Quest Magazine

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Buddhist Wisdom

By Gill Farrer-Halls
Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, Quest Books, 2000. Hardback, 192 pages.

This splendid volume is surely not an encyclopedia in the modern sense of the word, for there are no alphabetized entries or technical terms of Buddhist thought. Rather, it is a beautifully illustrated introduction to the essential features of Buddhism in its Theravadin, Tibetan, and Zen forms and to the practice of that spiritual tradition today.

As an introduction, it is not meant for students of Buddhist- philosophy—technical vocabulary is kept at a minimum. So, too, is the discussion of the bewildering variety of Buddhist seers that have arisen over the course of the tradition's long history. Essentially, the work is for lay people wishing to grasp the fundamental teachings, values, and methods of Buddhism without undue emphasis upon Sanskrit vocabulary or historical narrative. In this respect, the volume achieves its purpose admirably. It is a very good place to begin one's acquaintance with South and East Asia's most dominant spiritual tradition.

More advanced students will, of course, find many gaps in the account. Little is said, for instance, about Pure Land (qing tu) Buddhism, a form that has always been far more popular in China and Japan than Ch'an (Zen). Tantricism is mentioned in connection with Tibet but is hardly explained adequately. Madhyamika philosophy, which lies at the root of Mahayana, does not even appear in the index. The reader who has studied Buddhism already will sense a tendency on the part of the author to homogenize the various schools and traditions until Theravada, Zen, and Tibetan forms seem to be almost the same.

Nevertheless, for the beginner this is a more than adequate place to start, for it is written with a quiet serenity and faith that are quite compelling. The emphasis upon techniques of meditation rather than doctrine is quite helpful. The illustrations are both beautiful and informative.

It is, in a word, an upaya, an excellent expedient device to start one on the path. After the reader has absorbed all that has been said here, it will be time to amplify and more carefully nuance the understanding. Buddhism knows and teaches that not everything can be said at the beginning. The Buddhist path entails constant revision and reinterpretation. This work is an excellent starting point for a life's journey.

-JAY G. WILLIAMS

May/June 2003

In Search of the Unitive Vision: Letters of Sri Madhava Ashish to an American Businessman 1978-1997

Comp. Seymour B. Ginsburg
 Boca Raton, FL: New Paradigm Books, 2001. Paperback, x + 292 pages.

This book should engage anyone interested in the spirituality of Advaita or the Gurdjieff Work or Theosophy; and if one is interested in more than one of these, then the book is required reading.

Seymour Ginsburg is a successful businessman who in 1978 went on a private visit to India, a visit that became a spiritual journey for him. There he met Sri Madhava Ashish (born as Alexander Phipps in Scotland), who had taken over the direction of the Mirtola ashram near Almora in 1965, after the death of Sri Krishna Prem (born as Ronald Nixon in England), whom he had adopted as his guru in 1946. Madhava Ashish was a very wise man, often speaking from the level of consciousness established in a unitive vision:

In the unitive vision the identity of the individual with the universal is experienced, and it is perceived that this identity encompasses all beings as an eternally valid fact. It has not come into being with the seer's attainment to the vision, but simply is. What comes into being, or, more truly, is developed in the seer, is the seer's capacity to perceive the identity. In this context it seems meaningless to say that any individual man ever attains anything. (165)

Madhava Ashish told Ginsburg, "If you want to pursue in a Western way the path that we follow here at Mirtola, you need to study and work with the Gurdjieffian teaching" (13-14). Ginsburg did exactly that and cofounded the Gurdjicff Institute of Florida. Ginsburg visited Madhava Ashish regularly until the latter's death in 1997. It was the persistence and tenacity of Ginsburg that elicited a lot of letters from Madhava Ashish in response to his questions. Those are the letters presented in this volume, along with a few splendid and wonderful articles written by Madhava Ashish, two of them originally published in the American Theosophist.

Since both the authors—Madhava Ashish in particular and Seymour Ginsburg to some extent--are culturally and psychologically attuned to an integration of both the Eastern and the Western sensibilities in spiritual matters, it is good to recall a relevant aphorism of Gurdjieff "Take the understanding of the East and the knowledge of the West- and then seek." This advice seems simple on the surface, but I wonder how the pupils of the Gurdjieff Work, who are almost exclusively Westerners, would "take" the understanding of the East? From books? By apprenticeship with Eastern gurus? By imbibing the Eastern attitude by living in the East? Madhava Ashish certainly represents a striking example of a person who combined the understanding of the East and knowledge of the West. We need to be grateful to Ginsburg for persisting in his questioning, for gathering and sorting through the responses of Madhava Ashish, and for publishing them. These responses, always full of insight and sometimes wry humor, throw an impartial light on Theosophy, the Gurdjieff Work, and Indian spirituality.

-RAVI RAVINDRA

May/June 2003

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

By Jean-Yves Leloup
Trans. Joseph Rowe.Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions International, 2002. Paperback, 178 pages.

At the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-first century, we are experiencing a Gnostic renaissance that might represent a parallel to the Hermetic-Humanistic Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Every year we find that the literature on this subject has grown by way of the publication of new books often containing exciting new translations of important Gnostic texts.

Only fifty years ago it was generally believed that Gnosticism was extinct and thus could be approached only historically. Today we know that this is not the case. In Iraq and Iran there lives a substantial religious minority known as the Mandaeans (from the word manda denoting Gnosis), ancient Semitic Gnostics who have survived since the early centuries of the Christian era. Until quite recently, the only available literature describing these fascinating folk were the scholarly and hard-to-obtain tomes of the pioneer researcher, Lady Ethel Stefana Drower, who in the first half of the twentieth century befriended members of the Mandaean community and described their beliefs, customs, and scriptures.

Edmondo Lupieri, an Italian university professor of the history of Christianity, has presented us with a singularly informative introduction to Mandaeanism. In addition to the kind of material that was familiar to some of us by way of the books of Lady Drower, Lupieri discloses many valuable accounts of the prolonged interaction of the Mandaeans with Western Christianity, primarily Italian missionaries, who documented their experiences with the Mandaeans. Many of these documents (beginning with chronicles written by Rocoldo da Montecroce, a thirteenth century monk) are in the archives of the Vatican. In addition to these unique historical sources, Lupieri presents much contemporary information, including the visit of a Mandaean delegation to the Vatican in 1990 and the presence of Mandaean priests at a noted conference dealing with their religion in Boston in June, 1999.

Lupieri's book is arguably the best work ever published on this remarkable remnant of ancient Gnosticism. The book is enriched by an extensive anthology of translated Mandaean texts in addition to the detailed historical study that constitutes its first part. Esoteric students need to keep in mind that the Mandaeans are the most likely source of the Gnostic connections of the medieval Knights Templar, and thus they may very well be the mysterious "Christians of Saint John" referred to in Templar and Masonic lore. Students of the Gnostic tradition ought" to feel grateful for this readable and insightful introduction to an important branch of the ancient, but still extant, Gnostic movement.

The most renowned of all Gnostic scriptures is the treatise known as Pistis Sophia, contained in the Askew Codex, which turned up mysteriously in London toward the end of the eighteenth century. Several scholars have prepared translations of this remarkable text, not the least of whom was the Theosophist, G. R. S. Mead, whose fine translation, published in the last years of the nineteenth century remains the most accessible of all translations.

The myth of Sophia, "Our Lady Wisdom," is one of the most important myths of the Gnostic tradition. It tells the story of a feminine emanation of the Deity, who at a certain point in her career falls from her high throne and becomes subject to numerous afflictions and indignities until she is rescued and restored to her original place of glory. Contemporary writers on the feminine principle, including students of C. G. Jung, have often referred to Sophia as a mythic representative of the fate and predicament of the human soul in general and of the feminine psyche in particular.

Like so many scriptures of Gnostic provenance, the Pistis Sophia is a complex work, filled with repetitious passages, difficult sentence structure, and imagery that may appear incomprehensible to one not familiar with Gnostic scriptures. Now, for the first time, a highly skilled translator has given us a version of this treatise that is simplified and freed from some of its obscurities, while retaining its essential content and poetic form. Violet MacDermot is one of the most insightful and sympathetic contemporary scholars of Gnostic literature. Her earlier monumental translations of several codices are well known. Trained as a medical doctor, she became an Egyptologist and scholar of Coptic texts. In many ways this latest work is her finest gift to her readers.

One of the historically significant discoveries in Gnostic studies was the Akhmim Codex, which in the latter part of the nineteenth century came to repose in the Berlin Museum. This work has received less attention than the Pistis Sophia, perhaps because it is less voluminous, although it contains three separate treatises. Two of these, The Gospel of Mary and The Act of Peter have appeared in a fine new translation appended to the now classic work, The Nag Hammadi Library in English, edited by James Robinson (4th ed. 1996). Now a new and somewhat peculiar translation and treatment of the first of these treatises has appeared, under the title The Gospel of Mary Magdalene. The translation of the text is written in a style rather more cumbersome than the one in The Nag Hammadi Library. As to the commentaries, they are likely to bewilder anyone who has some familiarity with the content and especially the context of this scripture.

Beginning with Carl Schmidt's first treatment of this scripture in 1896, every authority has acknowledged that this is a Gnostic scripture. It would therefore appear to be obvious that any interpretation of the text ought to take into account the Gnostic context of the material. Such, however, is not the case when it comes to this work by Jean-Yves Leloup. The commentaries attached to the translated passages reflect much modern theological and philosophical speculative thought, which appears to be projected onto an ancient Gnostic text, where it obviously is out of place. Nowhere do the commentaries even intimate the Gnostic spiritual ambience of the scripture in question. In fact this treatment comes very close to falsifying its intent. This circumstance is particularly tragic in view of the increasing popularity in literature of the figure of Mary Magdalene and of her relationship to Jesus. A number of years ago, the sensational book Holy Blood, Holy Grail convinced many naïve readers of the unsubstantiated story of Mary Magdalene's children sired by Jesus. Now we find ourselves confronted with a Jesus and a Mary Magdalene harnessed to modern and post-modern agendas.

The book is further rendered suspect by the content and more particularly by the bibliography in the lengthy preface by David Tresemer and Laura-Lee Canon. This bibliography lists, along with a few reputable works, several revisionist fantasies masquerading as history, mainly inspired by the "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" theories, which are characterized as "extremely well researched." No more needs to be said.

-STEPHAN A. HOELLER

May/June 2003

Spirit and Art: Pictures of the Transformation of Consciousness

By Van James
Great Barrington, MA: Anthroposophic Press, 2001, Paperback, xii + 267 pages.

According to Van James, art is something like a midwife, helping, to bring into the world of sense perception "our experience of the invisible," Spirit and Art is a detailed, richly illustrated examination of art's power to symbolize unseen spiritual processes and to reveal the evolution of human consciousness.

Ranging from the cave art and megalithic structures of prehistory to the postmodern world of Joseph Beuys's shamanic conceptual art, James explores the art and architecture of Europe, ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt, the Near and Far East, Africa, Australia, and the Americas. He includes chapters on sacred buildings, art and the initiatory practices of ancient mystery cults, and spiritual designs and symbols. Writing that artistic symbolism is an "initiatory revelation that opens a doorway into the secret realm of creation," James offers numerous crosscultural examples of images and structures designed to draw human beings deeper into the mystery of life: catacombs, mandalas, labyrinths, Native American sand paintings, Gothic cathedrals, pyramids, and Buddhist temples.

- James also discusses "Cosmic Script," simple linear and geometric images, such as dots, circles, crosses, zigzags, and triangles, occurring as spiritual forms across numerous cultures, especially in the petroglyphs of early humans. James tells us that these forms, attempts to represent supersensory forces, are related to phosphenes, "fleeting physiological images produced upon the mind's eye independently of external vision" that appear during the "first stages of a shamanic trance state."

-PAUL WINE

March/April 2003