What Are the Books of Kiu-te?
- Details
- Published: Sunday, 22 May 2011 22:19
David Reigle – USA
[“What Are the Books of Kiu-te?” by David Reigle, was published in the High Country Theosophist 9.2 (Feb. 1994): 2-9, and reprinted in David and Nancy Reigle’s collection Blavatsky’s Secret Books: Twenty Years’ Research (San Diego, CA: Wizards Bookshelf, 1999), pp. 43-52, from which it is reproduced here, with slight modifications for our house style.]
The books of Kiu-te, as most Theosophists know, are said to be the source from which the Stanzas of Dzyan in The Secret Doctrine were translated. We are told that besides the secret books of Kiu-te from which the Stanzas of Dzyan were translated, there exist public books of Kiu-te, found in the libraries of Tibetan monasteries.1 Yet these public books of Kiu-te remained, for all practical purposes, secret until 1981, when they were finally identified. Though the books are "public," in that they are found in the printed collection of Tibetan Buddhist scriptures, they continue to be regarded by Tibetan tradition as the Buddha's secret teachings, and therefore as having restricted access. Even now only a tiny fraction of them has been translated into English.