To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

Foreword
LEGENDARY AND WRITTEN TRADITION testify to the presence
throughout time of a brotherhood of men and women scattered
over the face of the globe who resonate with the
spiritualizing impulses reaching earth from higher regions.
Their recognition of one another is not dependent on outer
insignia but on inner communion. Such was the case with
I-tsing, translator into Chinese of hundreds of Buddhist
Sanskrit texts, and his assistant, Chēng-ku. When they met
it was as though they had known each other ‘‘from former
days,’’ and after becoming conversant with the largeness of
their mission Chēng-ku said to I-tsing:
When Virtue wishes to meet Virtue, they unite themselves
without any medium, and when the time is about ripe,
no one can stay it even if they wanted.
Shall I then sincerely propose to propagate our Tripiṭaka*
together with you, and to help you in lighting a thousand
lamps?†
When virtue meets virtue — how better describe the
experience of intuitive recognition? Perhaps this may explain,
in part at least, the global awakening now taking
*The ‘‘Three Baskets’’ or major divisions of the Pāli Canon.
†A Record of The Buddhist Religion as Practised in India and The
Malay Archipelago (A.D. 671–695), I-tsing, p. xxxvi.