The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

156 Pages·1967·15.04 MB·English

by  Alexandra David-Neel

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Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2017 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/secretoralteachiOOdavi_0

The Secret Oral Teachings
in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
Alexandra David-Neel
and
Lama Yongden
Translated by
Capt. H. N. M. Hardy
Foreword by Alan Watts
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS
San Francisco
©1967 by Alexandra David-Neel
CITY LIGHTS BOOKS are edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and
Nancy J. Peters and published atijt|ie City Lights Bookstore,
261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133.
The Secret Oral Teachings
in Tibetan Buddhist Sects
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FOREWORD
by Alan Watts
For several years I have referred to this, hitherto, rare and
inaccessible work as the “I-told-you-so-book,” because it
has often been implied that I have invented my ex-
planations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying
its authentic teachings. Mme. Alexandra David-Neel
is a Frenchwoman now (in 1967) one hundred years
old who has travelled and studied extensively in Tibet,
who adopted the lately deceased Lama Yongden as her
son, and who has recorded her experiences m such ro-
mantically entitled works as Initiations and Initiates
in Tibet and Mystics and Magicians in Tibet, both of
which first appeared in English translation in 1931.
The present volume has a similarly “esoteric” title, rem-
iniscent of the fantasies of fd. P. Blavatskv, Talbot
Mundy, James Hilton, and “Lobsang Rampa,” who—
with a very superficial knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism—
have given us an image of Tibet as the secret stronghold
of the most mysterious and adept masters of the occult
and magical sciences, depicting the high-ranking Bud-
dhist monks, or lamas, as super-tedmicians in the exer-
cise of psychic powers far heyond the reach of ordinary
mortals.
Yet, despite the occultist flavor of its title. The
Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects is
the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth ex-
planation of Mahayana Buddhism which has thus far
been written. Specifically, it is a wonderfully lucid
account of the Madhyamika (or “middle-way”) School
of Buddhism, a method of meditation and enlightenment
which was worked out sometime between 150 and
250 A.D. by the great Indian sage and pandit, Nagar-
juna. More detailed and scholarly studies of this method
may be found in T. R. V. Murti’s Central Philosophy of
Buddhism (Allen and Unwin, London, 1955) and in
Edward Conze’s marvellous translations of the Prajna-
paramixa literature, published by the Buddhist Society
of London. Mme. David-Neel, however, writes for the
non-academic student who wants simply to practice