Theses to Agvan Dorzhiev’s Report at the First International Buddhist Exhibition Expected in 1927 in Leningrad

Abstract

The publication presents for the first time the B. Baradin’s theses to A. Dorzhiev’s lecture that was supposed to be delivered at the international Buddhist exhibition in Leningrad in 1927. A. Dorzhiev was a famous Buryat lama who received the academic title of Geshe (the highest philosophical academic degree in the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism) upon completion of his philosophical education in the monasteries of Mongolia and Tibet. After 1918, he was involved in organizational issues of the Buddhist Sangha in Russia. B. Baradin was an academic scientist and public figure, a professor at St. Petersburg University, and the author of studies on the history and teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. After the revolution of 1917, he began working in Buryatia in various administrative positions, focusing on the organization of the scientific and cultural life of the Republic. Their main idea is that the modern world consists of the two equal parts - East and West, unification of which is possible and even necessary for the further development of humanity. The system-forming teaching of the East is Buddhism; and the lecture hold on those aspects of Buddhist philosophy that could be compared with the teachings of the West. Four points are highlighted: 1) Buddhism is comparable to Darwin’s theory in that both consider humans in the context of all living beings in an evolutionary manner; 2) Buddhism, like science, accepts the determinism principle; 3) the Buddhist concept of shunya is similar to the relativistic principles of physics; and 4) the system of Buddhist psychotechniques is similar to the theory of reflexology. B. Baradin concludes that Indo-Buddhist culture and European culture are complementary and their rapprochement will bring us closer to a truly universal culture. The theses mentioned here are, apparently, the first systematic exposition of the views of neo-Buddhists-renewalists on the points of convergence between Buddhist and Western cultures.