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    The Voice of the Silence
    The Voice of the Silence
    The Voice of the Silence
    Ebook69 pages1 hour

    The Voice of the Silence

    By H. P. Blavatsky

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    First published in 1889, “The Voice of the Silence” is a translation of excerpts of “The Book of the Golden Precepts”, an ancient, sacred text of Buddhism, by the Russian occultist and philosopher Helena Blavatsky. Well-known for her work co-founding the Theosophical Society in the United States, a mystical and occultist group based around the doctrines of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, Blavatsky also traveled extensively and spent several years in India and Tibet studying the religions and spiritual beliefs of the East. In “The Voice of the Silence”, Blavatsky translates and dissects three of the tracts from the ancient Buddhist text that she memorized during her travels. In these translations, Blavatsky explains the two different paths of Buddhist enlightenment: the personal and selfish path that seeks only to alleviate one’s own suffering and the altruistic path of the Bodhisattva, which seeks to serve and aid all of humanity. With detailed information on the meaning of various Buddhist terms and spiritual practices, Blavatsky’s work was a significant contribution to the growth of Buddhism in the Western world. “The Voice of the Silence” continues to be read and studied by modern English-speaking practitioners of this ancient religion.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDigireads.com Publishing
    Release dateSep 24, 2020
    ISBN9781420969795
    The Voice of the Silence

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      Book preview

      The Voice of the Silence - H. P. Blavatsky

      cover.jpg

      THE VOICE OF THE SILENCE

      By H. P. BLAVATSKY

      BEING

      CHOSEN FRAGMENTS

      FROM THE

      BOOK OF THE GOLDEN PRECEPTS.

      FOR THE DAILY USE OF LANOOS (DISCIPLES).

      The Voice of the Silence

      By H. P. Blavatsky

      Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6978-8

      eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-6979-5

      This edition copyright © 2020. Digireads.com Publishing.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

      Cover Image: a detail of Guanyin and Sudhana in the Tidal Sound Cave at Mount Potala, from the book ‘In Celebration of the Amitabha Buddha’, Qing Dynasty era silk painting. Currently displayed in the National Palace Museum, Taipei. / Pictures from History / Bridgeman Images.

      Please visit www.digireads.com

      CONTENTS

      PREFACE.

      FRAGMENT I.

      FRAGMENT II.

      FRAGMENT III.

      GLOSSARY TO PART I.

      GLOSSARY TO PART II.

      GLOSSARY TO PART III.

      Preface.

      The following pages are derived from The Book of the Golden Precepts, one of the works put into the hands of mystic students in the East. The knowledge of them is obligatory in that school, the teachings of which are accepted by many Theosophists. Therefore, as I know many of these Precepts by heart, the work of translating has been relatively an easy task for me.

      It is well known that, in India, the methods of psychic development differ with the Gurus (teachers or masters), not only because of their belonging to different schools of philosophy, of which there are six, but because every Guru has his own system, which he generally keeps very secret. But beyond the Himalayas the method in the Esoteric Schools does not differ, unless the Guru is simply a Lama, but little more learned than those he teaches.

      The work from which I here translate forms part of the same series as that from which the Stanzas of the Book of Dzyan were taken, on which the Secret Doctrine is based. Together with the great mystic work called Paramârtha, which, the legend of Nâgârjuna tells us, was delivered to the great Arhat by the Nâgas or Serpents (in truth a name given to the ancient Initiates), the Book of the Golden Precepts claims the same origin. Yet its maxims and ideas, however noble and original, are often found under different forms in Sanskrit works, such as the Dnyaneshwari, that superb mystic treatise in which Krishna describes to Arjuna in glowing colours the condition of a fully illumined Yogi; and again in certain Upanishads. This is but natural, since most, if not all, of the greatest Arhats, the first followers of Gautama Buddha were Hindus and Aryans, not Mongolians, especially those who emigrated into Tibet. The works left by Aryasangâ alone are very numerous.

      The original Precepts are engraved on thin oblong squares; copies very often on discs. These discs, or plates, are generally preserved on the altars of the temples attached to centers where the so-called contemplative or Mahâyâna (Yogachâra) schools are established. They are written variously, sometimes in Tibetan but mostly in ideographs. The sacerdotal language (Senzar), besides an alphabet of its own, may be rendered in several modes of writing in cipher characters, which partake more of the nature of ideographs than of syllables. Another method (lug, in Tibetan) is to use the numerals and colours, each of which corresponds to a letter of the Tibetan alphabet (thirty simple and seventy-four compound letters) thus forming a complete cryptographic alphabet. When the ideographs are used there is a definite mode of reading the text; as in this case the symbols and signs used in astrology, namely the twelve zodiacal animals and the seven primary colours, each a triplet in shade, i.e. the light, the primary, and the dark—stand for the thirty-three letters of the simple alphabet, for words and sentences. For in this method, the twelve animals five times repeated and coupled with the five elements and the seven colours, furnish a whole alphabet composed of sixty sacred letters and twelve signs. A sign placed at the beginning of the text determines whether the reader has to spell it according to the Indian mode, when every word is simply a Sanskrit adaptation, or according to the Chinese principle of reading the ideographs. The easiest way however, is that which allows the reader to use no special, or any language he likes, as the signs and symbols were, like the Arabian numerals or figures, common and international property among initiated mystics and their followers. The same peculiarity is characteristic of one of the Chinese modes of writing,

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