On letters written by Bô Yin Râ
(article by the Books to Light)
Bô Yin Râ says in the Letters chapter of Showing the Way where his position is strong and clearly stated. He calls the posthumous publication of private letters a “revolting fabrication” — and reaches for a striking word: he compares it to necrophilia. The dead writer can no longer defend himself and must submit to being “plundered,” whether the editor seeks glory for himself or imagines he is honouring the author.
His core argument is philosophical, not just aesthetic:
A letter carries an aura — a subtle, personal transmission between two specific people that vanishes within days of being received. It belongs essentially to its recipient alone. Publishing it exposes to strangers something that was never meant for them, and since they cannot know the full circumstances of its writing, they inevitably replace objective understanding with subjective empathy — distorting rather than receiving what was given.
He calls posthumous letter-publishing “almost uncultured” — the mania of digging out correspondence to throw onto the market under thin pretexts.
Exceptions he grants: travel descriptions, humorous writings, love letters, and pedagogically intended correspondence — where the subjective/objective distinction matters less.
He also notes a particular vanity: writers who craft “intimate private letters” with one eye already on posterity — which he calls a strange demonstration of taste.
So his instruction was not quite “destroy the letters” — it was more of a fierce cultural and spiritual argument against posthumous publication, grounded in the metaphysics of what a letter actually is: a living, auric bridge between two specific souls, not a document for the world.
Quite remarkable that he then turned around and published Letters to one and many — but he drew the line precisely: those were timeless teaching letters, not private occasional correspondence. A careful and principled distinction.
Here is what Bô Yin Râ says, in the Preface to Letters to one and many:
He refers back to his book Showing the Way, where he stated explicitly his opposition to the posthumous publication of letters written only for specific occasions — letters meant to have validity only for that one moment, and which could only be properly judged with precise understanding of the conditions in which they were written.
Then he adds — with characteristic dry realism — that since he will be powerless after his own death to prevent such publication of occasional, time-limited letters, it would be foolish to fret about it during his lifetime.
So his reasoning was:
• Letters written for specific occasions should not be published posthumously, because they can only be understood in their original context
• He distinguished these sharply from his “timeless” letters — the kind he collected in Letters to one and many — which he did authorize for publication precisely because they teach principles valid for all times
Bô Yin Râ was drawing a careful line between occasional private correspondence (not for publication) and spiritually instructive letters (fit for broader readership). Simply put, letters were meant for a specific person, that person's specific circumstance or problem being discussed PRIVATELY with Bô Yin Râ and when taken out of this context, will pose high risk of being misunderstood.