the kongdan foundation

Who is it that inspires us to look to our highest endeavor and destiny and what does that even matter or mean? Looking Eastward it may be looking to the virtue of Confucius, Taoism and Lao Tzu.

To the West it becomes Emerson and others, who we look to for guidance. As though they are provoking us or providing a road map, or compass, that tells us the best route or way to follow. With Mahatma Gandhi in turn speaking for all of us.

Why is it we see ourselves just stumbling along looking down the road. Not looking to what lifts us up and to the stars from which we travel. As we come to know life as not only a travelogue, but a pilgrimage. 

Looking to someone who was transformative and transcendent, who made us look both to nature and the universe creating a whole new way of showing connections and self-reliance. To what Emerson called transcendentalism, or one’s inner striving toward spiritual communion with the divine spirit. To what Confucius called benevolence and virtue.

It is with this in mind we continue as an on-going narrative through a never-ending story. That we never know who will be influenced by words we have spoken or written that live for eternity’s sake.

Words to be picked up by others and carried beyond our own imagination when speaking to and for them as well.

When our own inspiration can become the aspiration for others, as we too live by and through what we have learned and have come to know as a living tradition. With our own success determined by what we can remember we apply going forward.

We often find ourselves speaking as though a part of a common thread of history repeating, even fine-tuning, what is meant to be said another way today.

Confucius, Emerson, and Gandhi, spoke to the soul of eternity in their day… as well as to us.

How we know our adherence to nature and our own self-reliance are keys to our own fate. How it is that a good writer does not simply write the words onto his/her heart, he/she becomes them. Why transforming our thoughts and actions become paramount, as we are to transcend into who we have always been. Our eternal selves appearing as if a wisp of a cloud just floating by.

When Emerson writes in Nature that our “relation to the world . . . is not to be learned by any addition or subtraction or other comparison of known quantities but is arrived at by untaught sallies (journeys) of the spirit, by a continual self-recovery, and by entire humility”.  The “self-recovery” he speaks of, is not simply a return to one’s sense of self. But to our role in nature and to our responsibility for finding and doing our part. 

Learning to guide our own spiritual path from the inside out and not needing to be told what to do. That we naturally have the ability, capacity, tools, and skills to guide and direct our life meaningfully, ethically, and effectively. There is a universality to this that serves as a coach or teacher, the ultimate guide to self-improvement. Emerson was a synthesizer of ideas that came before him. And afterward, I am reminded that it was Emerson’s writing that Gandhi found while in jail in South Africa where he learned the value of civil disobedience that served to inspire him to the greatness and immortality he found later in India.  

(The 2019 UN Mahatma Gandhi Stamp issued by the US Postal Service on his 150th birthday)

Gandhi was a “nonconformist” and followed Emerson who writes, “No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature” from Self-Reliance. With the next step seeing ourselves as a pathway consigned to living in virtue.

Emerson was also an admirer and a devotee of Bhagavat Gita and Vedanta that he demonstrated through a common synchronicity through his writing reminding us of the Buddha whose name means “to awaken”. Ultimately, I think this was the path he wanted all of us to take. To awaken to our inner most self and to make the best of it.

As though we immerse ourselves in the wisdom of those we follow and that by emulating and reflecting an inner spiritual communion with the divine spirit and them, we take steps that will define our path as well. As we live what we speak and learn to write and act how we are to live. 

Emerson published a magazine in the 1840’s called The Eye, where he spoke of different ideas from around the world.

From Hinduism, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Tolstoy, Indigenous peoples, and of course the Bible and Christianity and gave hundreds of speeches promoting understanding our role in nature and self-reliance.  

It is in a path of self-discovery, and recovery from our failures, and especially from the failure of what we thought we knew, that in the face of experiences we see and indicate otherwise is often the better path.

At times in his essays, Emerson entertained the deepest skepticism. “No picture of life can have any veracity that does not admit the odious facts”, he wrote in “Fate.”  

(Part two of this tribute to Confucius, Emerson, and Gandhi will continue as the next entry here on The Kongdan Foundation)