One day we had an opportunity of talking with a Thibetian Lama for some time, and the things he told us about religion astounded us greatly. A brief explanation of the Christian doctrine, which we gave to him, seemed scarcely to surprise him; he even maintained that our views differed little from those of the Grand Lamas of Thibet. “You must not confound,” said he, “religious truths with the superstitions of the vulgar. The Tartars, poor, simple people, prostrate themselves before whatever they see; everything with them is Borhan. Lamas, prayer books, temples, Lamaseries, stones, heaps of bones,—’tis all the same to them; down they go on their knees, crying, Borhan! Borhan!” “But the Lamas themselves admit innumerable Borhans?” “Let me explain,” said our friend, smilingly; “there is but one sole Sovereign of the universe, the Creator of all things, alike without beginning and without end. In Dchagar (India) he bears the name of Buddha, in Thibet, that of Samtche Mitcheba (all Powerful Eternal); the Dcha-Mi (Chinese) call him Fo, and the Sok-Po-Mi (Tartars), Borhan.” “You say that Buddha is sole; in that case, who are the Talé-Lama of Lha-Ssa, the Bandchan of Djachi-Loumbo, the Tsong-Kaba of the Sifan, the Kaldan of Tolon-Noor, the Guison-Tamba of the Great Kouren, the Hobilgan of Blue Town, the Hotoktou of Peking, the Chaberon of the Tartar and Thibetian Lamaseries generally?” “They are all equally Buddha.” “Is Buddha visible?” “No, he is without a body; he is a spiritual substance.” “So, Buddha is sole, and yet there exist innumerable Buddhas; the Talé-Lama, and so on. Buddha is incorporeal; he cannot be seen, and yet the Talé-Lama, the Guison-Tamba, and the rest are visible, and have bodies like our own. How do you explain all this?” “The doctrine, I tell you, is true,” said the Lama, raising his arm, and assuming a remarkable accent of authority; “it is the doctrine of the West, but it is of unfathomable profundity. It cannot be sounded to the bottom.”
These words of the Thibetian Lama astonished us strangely; the Unity of God, the mystery of the Incarnation, the dogma of the Real Presence seemed to us enveloped in his creed; yet with ideas so sound in appearance, he admitted the metempsychosis, and a sort of pantheism of which he could give no account.