A TRIBUTE TO ALLAN BENNETT

   _A_llan Bennett was an important figure in the early Buddhist movement in
   England at the beginning of the present century. Bennett wrote several books
   and many articles on Buddhism and related subjects, which were published in
   the _Buddhist Review_ and elsewhere. Bennett was one of the first Westerners
   to accept Buddhism as a sincere and serious practitioner. He was an
   extraordinary man who followed an extraordinary career and deserves to be
   remembered today, yet his work has been almost entirely forgotten, even by
   many Westerners who profess to adhere to the _Buddhadharma_. By all accounts
   Allan Bennett was a true man of power, who achieved a very high degree of
   spiritual attainment and earned the veneration of many religious adherents
   in Burma. Aleister Crowley called Bennett "a tremendous spiritual force" and
   "the noblest and gentlest soul that I have ever known," stating that his
   mind was "pure, piercing, and profound."

   _A_llan Bennett was born in London, England on December 8, 1872. His
   horoscope was put up for 7.23 a.m. L.M.T. by the photographer, Alvin Langdon
   Coburn. Allan's father, an engineer, died during his childhood, and he was
   raised a strict Roman Catholic by his mother. Allan's interest in occult
   studies seems to have taken root at an early age. It is reported that the
   child, having heard that the devil could be evoked by reciting the Lord's
   Prayer backwards, proceeded to try the experiment in the back garden, and
   something happened which frightened him. Allan rejected Christianity at the
   age of 16, upon learning the facts of biological reproduction from some
   schoolboys. The innocent, who still believed that babies were brought to
   earth by angels, was so shocked that he rejected monotheism on the spot,
   concluding that only a devil could have invented such a repulsive means of
   procreation! It is also reported that the young man, at the age of 18,
   spontaneously experienced the trance state known as _Shivadarshana_, in
   which the universe is annihilated in an experience of blissful communion
   with Shiva, the Hindu god of Yoga; this experience determined his ultimate
   vocation, and he resolved to dedicate his life to recapturing this ecstatic
   state.

   _B_ennett trained as a professional chemist, and was employed by a Dr.
   Bernard Dyer, Analytical and Consulting Chemist, in London in 1894, in the
   same year in which he was invited to participate in a scientific expedition
   to Africa, which he declined. Bennett was also very knowledgeable in
   electricity. However, chronic ill health forced him into unemployment. He
   spent most of his adult life in a terrible poverty, living in the Southwark
   or Lambeth district, a tenement slum south of the Thames. Bennett suffered
   from severe chronic asthma, from which his only recourse was to resort to a
   series of more or less continuous administrations of opium, cocaine,
   morphine, and chloroform, alternating between these drugs at monthly
   intervals, with brief respites when his body was so weakened that the
   symptoms abated. Yet Bennett pursued his spiritual and occult studies with
   sincere and intense devotion. At first Bennett was attracted to the study of
   Western occultism. He joined the most important occult order of his day, the
   Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which included the renowned poet William
   Butler Yeats, in February 1894, taking the motto "Voco" (Latin, "I call").
   Bennett subsequently attained the grade of Minor Adept in May 1895, taking
   the motto "Iehi Aour," the Hebrew for "Let there be light!" Bennett quickly
   attained a reputation as a powerful magus and Cabalist, second only to S. L.
   M. Mathers, the Order's chief. Bennett also belonged to the Esoteric Section
   of the Theosophical Society, an elite group who met with Mme. H. P.
   Blavatsky in private. The story is told of Bennett producing a crystal
   lustre in response to a Theosophist's expressing doubt concerning the power
   of the blasting rod; it took the incredulous individual fourteen hours to
   recover his senses! Bennett, with some fellow G.D. Adepts, is also reputed
   to have evoked the spirit of Mercury to visible appearance.

   _B_ennett met the poet, Aleister Crowley, in the spring of 1899, and was
   invited by Crowley to live with him in his flat at 67/69 Chancery Lane,
   where the two men studied Scientific Illuminism and engaged in various
   courses of practical occult experimentation which resulted in tangible
   physical results. This association subsequently caused Bennett some grief
   when he was written up in the gutter press in the 1920s as a "rascally sham
   Buddhist monk," and accused (probably falsely) of homosexuality. Both men
   were very interested in the original Way which underlies all Ways, now
   generally called "shamanism," including the universal theme (subsequently
   developed by Dr. Carl Gustav Jung in his theory of the "archetype") which is
   described in the following quotation by Crowley:

       "Through the ages we found this one constant story. Stripped of its
      local and chronological accidents, it usually came to this--the writ
     er would tell of a young man, a seeker after the Hidden Wisdom, who,
     in one circumstance or another, meets an adept; who, after sundry ord
     eals, obtains from the said adept, for good or ill, a certain mysteri
     ous drug or potion, with the result (at last) of opening the gate of
     the Other-world."

   _N_o doubt Bennett's need for drugs to control his asthma sparked this
   interest. He was also interested in the hallucinogenic plant, _Dictamnus
   fraxinella alba_, for its reputed capacity to induce clairvoyant visions. In
   this Crowley and Bennett anticipated the discovery of the significance of
   psychedelics by several decades. Both Bennett and Crowley were especially
   interested in applying the scientific method to occult studies and the
   practical pursuit of illumination or enlightenment.

   _I_n addition to his occult interests Bennett was thoroughly acquainted with
   the classics of Hindu and Buddhist mysticism, which were just beginning to
   be translated into English in such massive scholarly anthologies as Max
   Muller's _Sacred Books of the East_ and _Sacred Books of the Buddhists_
   series'. Bennett's devotion to Shaivite Yoga caused a major row with S. L.
   M. Mathers, who intensely disliked Orientalism. Mathers is said to have
   threatened Bennett on this account with a gun. Bennett's life was only
   saved, apparently, by the intervention of Moina Mathers, Mather's wife and
   sister of the philosopher, Henri Bergson.

   _T_he climate of England is not known for its friendliness to asthmatics,
   and Bennett's increasing ill health caused his friends to fear for his life.
   Crowley raised one hundred pounds to send Bennett to better climes, and
   early in 1900 he set sail for Ceylon. Here he served as private tutor to the
   sons of the Hon. P. Ramanathan, Solicitor-General of Ceylon, in Cinnamon
   Gardens, Colombo. In return, as Sri Parananda, Ramanathan tutored Bennett in
   the practice of Yoga. Subsequently Bennett shared a house in Kandy with
   Crowley, whom he instructed in Yoga. Bennett's Yogic attainments were
   impressive. He was able to meditate for days at a time in _Padmasana_, the
   so-called "lotus posture," which is extremely difficult to master. Crowley
   records one incident in which Bennett did not touch his food for three days.
   Concerned, Crowley entered Bennett's room, where he found him, still
   entranced and crosslegged, in a corner of the room, upside down! Crowley
   concluded that the only possible explanation of this phenomenon is that
   Bennett actually levitated, lost his equilibrium, slid sideways, and ended
   up in this position. Crowley also records that Bennett fed the leeches every
   morning with his own blood, and could control their ability to penetrate his
   skin by controlling his breathing, or vital _prana_. His committment to
   _ahimsa_, "harmlessness," was so profound that he refused an offer of
   employment as manager of a coconut plantation on the ground that he would be
   required to order the destruction of vermin. It is also reported that
   Bennett, coming across a krait, a very dangerous snake, in his path, instead
   of killing or avoiding it, preached to it the Noble Truths of the Buddha,
   until it crawled away, abased by the holy man.

   _I_t was at this time that Bennett became increasingly attracted to the
   teachings of the _Buddhadharma_. Dissatisfied with the yogic attainments of
   _dhyana_ and _samadhi_, Bennett came to the conclusion that these ecstatic
   states were fundamentally distractions from the ultimate state of _nibbana_
   (nirvana), which is a state of perfect emptiness, indifference, and
   compassion. About 1901 he travelled to Akyab on the west coast of Burma to
   enter the Buddhist monastery of Lamma Syadaw Kyoung. Here he took the motto
   Bhikkhu Ananda Metteya, as which he became well known to the readers of the
   _Buddhist Review_. Bennett acted as treasurer of the monastery and was
   subsequently promoted to _syadaw_. Here he received the veneration of many
   devout Buddhists and acquired a reputation as a holy man of the first water.
   About this time he moved to Rangoon.

   _B_ennett's devotion to the Vinaya, the rules of discipline of the Buddhist
   _sangha_, or order, caused his health to deteriorate. Later Bennett led the
   first Buddhist mission to the West, and became a founding member of the
   Buddhist Brotherhood of the West, but returning to England caused his health
   to deteriorate still further. When he tried to return to Burma his health
   was so bad that he was refused passage. Apparently Bennett's interest in the
   occultism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn also revived about this
   time, causing him to lose many of his Buddhist friends and allies. Bennett
   died young in England shortly thereafter, leaving behind a legacy of books
   and articles and the seed of what would become the Theravada Buddhist
   movement in the West. It is reputed that at the end his understanding had
   passed from the formula of the Black to that of the Yellow School.