Walden; or, Life in the Woods was published on this day in 1854.
Henry David Thoreau was a complex man, a failure in most usages of the word. Even his time at Walden pond is mocked by those who observe the location was underwritten by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson and that he frequently walked home from the cabin to have dinner with his mother.
And he wrote a spiritual classic.
No doubt.
It has been suggested he was a proto-Buddhist. Walden contains an account of a samadhi experience which suggests to me a natural contemplative. Personally, I think he was more a Western Taoist than a Buddhist proto or otherwise.
I’m also quite interested in how so much of his sensibilities continue in the faith in which he was raised and from which he tried to disconnect from by “signing himself out,” but from whose influences he could never escape and whom he would influence right down to this day.
If its been a while you might check it out. Worth a read…
Here’s the book online.
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