Paul Brunton's legacy: a follow up story

[Guest guest]

FROM: NDS August 6,2001

 

ERIC BLACKSTEAD

 

Jerry and Friends, 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. 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, a controversial story about the first strides of

Tibetan Tantric Buddhism in America and the real meaning of "Refuge",

and I thought you might like to hear it. yours in the bonds, eric

~~~

Friends,Regretably, I left an important fact out of my previous story,

which is that Anthony died only 2 days after commending his students

and friends into the spiritual care of HH the Dalai Lama. It seemed a

moving synchronicity.yours in the bonds,eric

[Guest guest]

Of course, this was all according to the son, but he seemed

quite credible to me. lt was a disappointment, in that l read and

loved some of Brunton's books in my early days, including his SEARCH

IN SECRET INDIA, which was my intro to Ramana. l lent the books to a

friend to read -- she loves Brunton, and l could never bring myself

to tell her about the *dirt*.

Another friend of mine here is an ardent and longtime devotee

of Meher Baba. ln SEARCH IN SECRET INDIA Brunton completely trashes

MB as a fraud, based on his experiences with him. l could never bring

myself to tell my other friend about this one either. Brunton trashes

MB, the son of the disciple trashes Brunton, and on it goes ....

jerry

jerry