Thoreau was a Buddhist
28 March 2006
The April issue of Harper’s Magazine features an essay by Curtis White entitled “The Spirit of Disobedience: An Invitation to Resistance” that everyone should read immediately1.
White begins the essay by establishing the problem:
According to our leading wise men, the great contemporary moral and political question of the age is: Are we fundamentally a Christian or an Enlightenment culture?
Problem? How is that statement a problem? And it’s true, insomuch as the recent debates over stem-cell research and “Intelligent Design” can now be stacked on the shelf alongside other, more well-worn luminaries such as school prayer, abortion rights, capital punishment, et al, that the debate of faith versus science, specifically as it relates to matters of national character, has long been a feature of Western discourse.
Of course, we should know better. The length, volume, or even ferocity of any argument is no sure indicator of its importance or even relevance. White begins to lay out his argument thusly:
It should go without saying that it is capitalism that most defines our national character, not Christianity or the Enlightenment.
and
Capitalism has not believed and does not believe in the authority of Christ’s spiritual vision nor does it feel constrained by Kant’s Enlightenment ethic, which argued that human beings should be treated as ends, not means.
This is a well-written and thoughtful essay, so trust me (or better yet, read it) when I say there is some intriguing evidence to support these claims. I won’t, however, simply attempt to reproduce the essay here bit by bit, but hopefully I’ve whetted your appetite.
Anyway, the main thrust of the essay is if Capitalism is what most defines our national character, it is also Capitalism at the root of most of our problems with our society, which have remained essentially unchanged since the Industrial Revolution and the very advent, in any real sociopolitical sense, of Capitalism. If such a claim is made, you know a reference to Karl Marx can’t be far behind, and you’d be right, however it’s not what you’d expect. Henry David Thoreau is mentioned in the same breath and, when you think about it, it makes perfect (if uncommon) sense: they both saw what society was doing to itself in the name of profit and, albeit in very different ways, sought to resist.
And this, for those of you at all familiar with other texts mentioning Marx and Capitalism, is where things go in an unexpected direction. Specifically, Marx is cast aside:
For Thoreau, Marx’s first and fatal error was the creation of the aggregate identity of the proletariat. Error was substituted for error. The anonymity and futility of the worker were replaced by the anonymity and futility of the revolutionary. A revolution conducted by people who have only a group identity can only replace one monolith of power with another, one misery with another, perpetuating the cycle of domination and oppression.
Once Marx is dealt with White begins to lay the foundation of why we should all turn to Thoreau as our guide de résistance:
Thoreau’s revolution begins not with discovering comrades to be yoked together in solidarity but with the embrace of solitude.[...] In solitude, the individual becomes most human, which is to say most spiritual.
According to White’s take on Thoreau, this spirituality
is gained by simply doing one thing, consciously. “I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it,” said Thoreau. What is divine is simply being attentive to what you are doing in the moment you are doing it, assuming that that thing is not merely stupid (i.e., anything you have to do to receive money), or reflective of a life that is “frittered away by detail” (a good description of a country of double- and triple-taskers, driving a car while talking on a cell phone, the local classic rock station wailing through the Bose speakers, while wiping the baby’s nose, with the Classifieds on your lap, all the while thinking of where you’ll eat for dinner). Thoreau recommends simply being “awake” to what is in front of you.
And here, finally, I get to my point: Thoreau was a Buddhist. Though surely he never called himself such, his idea of mental focus, of being awake or fully present in what you are doing, of eschewing the material world and all the excesses it heaps upon you (or the excesses it encourages you to heap upon yourself), and of the attainment of peace and harmony (with oneself as much as with nature) as a result of this focus and lack of material distraction, these are all fundamental Buddhist concepts:
The four noble truths of Buddhism state that all existence is suffering, that the cause of suffering is desire, that freedom from suffering is nirvana, and that this is attained through the eightfold path of ethical conduct, wisdom, and mental discipline2.
At this point, “so what?” might be a fair question. I know, the idea that certain philosophies arise in disparate times and locations unconnected is nothing new. No, I’m focusing on White’s claim that for Thoreau the adoption of this philosophy was in itself the only true act of resistance.
As I said in “No Time for Deep Thought,” we’re not being taught, or even encouraged, to learn how to think deeply, which requires focus and wakefulness. It requires being fully present in that moment. But we’re not fully present, we’re driven to distraction, no, scratch that, we’re driving ourselves to distraction. Because we’re so easily bored, because society says doing one thing at a time is time wasted, because we are a society that values quantity over quality, we are not awake.
And if we are not awake, if we are instead sleep-walking through our lives, jumping from one partially-completed task to the next, ever searching for the chalice of efficiency, well, then are we not also easier to control? Easier to manipulate? Easier to flat-out lie to without real fear of repercussion or recrimination? We don’t have time to ask hard questions, to think out all the details, or to really chew on an idea to figure out what we truly think is right, we’ve got a hundred irons in the fire and they demand attention. But to take control of our lives means not only paying attention to the hundreds of little details that need attending to on a daily basis but also, and just as importantly, the careful, focused contemplation of the larger, more serious issues of not only our own lives but of the lives around us in our societies writ both small and large. Society’s problems are our problems—personally, individually ours. If we are not willing to slow down, to focus, to be fully present and fully awake, to put away the distractions of this modern life and think deeply about the issues shaping the very fabric of our society, who will do it for us? What decisions have already been made with our proxy? Instead of just living, shouldn’t we, like Thoreau, disobey the call to distraction and resist the debasement of routinized work by emptying ourselves, fully present, into the work of living justly?
1 Harper’s does not publish their content online and, as a subscriber and supporter of their mission (and they’re a non-profit to boot), I won’t link directly to the article, even though I have downloaded a copy from the FCC Library. If you’d like a copy of the article I’d recommend a trip to your local newstand/bookstore. Barring that, if you have access to a decent library that has good database access, that’s a viable route to go as well. Lastly, and in following Harper’s copyright guidelines, I will gladly email the article to anyone who asks. Just drop me a note or leave a comment. Thanks for understanding.
2 via The Oxford American Dictionary
I would appreciate a copy of the “Spirit of Disobedience” article. I’d working on a book project that concerns the role of animals in Thoreau’s spiritual life.
Geoff Wisner | 07/16/2007 08:39 AM | #Commenting is closed for this article.
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