SOURCE: "Emerson, Whitman, and Zen Buddhism," in Midwest Quarterly, Vol. XXXI, No. 4, Summer, 1990, pp. 433-48.

In the following essay, Hakutani notes similarities and contrasts in the precepts of Zen Buddhism and the American Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman.

Fascinated by the Mysticism of the East, Emerson adapted to his own poetical use many allusions to Eastern religions. From time to time, however, one is surprised to find in his essays an aversion to Buddhism. This "remorseless Buddhism," he writes in his Journals, "lies all around, threatening with death and night.… Every thought, every enterprise, every sentiment, has its ruin in this horrid Infinite which circles us and awaits our dropping into it." Although such a disparaging remark may betray the young Emerson's unfamiliarity with the religion, as a critic has suggested [Frederick Ives Carpenter, in Emerson and Asia, 1930], this passage may also indicate Emerson's aversion...