Transcendentalism and ...Buddhism?!

After I have been studied about American Literature and movements, I found an interesting connection between religion and American movements. Based on my knowledge about Buddhism which is my religion, I see many similarity of Buddhism and Transcendentalism movement. They share many major beliefs together.

Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early to middle 19^th century. It is sometimes called American transcendentalism to distinguish it from other uses of the wordtranscendental. It was emerged from Romanticism with the belief that human can transcend their physical.This belief is very similar to the Buddhism beliefs.Buddhist believes that human are the combination of body and soul. They believe that soul is the one who control the body. Actually, Soul can completely control the feelings too. Buddhist uses meditation method to develop soul in order to control the physical. The more strong your soul is, the nearer you can reach a religion's goal “ Nirvana” which is the status that you can separate your soul from your body. From this point, you might be confused about Buddhism. For making it easier is to say that Buddhist uses meditation to transcend their soul over their physical body.

Walden by Henry David Thoreau is a great work for representing the beliefs of transcendentalism. He left the city to live in the nature and wrote this piece.Walden is representing an idea of simple living and self-sufficient. It is the same way Buddha was teaching all Buddhist to live simple life and to be self-sufficient. Also the view of nature from Thoreau, he believed in intuition through nature. The same beliefs of Buddhist, for an example, many Buddhist monk left the city to live in the forest among the nature for meditating and find the intuition among nature.

Another piece that is a good representative for Transcendentalism is Nature form Ralph Waldo Emerson. This essay is the foundation of transcendentalism is put forth, a belief system that espouses a non-traditional appreciation of nature. He also singles out Buddhism and the belief that every good deed will be rewarded.

There is also some major different between Buddhism and Transcendentalism. As from the text of Nature :

“ I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”


If we considered this quote to represent the beliefs of over-soul which state that everything and everybody shared the same one soul, then that is different from Buddhism that people have their own soul.However, If I cut the last sentence about particle of god out, then I see other meaning in the text in which the writer Emerson had been experience. I think that after he spent time with nature he somehow has an intuition that he become transparent and see the Universe. He used the word “Nothing” to describe himself. Actually, this is a very advance theory of Buddhism. The theory is that when human soul become very strong that we can separate our soul and body. We will see the truth that actually human is “Nothing”. Buddha also said about how he has an intuition through nature and the Universe. But this kind of thing is a very complicated and very hard to understand. It is for the high-level Buddhist monk.

I am sorry that the information above is hard to understand, boring and extremely confusing but I just want to show you how amazing these two groups from different side of the world and can share something very similar.