Thoreau and Taoism: Finding Harmony in Nature

While browsing through my Kindle books on Taoism, Chi, and Yin and Yang I saw an advertisement for Mark Bozeman’s Tao of Thoreau.  I hadn’t thought about Emerson or Thoreau for a long time, but when I reflected on the title I could see some parallels between Transcendentalism and Taoism.  So I added another book to my ridiculously long reading list.  

If I was more ambitious, I would probably reread Thoreau’s Walden and Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching and extract my own parallels, but at 83 I’m getting lazy so I settled for reading Mark Bozeman’s Tao of Thoreau which lists quotations from Walden Pond and follows them with similar quotations (or Bozeman’s interpretation) from the Tao Te Ching and other notable Taoist works.  

I’ll have to admit that I was a little ambivalent about the book when I started reading it. At times Bozeman seemed to be stretching to show parallels between Taoist ideas and Thoreau’s ideas that might not exist. 

So, I decided to get a second opinion, and a quick online search showed that Emerson, Thoreau’s mentor, had been exposed to Taoist philosophy, if not directly at least indirectly. It’s hard to believe that if Emerson had been exposed to Taoist thinking that he hadn’t at least discussed their ideas with Thoreau.

ChatGPT was ambivalent about whether Thoreau ever studied texts but it does point out a number of parallels.  

While there is no definitive proof that Thoreau directly studied Taoist texts, the intellectual milieu of transcendentalism and his engagement with Asian philosophies likely brought him into contact with Taoist ideas. His writing demonstrates a profound alignment with core Taoist themes, suggesting at least an indirect familiarity or parallel philosophical development.

Even if Thoreau wasn’t directly familiar with Taoism, his ideas align closely with Taoist principles:

• Harmony with Nature: Thoreau’s love for nature and belief in living in harmony with it is strongly reminiscent of Taoist reverence for the natural world and its cycles.

• Simplicity and Wu Wei: Thoreau’s advocacy for simple living and his withdrawal to Walden Pond echo the Taoist ideal of wu wei (effortless action) and a life free of unnecessary complication.

• Individualism and Non-Conformity: His resistance to societal norms and emphasis on individual intuition resonate with Taoist ideas about following the natural way (Tao) rather than rigid human constructs.

• Mystical Reflection: Thoreau’s contemplative writing about the ineffable qualities of nature parallels the Taoist view that the Tao is beyond words and conceptualization.

Reassured that critics do see parallels between Thoreau’s ideas and Taoist ideas, I began to look for the parallel ideas that Bozeman saw that most resonated with me. Here’s one of my favorites:

No weather interfered with my walks. I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mold myself? There is nothing inorganic. The earth is living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit, a living earth. Melt your metals and cast them in the most beautiful molds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

——————

Seeing the world this way is like seeing the Tao in all things, and beginning to understand the proper order: Man follows the laws of earth; Earth follows the laws of heaven; Heaven follows the laws of Tao; Tao follows the laws of its intrinsic nature. Thus, following the Tao means following the primal force.  The Seeker becoming attuned to the Tao is attached to the greatest power there is.

I’m certainly not claiming to be One with Nature, to be directly in touch with the Over-Soul, or to be totally attuned to the Tao, but I strive to be.  I may focus on birds in Nature in my blog, but by paying attention to birds you are also paying attention to the birds’ habitat, your habitat.  You are as much a part of this space as the birds are.

For better or worse, I’ve lived my life as a city-boy, but that desire to be one with nature goes back as far as I can remember — long before I could read.  Judging from this quote from a 2002 blog entry I wrote, it has stayed with me all the time — if not quite consciously.  Here’s a quote I pulled from Emerson’s essay “The American Scholar:”

Most of all the American Scholar, though, will find himself through Nature:

He shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim.