chapotraphouse

Blavatsky claimed to have visited Tibet back when it was closed to Europeans, as it should have stayed, although sidebar: it's kinda neat to see how the British Empire overextend its grasp as it fell into decline through the Younghusband (military) Expedition which was pretty blatantly the overtures of the Brits attempting to establish an embassy with which to further expand the British Raj (although this would never come to fruition).

From memory Chinese government officials demanded that the Ganden Phodrang, the Tibetan theocratic Gelug government which was headed by its (roughly) alternating reincarnations of the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama (with periods of regency interspersed between those two), expel the Younghusband Expedition and they refused to accede to this demand because they were getting cosy with the idea of their tributary state status lapsing as China experienced a decline due to the Qing Dynasty being the Qing Dynasty and failing to maintain its suzerainty over Tibet as it faced its decline and ultimate collapse.

Blavatsky claimed to have stayed with a Kashmiri who lived in Tibet (Kashmiris living in Tibet is extremely plausible), who was a vegetarian (very implausible on account of the fact that a vegetarian diet in the Tibetan plateau was, until recently, basically a pipedream unless you were wealthy enough to be regularly importing food and very implausible on account of the fact that a Kashmiri in Tibet in this era is either most likely going to be a travelling merchant or part of the Muslim untouchable Ragyabpa caste in Tibet who served as butchers due to the Tibetan Buddhists wanting to "outsource" the bad karma accumulation by the profession of butchery to the heathens for whom they held basically zero concern for. What a charming little arrangement, huh?) who she also claimed was a teacher of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism to students (fairly implausible that a Kashmiri would be well-versed enough in Gelug-specific Tibetan Buddhism that they would have Tibetan students [Why would Tibetans go to a non-native speaker to be instructed on the dominant school of Tibetan Buddhism at that time from a person who is reasonably certain to have not studied as a monk and developed the debate skills that are critical to the Gelug school in particular and who wouldn't have had access to sacred Gelug texts that any nearby Gelug monastery would have in their repositories? If we are talking committed students of the Gelug school then there's virtually zero chance that he would be "qualified" or permitted to transmit empowerments, so it's baffling to try to come up with any decent reason why he would have any students or how he sourced his income.] The only plausible thing about all of this is that a Kashmiri migrant would align themselves to the dominant Gelug school because it would put them in proximity to power and they would find themselves in the good graces of the Tibetan government.)

Idk, but it just seems like too tall a tale for me to believe without a lot of supporting evidence. And that's cherry-picking the most plausible parts of her alleged Tibetan adventures.

Tbh it seems much more believable that her knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism came from contact with the Russians Kalmyks and she used that to fabricate the rest of her claims about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. (Although it would be kinda convenient to believe that the proto-fash Blavatsky was doing her research in Tibet in the same way that a later Nazi expedition would conduct because of how it would rhyme.)

Speaking of Nazis in Tibet, did you know that Brad Pitt starred as a sympathetic Nazi protagonist in the Hollywood blockbuster movie Seven Years In Tibet, which was based on the story of Heinrich "I just joined the SS because it was the fashion at the time and I somehow managed to get promoted to the Oberscharfuhrer rank as well as having a private audience with Hitler, which I was was very enthusiastic about" Harrer?

Brad Pitt got banned from China for this (lol get rekt - 7 years in Tibet, how about 17 years of stay the fuck away from China instead?) but tbh he and everyone involved in the production of that film aside from the workers who were just like a gaffer or a caterer or whatever should have been banned from existence.