Paul Brunton, the Dali Lama and "Refuge"

[Guest guest]

I was answering a question this morning about a book critical of Paul

Brunton, written by the son of one of his first American disciples,

and found myself relating the following story. It's a little known

one that I personally witnessed and participated in, and that I think

suggests an interesting and very American perspective on the Guru

tradition, and the meaning of taking refuge. I doubt it could have

happened in any other country or at any other time than the recent

past. It is uniquely the product of the Tibetan diaspora and the

spiritual "greening" of America that seemed to take place

synchronistically together.

It's a true story. I hope you enjoy it.

I went to school at Cornell in Ithaca,NY and used to return to a small

upstate town near there, Trumansburg, to visit old musician-friends

who had elected to stay up in that area. An article in one of the

local newspapers drew my attention to a group of disciples of a man

named Anthony who had gone to study with Brunton before he died and

considered himself his major disciple and dharma heir. The group was

called "Wisdom's Golden Rod" and was a sizable number of people,

especially considering the outriders, of which I soon became one.

There were at least 70-80 regular members who got together one or

more nights a week for regular study and meditation in a little town

on Seneca Lake called Burdett. Under Anthony's tutilege they

conducted a cutting edge Astrology/spirituality class once a

week(which wasn't my kind of thing), and ran the 1st, and

subsequently only, systematic Plotinus Enneads study group I've ever

encountered( which very much was my kind of thing). These weekly

classes regularly involved 20-30 students a night throughout the

week. Not surprisingly, the academic community was well represented.

Taken as a group, Anthony and the Wisdom's Golden Rod participants

were the 1st and most powerful expression of a karmic group that I've

ever encountered. One got the impression that through countless

lifetimes these "friends and enemies" had worked out their mutual

karma until they had arrived at a peaceful reconciliation as the

members of Anthony's advaitic mystery school.

They wrote the Dalai Lama when they heard that he would be appearing

in America for, I think, the 2nd time, and invited him up to visit

them. They were then, as now, a non-affiliated sangha who prided

themselves on "taking the best from many traditions". They certainly

weren't Buddhists, from any perspective, although non-dualism was

their organizing overview.

Interestingly, and I think karmically, HH accepted their invitation

and came to visit them for 3 whole days. It was clear that he felt

very close to this American philosophic school, and he lavished

friendship and attention on all of them, but particularly on Anthony.

 

It was as a result of my "friend of 'Wisdom's Golden Rod' "status that

I was invited to participate in the 1st of two private darshans with

HH, for which I was, and am, very grateful to Anthony and his student

friends.

A few of Antony's followers became Buddhists and formed the core of

Ithaca's emerging Buddhist community, which now boasts a Tantric

ashram/community center with it's own on-site Buddhist teaching

monks. Currently they have some sort of official sanctioned symbiosis

with Cornell. Ithaca also boasts Snow Lion Publishers, America's

premiere Tibetan Buddhist publishing house. All of this started with

that initial 3 day visit from His Holiness to "Wisdom's Golden Rod",

a non Buddhist group which, ironically, counted Paul Brunton, an

American Hindu who was not a Hindu, as it's spiritual authority.

Anthony, who was an auto-didactic chain smoking intellectual,

contracted lung cancer, unfortunately, but probably inevitably, and

had one lung surgically removed. While laid up at the farmhouse he

shared with his wife next to the "Golden Rod" facilities, he secretly

got in touch with the Dalai Lama, who by coincidence was back in

America at that time visiting some of the Buddhist installations in

Vermont and,I think, performing the 1st or, perhaps, 2nd Kalachakra

Initiation ceremony in America. The Dalai Lama immediately agreed to

grant Anthony and his friends a private darshan and Anthony, although

clearly suffering, organized his troops and within a week delivered

them to an al fresco garden darshan at a devotee's farm or estate in

Vermont. After exchanging greetings and answering a few of the

student's questions, the Dalai Lama and Anthony, in full view of both

their parties, retired to a vine covered gazebo at the other end of

the garden, where they conferred in private.

At that time, Anthony revealed to His Holiness that he was dying and

hadn't long to make his final arrangements. He said that his first

concern was the welfare of his students, and he asked the Dalai Lama

if he would take them under his wing and offer them his influence and

protection. HH allowed as how he wasn't a practicing guru, and so

could not accept them as students, but that he would watch over them

and offer them his special attention.

The meeting was soon over, and Anthony and his friends headed back to

"Wisdom's Golden Rod" and Seneca Lake.

Anthony's revelation of his final conversation with His Holiness was

the occasion of a great emotional outpouring from his students, who

hadn't even begun to come to grips with the possiblity of his

approaching death. This moving catharsis was accompagnied by

intellectual confusion, doubt, and in some cases, outspoken dismay as

the group had never accepted any kind of

Buddhist affiliation, even an affiliation with the Dalai Lama. They

were in equal parts honored as well as shocked, and I think, more

than a little angry, with Anthony's unexpected gesture. At the same

time, all of them were understandably moved by the extreme concern he

had shown for their welfare. I think that the most enlightened among

them knew, that in Anthony's concern for their spiritual safety, he

had abandoned his pride and his hard won intellectual detachment and

simply turned to the highest spiritual authority and refuge that he

had could access. Also, I don't think that it's a coincidence that

His Holiness was an expert, if little known, Tantric philosopher, as

well as a great monastic leader and practitioner.

After Anthony's passing their was a great debate as to how to deal

respectfully with the Dalai Lama's kind, but to many of Anthony's

students, threatening, offer. But that's another story.

To honor their departed teacher, the senior membership of Wisdom's

Golden Rod undertook to edit and publish the whole corpus of

Brunton's voluminous journals and notes in a massive project that

took them 5 or more years to complete. This hard bound series is

called the Notebooks of Paul Brunton and it's published by Larson

Publications in Burdett, NY.

All this verbiage is far afield of my original simple answer to a

question about a book critical of Paul Brunton; but I thought that

it's a curious, wonderful and, in some circles, controversial story

about the first strides of Tantric Tibetan Buddhism in America and

the real meaning of Refuge, and I thought you might like to hear it.

yours in the bonds,

eric