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Vlada Pakhomova
Prof. Charles Goodman
Philosophy 486E
May 15, 2016

Philosophical Musings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Dgen Zenji

Buddhist thought was initiated in the 5th century B.C.E. when prince Siddhartha
Gautama abandoned his life of wealth and left his town of Kapilavastu in the Lumbini region,
India (now Nepal) to seek spiritual knowledge and awareness. Around the age of 29, Siddhartha
became curious about the outside world as his family shielded him from all its pain and
discomfort; he asked a charioteer to take him outside the walls of his home. On his trip he
witnessed people suffering of old age, sickness, and death and after seeing what the world really
consisted of, he decided that the life he was born intothe life of rich royaltywas not meant
for him. Lastly, Siddhartha came across an ascetic, a self-disciplined man, who firmly inspired
him to denounce his current life and wander the land with the goal of helping others. Siddhartha
became the Buddha, or the Awakened One, when one day as he was sitting and meditating
beneath a Bodhi tree, a demon named Mara began attacking him with various temptations,
testing his enlightenment as he remained calm and still. He realized that the self was only an
illusion and it was that same self and view of his individual that was previously halting him from
truly seeing. The Buddha knew that his teachings would be difficult for others to comprehend but
realized it was his duty to try to explain the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path to
everyone regardless of age, sex, race, class, or any physical labels. As the Buddha traveled and
spread his knowledge, he developed disciples who took in his words, meditated upon them, and
developed their own wisdom. Buddhism spread to Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, into

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the Himalayan kingdoms (Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal), Tibet, Mongolia, China, Korea, Japan and,
not until recently, into the west to young America. The philosophy was brought to the west in
the 1840s when Chinese immigrants settled in Hawaii and California and through travelers
who came across Buddhism and brought it back to the U.S. with them. It is around that same
time that writers and philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau began
exploring inwards thought. Emersons views on Transcendentalism have been compared to
Japanese philosopher Dgens teachings of Zen Buddhism. Both were adamant about just being
in the now and experiencing life as it is; they looked above and beyond the structure of
government and society into universal consciousness.
Zen Buddhism is thought to have been started with Bodhidharma who brought the
Buddhist wisdom to China from India in the late 5th century. Similarly to Siddhartha,
Bodhidharma was born a prince who renounced life of royalty and politics and went on to
wander and spread Buddhist teachings. He was one of three brothers and his fathers favorite so
much so that to try to insure the claim to the throne his older brothers tried to turn their father
against him or even assassinate him but to no avail due to the monks good karma. Around the
same time, Emperor Wu in China was very fond of the philosophy and was looking for
enlightened Buddhist monks to come teach it. When he arrived to China, 22 year old
Bodhidharma was know as Da Mo. Emperor Wu tried asking Da Mo about the source of
creation, his own existence and whether or not he will achieve Mukti (Moksha) or liberation
because he took care of so many citizens and set up many Buddhist meditation centers. To all of
this Da Mo replied that his questions are stupid and he will burn in the seventh hell of his own
mind. Emperor Wu was of course angered by all of this and threw Da Mo out. But with this,
Bodhidharma brought Buddhas Dhyan (meditation) to China which became Chan and the means

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of establishment of the Chan school of Chinese Buddhism. The Chan school attracted Japanese
monk, Myan Eisai, to which he traveled to in 1168 and 1186 to learn real Buddhism and bring
it back to Japan to teach to others. One of Eisais disciples, Myozen studied Chan teachings with
Dgen Zenji/Kigen. Dgen was originally taught at the Tendai school of Buddhism near Kyoto
but he was having trouble understanding why Buddhas needed to seek enlightenment if,
according to his schools concept of original enlightenment, it is inherent in all. He then
followed in Eisais footsteps and traveled to China in 1217 where he reached Enlightenment,
answered his questions and then dedicated his life to teachings of Zen Buddhism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on May 25, 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended
Harvard University and the Harvard School of Divinity. He graduated in 1821, became a minister
in 1826, and a clergyman like his father and ancestors with the Unitarian Church in 1829. His
family had a long line of ministers and Emerson felt a duty to stand with the church, however his
personal beliefs and the claims of Unitarianism and Christianity did not always coincide and his
belief began to falter. After his wife Ellen Tucker died of tuberculosis in 1831, only 2 years after
they married and he became ordained to the church, he resigned and went on to travel to Europe.
While traveling he met other influential writers: Thomas Carlyle, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and
William Wordsworth who further inspired him to seek out a spiritual understanding of the world.
Two years later, he moved to Concord, MA and the year after he remarried to Lydia Jackson.
Emerson then continued to give lectures and write essays and poems including Nature, The
American Scholar, and Self-Reliance. He developed a close friendship with Henry David
Thoreau with whom he shared the same values; in 1845 Emerson let Thoreau build a cabin by
Walden Pond on a plot of land he owned so that Thoreau could write and think in peace. It is in
that cabin that Thoreau wrote his most famous piece, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, which was

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later published in 1854. Emerson continued to write and live in Concord until his death on
April 27, 1882.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, Transcendentalism means: a philosophy
which says that thought and spiritual things are more real than ordinary human experience and
material things and Zen means: a Japanese sect of Mahayana Buddhism that aims at
enlightenment by direct intuition through meditation. They aim to have a clear focus on the
inner life and our minds. To transcend means to rise above and it appears that the goals of
Emerson and Dgen encompassed transcending the material and physical world to view life as
something more than just being human. In chapter 1 of Nature, Emerson writes Standing on the
bare ground, my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, all mean
egotism vanishes. 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. The transparent eyeball
becomes an important metaphor for all transcendentalists or lovers of Emersons literature,
representing the ability to see beyond oneself and our surroundings. It is similar to the third eye
in Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism that is represented in sculptures as a dot or swirl in
between the two physical eyes of the Buddha and is known as the link between the physical and
spiritual worlds; one who has opened their third eye is one who can see past the good and the
bad, the love and the suffering to a universal higher consciousness where the details of our lives
dont matter and we can be whoever we desire to be. Emerson believed in non-conformism and
people finding beauty and art within themselves rather than mimicking othersas many believe
they have to do in the western, form obsessed culture. He believed that how others perceive us
doesnt matter and what is important is that we feel complete in our existence. Mirroring these
thoughts centuries earlier, Dgen writes in Shbgenz: To study Buddhism is to study the self.

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To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be
enlightened by all things is to be free from attachment to the body and mind of one's selfand of
others. In another section of the same book, Dgen addresses a conversation between the
twenty-eighth Zen lineage patriarch and his disciples. In Buddhist Philosophy, the text translated
by William Edelglass and Jay L. Garfield, Dgen explains the conversation. The patriarch is
Bodhidharma and he is asking his students about how they express the transmission of Dharma.
After each response he replies, You express my skin...my flesh...my bones...my marrow.
(p.151,152) Dgen says that these replies all mean the same thing but were adjusted to fit each
disciple's understanding. You should realize that when you express me, then I express you...you
must realize the oneness of the interior and the exterior [dimensions]. (p. 153) There is
ultimately no difference between skin, flesh, bones, and marrow as it is all interconnected. Zen
and Transcendentalism spread the awareness that everything and everyone is interconnected so if
one is suffering everyone suffers, and if one is happy everyone is happy.
While there is a clear connection between Emersons thoughts on breaking through
society's ideal views of the self and Dgens Zen teachings of becoming free of one's selfand
of others, there is a significant difference between what they mean when they say self. When the
Buddha first awakened and saw how to end suffering, he realized that all our problems come
from our false sense of self and continued to explain this through the Four Noble Truths. In the
same way, Ngrjuna tries to explain this through his concept of emptiness: to be empty of
essence is not to be empty of existence. Instead, to exist is to be empty. (Edelglass and Garfield
p.27) Similarly, Dgen stresses that Delusion occurs when the ego posits itself as the single
fixed centerrather than understanding itself as one among infinitely many mutually expressive
focal pointsof the whole...when practicing the Buddha Way, one comes to realize the empty

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(i.e., open and interdependent) nature of the true self. (p.253) While Emerson was very aware of
the impact society has on the individual mind, he never truly reached the understanding of the
self that Zen expresses. In The Over-Soul, he writes Man is a stream whose source is hidden.
Our being is descending into us from we know not whence...I am constrained every moment to
acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine. Emerson saw that we exist
without knowing how we exist or why and most of us never question it or try to find answers.
Many of us are too scared to even think about it and often fall into depression if we do; in the
modern world we call this an existential crisis. But the reason why Emerson became a pioneer
of Transcendentalism is because he was willing to stop and ask himself these questions and
contemplate on what life is. He got very close to the basics of Buddhism but it is evident from
this quote that he was lost on where his existence was coming from. He says that his source is
hidden to which Dgen may have replied that it is only hidden because he views it as so and has
much to learn on the path to Enlightenment. His transparent eye-ball may not have been as
transparent as he believes and this may have been due to his background in Christian faith. Even
as he discovered that his church was missing pieces of information and left his position in the
ministry, he still referred to God or a higher being in many of his texts and continued to visit and
preach there. He viewed life as more gratifying when he focused on the spiritual reality over the
material but never managed to realize that the self he experiences daily is nothing more than an
illusion.
In many instances of his writing, Emerson refers to the soul, but Dgen would argue that
there is no soul. In terms of conventional truth, he would say that if Emerson is referring to
himself being an entity who thinks and exists of many parts within smaller parts then he would
say yes the soul exists but only as a name to put on this being called Emerson. In terms of the

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ultimate truth, he would say the soul doesnt exist, he doesnt exist, Emerson doesnt exist and
nothing around them exists. Everything is empty. But Emerson dedicates a whole essay to just
talking about the soul. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the
universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE...We see the
world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are
the shining parts, is the soul. (The Over-Soul) Perhaps to Buddhists his mistake here is that he
uses the wrong word to describe the interconnectedness of the universe. In a translation of
Genjkan, taken from Shbgenz (Treasury of the True Dharma Eye), Dgen does not speak
of a futuristic salvation or a transcendent Pure Land, but rather of awakening to the truth that is
always presencing beneath our feet...completely right here and right now, and this living moment
(nikon) of being-time is all there ever is to life, and to death. (Edelglass and Garfield p. 255) He
talks about the meaning behind genj-kan being the presence of the here and now and that
reality is both and neither a collection of the past and future. It is not possible to put a name on
this concept, especially the name soul, as a soul is only a conventional, abstract manifestation
the human language invented to describe the intangible.
When I learned about Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in high school,
the concept of Transcendentalism and spirituality stuck with me and although I never learned
about them in class again, I clearly remembered their names when I saw the topic of this paper. I
knew right away that I wanted to research and compare their ideas to those that we learned of in
class. Being in high school, where the epitomy of conformism begins, Emersons views on how
we should live resonated with 16 year old me and I knew that one day Id be looking at his work
again. Now, 5 years later, as I have started to find philosophies that mirror my own, solidify
personal beliefs and discover the appeal of Buddhism, Emersons words ring even more clearly

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in my head. I was exposed to Transcendentalism before Buddhism so it only makes sense that I
am highly fond of his work. Nevertheless, the fact that I was exposed to his work brought me
closer to discovering the same ideals in Buddhism. Emersons views on society, solitude, and
nonconformism are very close, if not exactly the same, to my own. However, while Emerson lets
me put a description on what I already believed in my entire life, Dgen, his disciples, and his
predecessors let me learn about how I can further my knowledge and understanding of the
universe and cope with any troubles that come my way. For me, the difference between the two
is that one says what is wrong with the world and why I shouldnt be like everyone else, and the
other goes further and tells me how I can do so and achieve a more fulfilling and colorful life.
Western and Eastern societies have long been on the opposite spectrum of values. Despite
the fact that America has large modern cities and useful technologies, it is a young, highly
patriarchal country that still needs much work, especially on its view of others. Emerson saw this
and was very much bothered by it. It comes as no surprise that he, unknowingly, took on western
values to explain what is wrong and what needs to change. Despite the fact that he wasnt very
exposed to Buddhism, he sought out to teach others a philosophy and spirituality that is very
similar to Buddhism. In Self-Reliance, he says, There is a time in every man's education when
he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take
himself for better, for worse, as his portion...The power which resides in him is new in nature,
and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
Most of us are blind and most of us are suffering but it is only in our own power that we can
change that. Dgen says that viewing the world from the usual anthropocentric standpoint is
like looking through a bamboo tube at the corner of the sky...he recommends entertaining the
perspectives of other beings, such as mountains, drops of water, celestial beings, hungry ghosts,

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dragons, and fish. (Edelglass and Garfield p.85) They both highlight the importance of seeing
things from another angle and that that is the only way one will reduce or eliminate their own
suffering. If Emerson was exposed to more Western philosophies, he may have found the perfect
balance between living in the modern world yet still being aware of our trivial existence in the
grand scheme of the universe.
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