Walden: Introduction and Annotations by Bill McKibben (Concord Library)
by Henry David Thoreau
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Book Summary Information
Author: Henry David ThoreauIntroduction: Bill McKibben
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-07-15
ISBN: 0807014257
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Beacon Press
Book Reviews of Walden: Introduction and Annotations by Bill McKibben (Concord Library)
Book Review: Henry David Thoreau and Hindu scriptures
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading through the pages of this book makes you wonder if the author was a hermit and a heretic or a social reformer, or a mystical philosopher. "On Walden Pond" sounds similar to the classic movie "On Golden Pond," starring Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn. There are some similarities; in both stories the lead characters go and live near a secluded lake (pond) to spend their lives, but Thoreau goes a step forward to find himself and his soul when he can't accept the status quo of life. His journey is to find the truth that is beyond the apparent reality: A search for transcendental truth of Bhagavadgita and Upanishads. His search for the nature of soul is found in the tranquility of Walden Pond when he states that, "In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose com¬position years of the gods have elapsed, and in com¬parison with which our modem world and its litera¬ture seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our con¬ceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! There I meet the servant of the Brahmin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Temate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander (the Great) only heard the names." Through these passages he compares himself to the great Vedic sages and rishis who meditated deep in the woods for prolonged period of time in total tranquility to realize spiritual awakening. Thoreau was a prophet who had the same identity crisis as his better known contemporaries like; Emerson, Whitman, Channing, Hawthorne, Melville, and Dickinson. But among these men, Thoreau was forerunner as practitioner. He insisted that knowledge without experience or action is a false knowledge.
Thoreau's passion to seek inner meaning of life is illustrated by his disappointment in the traditional Christian culture; "We have adopted Chris¬tianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man's struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten." In another paragraph he observes; "For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to glorify God and enjoy him forever." In another section of the book, Thoreau writes, "We perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always ex¬hilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slum¬bering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit every where, which still is built on purely il¬lusory foundations." He continues in the later part of the paragraph, "I have read in a Hindoo book, that there was a king's son, who, be¬ing expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to ma¬turity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father's ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul," continues the Hindoo philosopher, "from the circumstances, in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme. I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things."
Thoreau was also keenly interested in the work Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. In many ways he resembled Darwin in his patient observations and Benjamin Franklin in his inventive practicality. Unlike most transcendentalists, he could do things, tend to garden and make home repairs for Emerson, or actualize the real carpentry Branson Alcott's fanciful vision of a summer house.
Thoreau expresses strong belief in social reforms when he refuses to pay taxes in protest against practice of slavery in Southern States. He championed abolitionist John Brown whom he met briefly in Concord, Massachusetts. In one paragraph he laments; "I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous,.." "There are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave driver of your soul."
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Summary of Walden: Introduction and Annotations by Bill McKibben (Concord Library)
First published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau's groundbreaking book has influenced generations of readers and continues to inspire and inform anyone with an open mind and a love of nature. With Bill McKibben providing a newly revised Introduction and helpful annotations that place Thoreau firmly in his role as cultural and spiritual seer, this beautiful edition of Walden for the new millennium is more accessible and relevant than ever.History & Criticism Books
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