Lohans, the Solitary Adepts of China

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 10 pages

Two connected subjects. The first is Tsong-kha-pa, founder of the Gelug-pa order, held here to have been an incarnation of Amita-Buddha himself and not, as Parsi scholars alleged, of one of the celestial Dhyanis said to have been created by Shakyamuni after his passing into Nirvana. He gave the signs by which the presence of one of the twenty-five Bodhisattvas or of the celestial Buddhas in a human body may be recognised, and strictly forbade necromancy — which split the Lamas, the malcontents allying themselves with the aboriginal Böns against the reformed Lamaism. Blavatsky notes the weight European orientalists give the Dalai Lamas of Lhasa against their ignorance of the Tda-shu or Teshu Lamas, who began the hierarchical series of Buddha-incarnations.

The second is the Lohans, the solitary adepts of China, described as the mellifluous disciples of Tathagata. The works of the orientalists are full of direct landmarks of Arhats possessed of thaumaturgic powers, she observes, but speak of them with unconcealed scorn. Her explanation for the disappearance of the Arhats from India after the persecution of Buddhism began is that their vows forbade retaliation, so they left for China, Tibet and Japan — a rehearsal, she says, of dramas enacted centuries later in Christendom. The rule of the Supreme Degree is stated plainly: whoever revealed even the smallest of the secrets entrusted to him had to die, and so did the man who received the confidence.

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