In 1960 a small print run was made of a book by Alexandra David-Neel and Lama Yongden titled, The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects. David-Neel was a French woman who spent 40 years in Tibet. In 1923, at the age of 55, she disguised herself as a pilgrim and made her way to Tibet’s forbidden city of Lhasa, becoming the first Westerner to visit. She wrote over 30 books about her travels and Tibetan religion and philosophy.  

The few copies of the book were quickly snatched up. One person who got his hands on a copy was Alan Watts - the great spiritual entertainer of the mid-20th century. It has been said it was his favorite book. 

In 1967 the book was reprinted with a foreword by Alan Watts. He begins the forward saying:

For several years I have referred to this hitherto, rare and inaccessible work as the “I-told-you-so-book,” because it has often been implied that I have invented my explanations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying its authentic teachings. 

He goes on to say,

...this is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism that has been written. Specifically, it is a wonderfully lucid account of the Madhyamika (or “middle way”) School of Buddhism…. David-Neel writes for the non-academic student who wants simply to practice and experience this method as a way of overcoming the hang-ups (klesa) which follow from the illusion that one is, in fact, an individual ego separate from the eternal and inconceivable Ground of all existence. 

The book has remained in print ever since. Even now, when more books on Buddhism are published each year than anyone could ever read, this slim volume enthralls readers due to the clarity of its exposition and its intellectual accessibility on topics that other writers render opaque.

The secret teachings the title refers to, David-Neel explains, aren’t actually a secret. They are Madhyamika Buddhist teachings. They’re a secret because most people cannot understand them. David-Neel, however, produced an introductory work that can be understood by many. 

Back when David-Neel was writing this book, hardly anyone other than Nietzsche had noticed the similarities between Madhyamika Buddhism and ancient Greek Pyrrhonism. Presumably, she was not only unfamiliar of any relationship between the two, she was also unfamiliar with Pyrrhonism. The fact that the main points of The Secret Oral Teachings so closely correspond with the main points in Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism demonstrates the remarkable similarity between the two philosophies. 

In an earlier article I outlined the case that Nagarjuna was influenced by Greek Pyrrhonist texts in his creation of Madhyamika philosophy. It is not coincidental that The Secret Oral Teachings also say that the source of the secret teachings is a subject of debate. They are not considered to be indigenous - even though they are traced to Nagarjuna - they really come from some other, mythical source, about which opinions vary. 

As The Secret Oral Teachings is perhaps the most accessible introduction to Madhyamika Buddhism in print, the book can be used as a basis for pointing out the close parallels between Madhyamika and Pyrrhonism. Those interested in more detail on this matter can refer to the research of Matthew Neale in his Madhyamaka and Pyrrhonism: doctrinal, linguistic and historical parallels and interactions between Madhyamaka Buddhism & Hellenic Pyrrhonism. Neale’s work is painstakingly detailed, matching the many hundreds of arguments made by the ancient Pyrrhonist and Madhyamika philosophers. He concludes that the two philosophies are mutually recognizable as being engaged in the same philosophical project. 

Pyrrhonism and The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

David-Neel notes in her preface that the book is about the “doctrines held by an elite of Tibetan intellectuals” - a subject she devotes the first chapter to expanding upon. At the beginning of the first chapter, she tells a story about how one Tibetan master advised her not to write the book. One reason he gives is that only people with exceptional intellects will be able to understand the teachings.

At the beginning of Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus says something similar: that Pyrrhonism was created by and attracts people with strong minds who have noticed the anomalies of the world and have sought to resolve them.

 The Tibetan master explains why the teachings are called “secret” saying, 

One may proclaim on the high road the Teachings considered secret, they remain ‘secret’ for the individuals with dull minds who will hear what is said to them, and will grasp nothing of it but the sound…. They are simple, but, like a powerful battering-ram, they run counter to the wall of false ideas rooted in the mind of man and the emotions which delight him into suffering.

I am reminded of a strongly negative review of my book, Pyrrho’s Way. The reviewer said she couldn’t get through it. I was curious about what books she liked. Her positive reviews were for books about astrology, Buddhist magic, and ghost hunting. 

David-Neel then recounts part of the story of the Buddha’s awakening, where the Buddha initially resisted the call to teach the Buddhadharma, convinced that he could not find others who could understand it, saying,

It will be difficult for men to understand the law of the concatenation of causes and effects, the suppression of the saṃskāra…. 

Saṃskāra is a Sanskrit word used in Buddhism to mean mental formations - things that are voluntarily put together in the mind. No term in English is a good translation for it, but the technical term in Pyrrhonist philosophy, dogma, seems to be a good match. Confusingly, English borrowed this term from Greek, and since then the meaning has changed, as has happened with so many other Greek philosophical terms such as stoic, cynic, epicurean, and skeptic. A dogma is something formed in the mind that is voluntarily assented to. To clarify, this excludes a lot of things in the mind. For example, it excludes things such as the idea that this article is written in English, and that it is about a book. These things are forced upon the mind. Also, unlike the English “dogma,” which carries with it the idea of a faith-based belief, the Greek dogma may be believed in as a rational conclusion. 

For example, at some point, you will decide whether this article was worth reading. You likely have an instinctual reaction to this question. In Greek, that reaction is a phantasia - usually rendered in English as an “impression” or an “appearance.” You will experience that instinctual reaction as forced upon you. However, you can go beyond that instinctual reaction to have a more considered reaction. For example, I instinctually thought getting my root canal was awful, but with more consideration, it was a good thing.

Perhaps the most well-known sentence from an ancient Greek philosopher using the word dogma comes from the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who said,

Men are disturbed not by events, but by the dogmas they have about those events. (Enchiridion 5)

Most translators render Epictetus’ use of dogmas as “judgments” or “opinions” or “views,” but this gives a one-of character that Epictitus did not mean. He is aiming deeper than that. He’s talking about a mental formation that results in judgments, opinions, and views of a particular character. His ultimate aim is to replace his students’ existing mental formations with Stoic mental formations.

Just as the Buddhadharma entails the suppression of the saṃskāra, so too does Pyrrhonism entail the suppression of dogmas. 

David-Neel says the Buddhism of the secret teachings has,

…a special quality of transcendent rationalism, a strict intellectual equilibrium which completely differentiates it from the popular religion as also from the emotional mysticism of certain Mahayanist schools. It is evident that the great majority of those who call themselves Buddhists have not been able to rise to the mental level of the Teaching of the Buddha. … they uphold … their belief and their absurd practices as the expression of pure orthodoxy

Pyrrhonist rationalism is explicitly transcendent. Sextus likened the Pyrrhonist use of rationality to the use of a ladder. Once one has scaled the ladder, the ladder may be kicked away. “Strict intellectual equilibrium” describes well the Pyrrhonist practice of epoche - a practice of achieving an equilibrium between competing mental formations such that neither is assented to. 

As one of the modern synonyms for Pyrrhonism is “doubt” it is fitting that chapter 2 begins with,

The faith commended to their faithful by all religions and considered by them as a virtue essential for him who hopes for eternal salvation, is nowise approved in the Secret Teachings. Based on the advice given by the Buddha to His disciples, the primary recommendation that the Masters give to neophytes is: Doubt!

The purpose of this doubt is to spur investigation. This is exactly the same with the Pyrrhonists, who named their practice investigation - “skepticism” in Greek means “investigation.”

Moreover, the two investigate the same things. As David-Neel puts it,

He is put face to face with certain facts, facts which have always seemed to him to be so obvious that he as never given them a moment’s thought, and the Master says to him: “Now investigate whether these facts which you accept as representing reality are truly real.”

This is the same with students of Pyrrhonism. They are told not to accept that sense data necessarily represent reality, and that inferences from sense data to understand that which cannot be sensed is even more fraught. For investigating these matters, the student is provided with stock methods of inquiry. These stock methods are similar to ones given to the Madhyamika student. David-Neel describes one in which the student is asked to visualize being in a vast, bare plain where one can see a speck of green in the distance. One infers one is seeing a tree, but one doesn’t actually know this. This example is similar to examples given for one of the stock Pyrrhonist arguments known as the fifth mode of Aensidemus. Things appear differently based on distance and position. For example, a square town can look round from a distance. 

Later David-Neel presents two more examples, examples that correspond to the first and second modes. Because humans differ from other creatures, what humans sense is differert from what other creatures sense. Similarly, because humans differ from each other, each person senses things differently. Therefore all perception is relative. 

The result of attaining this understanding is a recognition that rather than dealing directly with reality we are dealing with our sensations and our interpreations of those sensations. The sensations we don’t have control over, but we can change our interpretations. 

David-Neel closes the second chapter by saying:

What has to be understood is that theories and doctrines of all kinds are the fabrication of our mind. It is capable of fabricating some of them diametrically opposed to each other and one will be no truer nor less true than the other because they are all based on false perceptions or, at best relative ones which are only of value for an observer constituted as we are, placed where we are, and such perceptions have no absolute reality. 

In the third chapter, David-Neel quotes a Tibetan teacher as saying,

The usefulness of learning … does not transcend that of a profitable mental gymnastic calculated to render flexible our intellectual faculties, calculated to bring about critical tendencies, suspicion, and doubt, this first step towards investigation and knowledge. 

Sextus Empiricus says some similar things. He speaks positively of some of the Platonic dialogues as providing mental gymnastics for training the mind. And, of course, the Pyrrhonists referred to themselves as skeptikoi - those who investigate. 

This chapter also addresses two key Buddhist teachings. One of these is the denial of the existence of the self, or, as David-Neel puts it, the ego. There’s something like this in Pyrrhonism, in the sense that the existence of the soul is extensively questioned, but this questioning is not central to Pyrrhonism in the way it is in Buddhism. 

The other is dependent origination - a teaching that appears in Pyrrhonism as well. Although in Pyrrhonism the emphasis is epistemological - nothing can be known in itself; all knowledge is dependent on other knowledge. David-Neel digresses to other subjects about how Buddhism is taught in Tibet and picks up dependent origination again in chapter five. 

… everything that exists depends, for its existence, on the existence of other things which produce it or support it, and the existence of that which exists ceases when the causes or conditions which support it themselves cease. Thus all existence is relative. One cannot say it is, because it is not autogenous, nor, on the other hand, can one consider it as pure nothingness. “To go beyond” is, in fact, to cease to cling to the opinions, the connections which belong to the world of illusion, and to understand that they have only a relative value depending on things which themselves have only a relative existence but which we should be wrong to consider as absolutely non-existent. 

“To go beyond” is a reference to the closing lines of the Heart Sutra. English translations of this sutra normally leave the last lines untranslated. The secret oral teachings are said “to go beyond” the exoteric teachings. 

Again, this parallels Pyrrhonism, but with Pyrrhonism putting the emphasis on epistemology. All we know is relative. What we perceive depends on other things. We can’t say our perceptions are true reflections of reality, nor can we say they are illusions. The objective is to cease to cling to dogmas.

David-Neel says, 

The Masters of the Secret Teachings will willingly remind their students of the ancient Buddhist parable of the raft. The traveler who finds his road blocked by a river will use a raft to reach the opposit shore, but, this shore once reached, he will not carry the raft on his shoulders while continuing the journey. 

The Pyrrhonists have similar parables about their teachings. One is that the teaching is like an emetic drug that is purged from the body along with what the drug aims to remove. Another is that the teachings are like a ladder. Once the ladder has been used to reach the higher level, it may be kicked away as no longer necessary. 

David-Neel describes the other shore of the raft journey as,

To go beyond virtue and vice, opinions and beliefs, is to go beyond the mental constructions which are built up by the mind, unceasingly, and to recognize, by transcendent insight, that they are devoid of reality. 

The Pyrrhonists similarly describe a shift in consciousness involving suspending belief in opinions and theories, and in particular, in things being good or evil.

She relates a tale of one of the Masters of the Secret Teachings:

To one of his disciples who asked him: “If I am questioned about the opinions held by my Master, what should I say?” The Buddha replied: “You shall say: the Venerable One holds no opinions, he is free from all opinions.” 

Chapter six is a discussion of the Buddhist ideas of liberation from suffering, of nirvana. Pyrrhonism has similar ideas of liberation from suffering, of ataraxia. The Buddhist conception is invested with religious meaning in ways that the Pyrrhonist conception is not. 

Pyrrhonism, because of its rejection of living based on opinions and dogmas, has from the beginning been accused of being unlivable because it should render its practitioners incapable of action. There’s even a technical term for this charge: apraxia. The Pyrrhonists, of course, refute this, but in an interesting inversion, the Masters of the Secret Teachings embrace this idea.

Liberation is achieved by the practice of non-activity.

But this non-activity is of a specific kind. As David-Neel explains,

Ought one to believe that it consists in inertia and that the disciples of the Masters who honour it are exhorted to abstain from doing anything whatsoever? - Certainly not….. The doctrine of non-action does not in any way aim at those actions which are habitual in life: eating, sleeping, walking, speaking, reading, studying, etc. …neither the practice of any particular virtue nor that of the numerous virtues together can bring liberation. This fact is constantly recalled to the pupils by the Masters who explain the traditional Secret Oral Teaching to them. They never tire of repeating the classic simile of the two chains. Whether one is bound by an iron chain or a golden chain means, in both cases, to be bound. The activity used in the practice of virtue is the chain of gold while that utilized in evil deeds is the iron chain. Both imprison the doer. The Dhammapada … which can be considered as representing the original Buddhist doctrine, also stresses the two chains and the necessity of breaking them. “He who has shaken off the two chains, that of good and that of evil, he is a Brahaman.” [Dhammapada 412, “Brahaman” meaning “spiritually enlightened man”] … What then is this activity from which one ought to abstain? - It is the disordered activity of the mind which, unceasingly, devotes itself to the work of a builder erecting ideas, creating an imaginary world in which it shuts itself like a chrysalis in its cocoon. 

This is exactly the non-activity the Pyrrhonists engage in: the non-activity of not dogmatizing, and most particularly that of holding dogmas about good and evil. 

An Introduction to Pyrrhonism

I am occasionally asked what book someone should read as an introduction to Pyrrhonism. For me, it’s a strange question as that was the object of the book I wrote. But my book is long, and at points, a bit complicated. When people ask me this question, I’ve come to interpret it as a request for a short book just covering the main points. To this question I now answer, The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects.