Swans to Lake #2

[Guest guest]

Chp. 4 "The Restless Pioneers"

 

 

The Journals of the Asiatick Society found their way to America and were

read by the likes of Thomas Jefferson. They were collected in the libraries

of the educated, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson's father. The Concordians who

became famous as the Transcendentalists never met a practicing Hindu or

Buddhist. Tho the thriving trade with the East India company from the port

of Boston contributed interest and Thoreau later watched the harvest of ice

from Walden Pond which was destined for India, their search for other

knowledge came mostly from being at odds with the status quo of their times.

They published "The Dial" to offer "ethnical scriptures" in support of a

universalist moral code present in all times and races. When the first copy

of the Bhagavad Gita arrived in Concord in 1843, Emerson called it a

renowned book of Buddhism. This confusion, when later sorted out, inclined

his sympathies more to the Hindus.

 

The younger Thoreau translated the Lotus Sutra from a French version, in

order to publish this in the Dial of 1944. While likely a contemplative by

nature, Thoreau derived much encouragement from reading the Gita at Walden

Pond. More important than merely studying the wise writers, he actually

practiced

to become, like them, a forest sage.

 

"Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in

my sunny doorway from sunrise til noon, rapt in revery, amidst the pines and

hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the

birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun

falling on my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the

distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those

seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than the work of

the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but

so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals

meant by contemplation and the forsaking of works."

 

When Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" appeared in 1855, The Oriental influence

was apparent, along with the influence of apparently everything else!!

 

It was to another of the Concordian circle, Bronson Alcott, that the first

copy of "The Light of Asia" was sent from England in 1878. Alcott was

impressed enough to have it printed immediately from his own copy. This life

of Buddha written in verse by an Englishman, eventually sold almost a

million copies. He managed to present the story in a way that appealed to

Victorian taste. "His Buddha is part romantic hero, part self-reliant man,

and part Christ without being Christ." At the same time he managed to

present a fair outline of Buddhist thought as it was understood. He

versified the doctrines of karma, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold

Path. Edwin Arnold, the author, has been often dismissed as simply foolish.

Nevertheless, it was from this book that Buddhism was made a household word

in America.