Buddhist Romanticism

wonder and newness of each present moment. If the universe is truly
evolving, no system—even a system to explain its evolution—can do justice
to the authentic experience of being both a passive and an active participant
in that evolution.
So instead of striving for truth as coherence, Novalis felt that one should
strive for the truth of authenticity: being true to the fact that we are evolving
creatures at our own particular place and time, while at the same time
rising above those limitations, through our powers of imagination, to taste
the infinite. For him, authenticity was the opposite of being a philistine,
someone confined to the mechanical repetition of everyday habits. An
authentic person was one who lived outside the commonplace, who was
able to transform the experience of the commonplace into something
continually magical and new.
Thus the primary guarantee of an authentic participation in the
evolution of the universe was that it romanticized the commonplace—a
process that Novalis admitted could not be explained even though it could
be experienced. In his words,
“Romanticizing is nothing other than a qualitative raising to a
higher power. The lower self is identified with the better self in this
operation.… This operation is as yet quite unknown. By giving a
higher meaning to the ordinary, a mysterious appearance to the
ordinary, the dignity of the unacquainted to that of which we are
acquainted, the mere appearance of infinity to the finite, I romanticize
them.” 14
Romanticizing the commonplace, Novalis thought, encouraged a
sensitivity to the twofold process of self-alienation and appropriation that
allowed the mind to be both more responsive to the world and to be more
self-directed in shaping the world through the imagination. Moreover, by
providing a glimpse of the cosmic categories of the sublime—mysterious
and infinite—in the microcosm of one’s experience, the act of romanticizing
also guaranteed, at least subjectively, the truth of the parallels between the
finite organism and the infinite organic unity of which it was a part. To
sense what might be called the microcosmic sublime was to know one’s
power, like that of an infinite being, to rise above the particulars of one’s
finite time and place. Thus the powers of the imagination, rather than being
empty fabrications and lies, were actually a source of truth. For Novalis,
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