On Feb 10, 2008, at 4:56 PM, kaligrafr wrote:
> Do you, Felicia, have any more information about what Yorke's being an
> *emissary* involved? Was he doing something for the Dalai Lama
> personally?
> Or was he doing something for the Tibetan government in exile?
Is there a demarcation/distinction between the Tibetan government in
exile and the Dalai Lama as religious leader or private citizen?
Perhaps only for the members of the Dalai Lama's immediate household?
Yorke's primary interest was in making Buddhist teachings accessible to
Western readers. Toward that end, he gave editorial suggestions.
Beyond that, only his personal papers, owned by his family, might tell
us the extent of his emissary work and, thus far, his family has
declined inquiries of this nature.
By 1962 (and possibly earlier), Gerald Yorke sourced manuscripts on
India, Buddhism, and esoteric religion for Rider, Allen & Unwin Publ.
Though some Thelemites seem to think so, he was not the founder of the
Buddhist Society in London. It was founded in 1924 as
an extension of the Theosophical Society and distanced itself therefrom
shortly after the Krishnamurti debacle. Gerald Yorke did, however,
attend the Summer School listening to visiting speakers/teachers,
always seeking publishable material. Among many other texts, Yorke is
responsible for the publication of _Light on Yoga_ by B.K.S. Iyengar.
In his preface to his translation of Nagarjuna's Precious Garland,
Jeffrey Hopkins of the University
of Virginia states this:
"My original impetus to translate the poem came from attending a series
of lectures on Nagarjuna's Six Collections
of Reasoning by His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,
in Dharamsala, India, in
May of 1972. After finishing a first draft, I orally re-translated the
English into Tibetan for verification
and correction by Lati Rinpoche, a senior lama-scholar who himself does
not speak English. I also
worked with Professor Anne Klein and finally Gerald Yorke to improve
the presentation."
In 2004, Tim Cummings wrote a piece for The Guardian in which he stated
that Yorke "almost single-handedly" brought Tibetan Buddhism to the
west. I'm not certain what he meant by that statement. Mr. Cummings
also seems to believe that Yorke was Aleister Crowley's secretary.
Since the latter statement is highly inaccurate, the former may be
without merit, as well.
Felicia Swayne-Heidrick
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