Thinking Activity on Transcendentalism
Hello reader this is my related to Transcendentalism my teacher gave me two question related this movement and i am trying to give my answer.
Que. 1) Transcendentalists talks about Individual’s relation with Nature. What is Nature for you? Share your views.
According to me Nature is Not artificial this the Nature. Nature is like never judge anyone not give any opinion to others. I am like this and this good for me then forgot anyone and their opinion doesn't matter for me like if you on forest you seen one tree and their branches are different from other you tell the tree no! you have to maintain this type of branch they never turn like this you tell river no you branch shouldn't go this way they never listen you not behave like your way they only follow their way and likes and this is Nature.
Que. 2)Transcendentalism is an American Philosophy that influenced American Literature at length. Can you find any Indian/Regional literature or Philosophy came up with such similar thought?
America’s earliest mysticism was strongly influenced by Hindu thought
“CRIME AND PUNISHMENT GROW OUT of the one stem,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay, Compensation. “Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed, for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.”
Compensation was Emerson’s interpretation of the Hindu law of karma. Long before his fellow countrymen even knew Hinduism existed, he was studying and absorbing the wisdom of the Vedas and their Upanishads, The Laws of Manu, The Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Today Emerson is honored as one of America’s most influential and original thinkers. Yet few realize how extensively his work was suffused with Oriental philosophy—especially Hinduism. Long before Swami Vivekananda’s famed sojourn to North America, Emerson was subtly weaving Hindu thought into the fabric of his scholarly writing as if it were his own. In the minds of the Western intelligentsia, he ploughed fertile fields of inspiration 50 years before Indian swamis traveled West to seed them.
Transcendentalism was a literary movement founded in 1836 by Emerson and a handful of other adventuresome American thinkers. It featured at least three authors of world stature: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman.
Combining Romanticism with reform, Transcendentalism celebrated the spiritual potential of man by encouraging nonconformity so that, through a sense of individuality, man might be released from mass conditioning enough to intuitively experience God’s all-pervading oneness by personal efforts of unbiased and open-minded introspection. Transcendentalism emphasized the individual rather than the masses, intuition rather than reason, the forces of nature rather than the powers of man. This was radical thinking in those days, and it did not bring them immediate popularity. Yet, such outspoken abandon of accepted norms freed the authors to study the literature, religion, philosophy and culture of exotic lands far beyond their shores. Perhaps as a result of Emerson’s influence, they all eventually became fascinated by the ancient texts of Hinduism.
An irrefutable mystical bent coupled with an interest in Oriental literature may have been the only qualities the early American Transcendentalists had in common. History paints a vivid picture of disparity and dissimilarity between Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman. Yet, this very dissonance was fuel in the fire of the cause for which they had formed in the first place. Emerson remained the ring leader—staid and serene. He entered into disputes only with intellectuals on intellectual issues. He was a far more comprehensive thinker than his comrades, but less given to “putting the concepts into practice,” which was the forte of Thoreau and Whitman.
Emerson’s infatuation with the East enticed him away from an early career in the Christian ministry into a mystic search that his creative writing only partially appeased, even though it decidedly altered the course of Western thought for more than a hundred years to come.
In an essay entitled Emerson as Seen from India, written shortly after his death, Pratap Hunder Mozoomdar, a leader of the Brahmo Samaj declared: “Brahmanism is an acquirement, a state of being rather than a creed. In whomsoever the eternal Brahma breathed his unquenchable fire, he was the Brahman. And in that sense Emerson was the best of Brahmans. He shines upon India serene as the evening star. He seems to some of us to have been a geographical mistake.”
Another author and scholar, Herambachandra Maitra, suggests that the Massachusetts mystic gave Hindus assurance and faith: “Emerson appeals to the Oriental mind. He translates into the language of modern culture what was uttered by the sages of ancient India in the loftiest strains. He breathes a new life into our old faith, and he assures its stability and progress by incorporating with it truths revealed or brought into prominence by the wider intellectual and ethical outlook of the modern spirit.”
Not only is Emerson acknowledged by modern-day scholars East and West as one of the world’s greatest writers, he is also considered to be a primary influence in the development of North America’s open-mindedness toward religious tolerance, psychic interests and ethical concerns. Emerson is the most quoted American in the modern media, and his works have been translated into dozens of languages abroad. Even those who never heard of him venerate the American ideals he helped to forge, including personal achievement, character development and moral living. According to one critic, Emerson continues to be “the least limited, the most permanently suggestive” of American literary artists.
Many Hindu religious leaders came to respect the work of Emerson. Swami Paramananda of the Ramakrishna Order, for instance, frequently quoted Emerson in his lectures and even wrote a book entitled Emerson and Vedanta.
Today it’s easy to find translations of Oriental writings. When Emerson was alive, however, things were different. Such translations were few and imperfect. International communication and travel were poor. It was rare to even hear of Hindu writings and rarer still to access them and be able to study them in depth. Emerson was able to gain much from “Hindu missionaries” like Ram Mohan Roy, who traveled to America in the early 1800s, inspired to elucidate Hinduism for the West.
“When Confucius and the Indian scriptures were made known, no claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom could be thought of,” Emerson joyfully proclaimed. “It is only within this century (the 1800s) that England and America discovered that their nursery tales were old German and Scandinavian stories; and now it appears that they came from India, and are therefore the property of all the nations.”
Emerson often presented Hindu principles in their original purity. Sometimes he would quote the scriptures directly. Through all of the elegance of his refined prose, there ever remained in his work an unpretentious commitment to the wisdom of the words rather than the crafting of them, as if the core of his motivation was more about leaving behind diaries of personal practice and discovery than legacies of literary greatness. Even his finished works read like ongoing revelations “to be continued.”
“Always pay!” he exclaimed, heralding the truths of karma and dharma. “First or last you must pay your entire debt. Persons and events may stand for a time between you and justice, but it is only a postponement. You must pay at last your own debt.”
“Thou canst not gather what thou dost not sow; as thou dost plant the trees, so will it grow. Whatever the act a man commits, of that the recompense must be received in corresponding body.”
Emerson more than echoed ancient wisdom. It was his pleasure and a good portion of his genius to be able to penetrate and expand upon the timeless truths. In this sense, his works were shared meditations.
“Every act rewards itself—or, in other words, integrates itself—in a twofold manner,” he asserted. “First, in the thing, or in real nature and, secondly, in the circumstance, or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance the retribution. The causal retribution is in the thing and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the circumstance is seen by the understanding. It is inseparable from the thing, but it often spreads over a long time and so does not become distinct until after many years. The specific stripes may follow late after the offense, but they follow because they accompany it.”
Most Famous and important Indian Philosopher
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