in
Peking.
 
Another controversy—this time purely Tibetan—concerns the
Karmapa, head of the Kãgyu school. The sixteenth Karmapa died in 1981 
and his incarnation was eagerly awaited. But it took a long time 
(eleven years) for him to he discovered. The task of finding him was 
entrusted to four Oharma-regents (all tu/kus, of course, and all 
pupils of the sixteenth Karmapa, who had himself recognized
them an instance of the "leapfrog' principle outlined above). But it
appears from the outside that they did not really know how to go 
about it. 
There was a certain amount of prevarication, followed by claims and 
counterclaims that two of the Dharma-regents, Tai Situ Pa and the 
Shamarpa, had fabricated! suppressed evidence that would have led to 
the discovery of the seventeenth Karmapa. They even produced rival 
candidates (though it appears that Tai Situ Pa's has become the 
official one). For more on this episode, see Keith Bowman (himself a 
disciple of the sixteenth Karmapa), Himalayan Intrigue: the search 
fur the new Karmapa', (Tricycle 11/2, Winter 1992, 29—34 ;Karma 
Tendzin Dorje, Golden Child', Fortean Times, vol. 69, June-July
1993, 30—33. There is also a mini-book, The Karmupa Papers ,Paris,
1992; written in English; contact address: PB. 128.16, F-75763 Paris 
Cedex 16, France, which gives the Shamarpa's side of the story.)

And are worth knowing because they show we are not just dealing 
with a spiritual idea or teaching but a whole social and cultural 
reality. One is bound to ask why, if the tenth Panchen Lama was 
false, he could have a successor at all; or, if he was genuine, why 
he did the things he did. One is hound to ask what status the 
Shamarpa's candidate as seventeenth Karmapa now has.

Moreover, it appears that it is at times of uncertainty that 
unorthodox claims tend to be made. As the Tibetan tradition emerges 
into the world, now Westerners are beginning to enter the tradition.

In his recent book about Blavatsky "The Book of Dzyan" Tim Maroney 
Blavatsky supposed to have shown the symptoms Dissociative Identity 
Disorder (DID), and that did played a decisive role in her 
experiences and behaviour.

I cannot say much to that, this is something a person with a certain 
background in psychiatry would have to look into.

I would rather put it in this way that there was some sense of a 
doubling or splitting that Blavatsky exploited to state spiritual 
authority as a man (the Masters) and spiritual powers as a women 
(Helena Blavasky).
I already mentioned that when she published "The Voice of the 
Silence" inscribed the flyleaf of her own copy, "From H.P.B. to 
H.P.Blavatsky, with no kind regards." (In Barker, ed, Letters of 
Blavatsky to Sinnet, p.145.) 
Brigitte
 
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