The Three Propositions of Theosophy 

and the Madhyamika-Prasangika

by Gerald Schueler, Ph.D.

In her Proem to The Secret Doctrine, H. P. Blavatsky states that "The Secret Doctrine establishes three fundamental propositions." These three propositions embody the fundamental teachings, what could be called the core teachings, of the modern Theosophical Movement. These core teachings are central to modern Theosophy. The Madhyamika-Prasangika is the name of a school of Tibetan Buddhism, considered by many to be the highest, the most profound, and the most spiritual. This school embodies the Madhyamika or "Middle Way" of Buddhism as presented by Nagarjuna (first century AD) and his followers including the great reformer Je Tsong-kha-pa (AD 1357-1419), who founded the Gelug school. Blavatsky called Tsong-kha-pa "the great Tibetan Reformer of the fourteenth century, said to be the direct incarnation of Amita-Buddha" as well as an incarnation of Prince Gautama himself (CW, VOL XII, p 425). In Blavatsky's day, little or nothing was known in the West of Tsong-kha-pa. Today, the influx of Tibetan Buddhists into the West has greatly changed this lack of knowledge. Now, most of his writings have already been translated into English, allowing us to directly compare the teachings of these two great spiritual teachers.

FIRST PROPOSITION

An Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable PRINCIPLE on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude. It is beyond the range and reach of thought -- in the words of Mandukya, "unthinkable and unspeakable."

To render these ideas clearer to the general reader, let him set out with the postulate that there is one absolute Reality which antecedes all manifested, conditioned, being. This Infinite and Eternal Cause -- dimly formulated in the "Unconscious" and "Unknowable" of current European philosophy -- is the rootless root of "all that was, is, or ever shall be." It is of course devoid of all attributes and is essentially without any relation to manifested, finite Being. It is "Be-ness" rather than Being (in Sanskrit, Sat), and is beyond all thought or speculation.

This "Be-ness" is symbolized in the Secret Doctrine under two aspects. On the one hand, absolute abstract Space, representing bare subjectivity, the one thing which no human mind can either exclude from any conception, or conceive of by itself. On the other, absolute Abstract Motion representing Unconditioned Consciousness.

The "Manifested Universe," therefore, is pervaded by duality, which is, as it were, the very essence of its EX-istence as "manifestation."

The following summary will afford a clearer idea to the reader.

(1.) The ABSOLUTE; the Parabrahm of the Vedantins or the one Reality, SAT, which is, as Hegel says, both Absolute Being and Non-Being.

(2.) The first manifestation, the impersonal, and, in philosophy, unmanifested Logos, the precursor of the "manifested." This is the "First Cause," the "Unconscious" of European Pantheists.

(4.) Cosmic Ideation, MAHAT or Intelligence, the Universal World-Soul; the Cosmic Noumenon of Matter, the basis of the intelligent operations in and of Nature, also called MAHA-BUDDHI.

The ONE REALITY; its dual aspects in the conditioned Universe.

The first proposition is generally considered to be a statement of absolutism - that an absolute reality exists independent of anything else. Blavatsky equates this to the Hindu god, Parabrahm. This appears to be in direct conflict with the Mahayana teachings of Tzong-kha-pa. The Madhyamika view is that absolutism and nihilism are both extreme points of view and the truth lies somewhere in the middle, thus their view is often called the "middle way" position. However, when we look closer, the discrepancies may be more apparent than real. Parabrahm, for example, means "beyond Brahman" and was originally used in Vedanta to name the state of non-duality that exists beyond the gods. Vedanta is one of the few non-Buddhist religions that recognizes non-duality as a transcendence of all dualities, including that of existence and non-existence.

"If one asserts that things exist by way of their nature, even if one does not propound them as permanent, one comes to have a view of permanence. And, if one asserts that something that existed by way of its nature at a former time is destroyed at a later time, then even if one does not assert that its continuum is annihilated, one comes to have a view of annihilation. Hence, once one asserts that things are established by way of their nature, one does not pass beyond views of permanence and annihilation ... Therefore, only the view of the Madhyamikas does not fall into the extremes of existence and non-existence and is free from the faults of permanence and annihilation." (Tzong-Kha-pa in his Ocean of Reasoning, trans. by Magee in The Nature of Things: Emptiness and Essence in the Geluk World, 1999, Snow Lion)

Tzong-kha-pa taught the Middle Way, the way that is neither absolutism nor nihilism but rather that transcends these two extremes. Thus he was a Centrist, as are all his Geluk followers. He taught that samsara is relative or conventional and that nirvana is absolute or ultimate, but that both must be transcended in order to be liberated from cyclic existence. The notion of positing a permanent eternal absolute has a built-in danger, "because if the absolute is taken to be too absolute, then the relative ends up being repudiated, self-annihilative wisdom is cultivated exclusively, and the ultimate concern of great compassion is deprived of drive and field of play." (Thurman in his introduction to Tzong-kha-pa, The Central Philosophy of Tibet: A Study and Translation of Jey Tsong Khapa's Essence of True Eloquence, with a forword by H.H. the Dali Lama, 1984, Princeton, pp 56-57) From my own personal experience I can say that this dangerous outcome is exactly what happened in Christian Science, which tries to affirm a spiritual absolute while denying the relative material. However, it has not happened in Theosophy, which affirms a conventional existence to matter.

The Madhyamika holds the Doctrine of Two Truths. According to this doctrine there is a conventional truth and an ultimate truth. The Prasangika teach that all aggregates exist only conventionally, their reality merely imputed by mind. They are all empty of inherent existence, and it is this emptiness that is their ultimate truth. To reject the notion of an absolute, the Prasangika have taught, from the time of Candrakirti who was a spiritual son of the legendary Nagarjuna, that even emptiness is empty (see Huntington and Wangchen's translation of Candrakirti's The Entry into the Middle Way, in The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Madhyamika, 1989, University of Hawaii Press)

SECOND PROPOSITION

The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane; periodically "the playground of numberless Universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing," called "the manifesting stars," and the "sparks of Eternity." "The Eternity of the Pilgrim" is like a wink of the Eye of Self-Existence (Book of Dzyan.) "The appearance and disappearance of Worlds is like a regular tidal ebb of flux and reflux."

This second assertion of the Secret Doctrine is the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common, so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see one of the absolutely fundamental laws of the universe.

The second proposition is the Law of Cycles which says that all aggregates manifest in cycles. All schools of Buddhism teach that existence is cyclic. Probably the best known description in Tibetan Buddhism is the Wheel of the Law shown below (from Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Joyful Path of Good Fortune, Tharpa, originally published in 1990).

THIRD PROPOSITION

The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over-Soul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul -- a spark of the former -- through the Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and Karmic law, during the whole term. In other words, no purely spiritual Buddhi (divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth principle, -- or the OVER-SOUL, -- has (a) passed through every elemental form of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and (b) acquired individuality, first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani-Buddha). The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and reincarnations.

The third proposition is the Law of Identity, which states that everyone is equal. Actually, it implies much more than that. Blavatsky taught the Doctrine of Monads, as opposed to the Buddhist doctrine of mind-streams or mental continuums. As long as we interpret the term monad loosely, we can see that these are two ways of looking at the same thing. The term mind-stream is deliberately used in Buddhism to avoid the false view of a belief in an inherently existing self. The term monad implies a reality that, in the Buddhist view, does not exist and is, in fact, the chief cause of our cycling in samsara. The Doctrine of Monads says that all things are essentially monadic, that aggregates themselves are simply compositions of countless monads. Each is a "ray" from the divine Monad, and since all divine Monads are identical, their rays are essentially identical as well. Thus the essential nature of all things is equal.

According to Tsong-kha-pa, "as long as you operate under the influence of the conception of a self, you will accumulate karma that will impel you into cyclic rebirth." (The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment, Snow Lion, 2000, p 304)

The Doctrine of Monads is strongly opposed in the Madhyamika-Prasangika school, where monads are called "partless particles." The Vaibhasikas and some Sautrantikas teach that the core of existence lies in tiny subtle partless particles which "are for them the principle units of impermanent physical entities, the "building blocks" for gross objects. Hypothetically, these particles are partless because they are too minute to be physically subdivided." (Cozort, Unique Tenets of the Middle Way Consequence School, Snow Lion, 1998, p123). Physically, these partless particles could be atoms or even quarks, but they are used as basic building blocks for all aggregates in the same way that Theosophy uses the term monads. The idea of a basic building block was thoroughly rejected by Tsong-kha-pa:

"Thus if identifiable existence (of anything) were possible in the ultimate, it would have to stand exclusive and isolated in its own essence, as something apart from the actualities of cause, condition, and aggregation. Hence, such things as elements and their composites, aggregates of eight kinds of atoms, and mind and mental functions, without mutual dependence, would not exist at all. Thus all things which arise from combinations of causes and conditions and which cannot exist apart from them must be stated to be ultimately and substantially inexistent." (Tzong-kha-pa in his Essence of True Eloquence, trans by Thurman in The Central Philosophy of Tibet, 1984, Princeton University Press)

According to Tzong-Kha-pa, as quoted above, monadic rays which depend on their parent monads are absent of inherent existence. Even the divine Monads themselves, which are said to be sparks from the fire of divinity, depend on divinity and thus lack inherent existence. Tzong-kha-pa would likely say that Blavatsky's monads have only a conditional existence which is imputed by the mind.

"The conception that a thing is a phenomenon [other than a person] is established as [its own] reality is said to be the ignorance that is the root of cyclic existence. Since the ignorance that is the conception of a self of persons arises from the conception of a self of phenomena, the twelve [links of dependent arising] are described as arising from it.

In order to overcome this ignorance, it must be seen that [phenomena] are empty of how they are conceived by that [conception of inherent existence] and it must be seen that self [that is, inherent existence] conceived in this way does not exist." (Tzong-kha-pa in his Illumination of Thought, trans. by Hopkins and Klein in Path to the Middle, 1994, SUNY press)

Tzong-kha-pa clearly rejects the Theosophical teaching that we are all eternal pilgrims, at least in the sense that such pilgrims have inherent existence. Anything that has inherent existence, or that exists from its own side, cannot change with time.

One of the yoga practices that Tibetan practitioners of Mahamudra undertake (the third of four yoga stages) is called the Yoga of One Flavor which has results that vary according to the three levels of practitioners:

1. On the lower level of the yoga of one flavor the meditator will achieve the blend of samsara and nirvana.

2. On its average level he will destroy the roots of duality.

3. On its great level he will blend [the perceptions] of all phenomena into the state of evenness. (Namgyal, trans. by Lhalungpa, Mahamudra: The Quintessence of Mind and Meditation, 1986, Shambala)

H.H. the Dali Lama says of this yogic stage that it is "the single taste, when we gain realization of appearances and mind being of a single taste." (H.H. the Dali Lama & Berzin, The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra, 1997, Snow Lion, p 346). This stage of the yogic process of Mahamudra, the Great Symbol, suggests a direct yogic perception of Blavatsky's third proposition.

"The perfect buddhakaya is all-embracing,suchness cannot be differentiated, and all beings have the disposition. Thus they always have buddha nature" (from Buddha Nature: The Mahayana Uttaratantra Shastra, 2000, Snow Lion)

RECONCILIATION

The only way to reconcile the views of Blavatsky and Tzong-kha-pa is to view each monadic pilgrim as a conventional truth. Blavatsky describes two states of this pilgrim as the personality and the individuality suggesting that the former is a conventional truth while the latter is an ultimate truth. According to Tzong-kha-pa, the individuality or Ego or Higher Self or atma-buddhi, however we want to name this pilgrim, is also a conventional truth.

Return