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