“To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogin.”

Any reader of Thoreau will have been struck by the quotations and allusions to Chinese and Indian thinkers on almost every page of his major works. He had read more Asian than Western philosophy, and even wrote essays on Confucius and Buddhism, as well as a translation (from French) of part of the Mahabharata. His reading in the Eastern Classics was extensive and formidable. He was not alone in this: Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Whitman, and other Transcendentalist writers were also fired up by Asian thought. They were preceded by Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams. In this lecture I will be exploring Thoreau's reading of Asian philosophy: What exactly did he study, how deeply did he understand these books, did they influence him, can he be considered an American version of an Asian philosopher? I will also explore Thoreau's profound affinity with a body of work he could not possibly have known: the poet-recluses of China and Japan, the Japanese poetic diarists, and his peripatetic brother Matsuo Basho.  What is the significance of all this? 

It will become evident in this lecture that the presence of an Eastern Classics program in Santa Fe reflects an interest that is as American as....the Founding Fathers and the Transcendentalists.