A rather poignant letter from Allan Bennett to Robert Felkin dated March 1900. Writing from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) he announces his inention to seek initiation as a Buddhist monk and retire from the world.
Bennett (1872-1923) was a member of the Golden Dawn from around 1894, moving from the Outer to the Inner Order in just over a year. He took the motto “Iehi Aour” - Let there be Light.
Probably best known through the descriptions of him in various works by his friend Aleister Crowley, who regarded him somewhat with awe, Bennett was a serious occultist. Having abandoned the Catholic faith of his upbringing he embarked on a long journey, seeking truth and enlightenment in various paths, from Theosophy, to Hindu philosophy, the Hermetic magic of the Golden Dawn, to Theravada Buddhism.
Bennett was a very significant figure in western Buddhism. After his ordination as a monk in Burma in 1902, taking the name Ananda Metteyya, Bennett became insturmental in bringing the teachings of Buddhism to the west. The first official Buddhist mission began in 1908, when he and a small group of laymen arrived in England. He gave public lectures and wrote articles for “The Buddhist Review” which he also edited. Always in poor health, having severe asthma from childhood, Bennett died at the relatively young age of 50, and is buried in Morden Cemetery, south London.
I have transcribed the letter below the photographs. Interesting to note that Bennett had intended to start “an occult society on a Christian basis” before becoming a Buddhist. He also asks Felkin for medical advice, but that half-sheet of the letter is missing.
There is a good article about Bennett's fascinating life here.
Dr. Robert Felkin here - an extraordinary man, whose life and work really does deserver to be know more widely.
For anything to do with the life and work of Aleister Crowley, I can highly recommend Richard Kaczynski;s scholarly and very readable Perdurabo – The Life of Aleister Crowley
Deva-giri-vihara near Matana
(Better address me Post Restante Colombo) 4th Visakha, 2443)
Christian Era, 18th Mar ‘00
My dearest P.A. and F. R.,
By the time this reaches you, you will have twice heard of me since my retirement from the world, thro’ C. M. J. and V. N. And you must let them have the account of my news herein. I have just got from P.C. re renewed rows at 62 I deeply grieve to hear of these for I know how they will have annoyed you both, and V.N.: - as I remember they did myself in the old days, when the order was all-in-all to me, those days when my foolish vanity presently led me to suppose that true occultism and worldly politics could have any common basis. For that error and some others, I paid terribly: but like all failings and errors, they only existed to teach a new necessary lesson: that worldly ambition, be it of the most well-seeming kind, cannot co-exist with Right Progress upon this very difficult path we are all seeking to tread.
I have so much of the element of Fire in me that it is very difficult to realise in my life what I grasp intellectually; - that one has indeed to become as a little child in this life which we have chosen, and learn to be humble learners devoid of any worldly ambition. I am hoping that my latest step, which cuts me off utterly (whilst yet in the East), from my own race and makes me on the level with the native, a social pariah, may teach me this in absolute reality.
I have now been here in this retired monastery for a little over a fortnight; and am at present feeling both old and unhappy. The latter because I shall have to leave this place and these people, which and some I like, as I cannot make enough progress in my study of Pali here; and I must learn quickly: - far quicker than I seem to have energy to study nowadays: - for I have arranged and definitely decided to be admitted to the Order on my twenty-eighth birthday – next 8th December. For my own part I should like nothing better that to now retire for all of my life, in some quiet place like this and devote my life to the Forty Two Mystic Meditations of my Religion, until I could enter at will into the Four High States: Infinite Love, Infinite Compassion, Infinite Sympathy with Other’s Joy and Infinite Indifference to one’s own pain or pleasure: until I could pass from the Four First Trances into those reserved only for the Arahans; the Perception that Consciousness was Infinity of Space, the Perception of the Infinity of Thought; the Unity of the Consciousness with the Idea of the Infinity of Non-Existence, even to the Niritta Samapatti, the highest of the trances possible to mortals. The trance of Cessation: when all ideas of consciousness in earth-terms has ceased, and the thinker has passed beyond even the Fourth High Trance – that of the Perception neither of Conscious-Existence nor of Non-Conscious-Existence, and stands, utterly devoid of the Five Attachments that aroused by their joint action, the idea of a separate Egoity in him on the very Threshold of Nirvana, on the Further Shore of the Ocean of Being. But this best of lives is not for me, not yet, at all events. Perhaps when I am too old for other work: - but who knows? At Present, I shall, when Robed, be the only white man now in the Order; and here in the East the white skin (alas!) counts for as much in authority and in respect, that I must spend years in preaching to these and other Buddhists peoples their own religion, then perhaps come to Europe to found the Order in London and Paris and then, perhaps, may be allowed to return to this beautiful, mystic, East, and realise in my very consciousness the Three Characteristics of Existence: Transition, Sorrow mending and absence of a true Egoity.
Now that I look over this letter, it seems so uncommonly like a sermon that I am fain to apologise. But the more I learn I learn of Buddhism the more absolute does it appear as truth: even to the reason as a religion, devoid of the Supernatural, by Reason itself conducts us beyond the Natural World: - that is the Religion which appeals to me. I have no money – nor, probably, every shall again, as I cannot make for a present, but when you can get yourself a copy of Warren’s “Buddhism in Translation” and look on it as a present from me! I took with me the copy belonging to the G.D: which I will presently return, but I would like for you to have a copy of your own. But ah! My friends, I cannot tell you how different it is to read of the Teacher and His Law in sad, dark London, and here in the radiant East: - to hear of it from books, and from His own yellow-robed priests; who do not say “the teacher said” but “thus have I heard, the teacher says” and I cannot tell you how I wish that you two, and Jones, and all who have been kind and dear to me should be able to be with me here, and to share with me the deep and constant delight this country, and place, and teaching waken in me. In a letter of F.R.’s he asks concerning certain occult news. I said had intended to find him. This referred to an occult society on a Christian basis that I had intended to found on leaving England. Now that I intend to enter the Order and to lend all my forces to the Buddhist aspect of religion, I can hardly do this.. The half-sheet attached to this please tear off; - it is for F. R. alone, and only relates to my health – still far from good. I wonder when my body will be equal to the carrying-out of the aspirations of my mind? With love, and with all best wishes to you both and all my friends.
I remain
Yours ever
Allan
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