Buddhist Romanticism

minor dissonances in the harmonic progression of the universe. They carry
no harmful consequences, and Hyperion has to give no more account of his
actions than that they were motivated by his character. The universe, in its
infinite vitality, will—by returning everything to Oneness—take care of the
rest.
This view of freedom without accountability became one of the prime
selling points for the Romantic view of the cosmos. This is unfortunate, for
it offered no lessons on how to learn from one’s mistakes. Instead, the only
lesson it offered was on how not to suffer from the knowledge of one’s past
mistakes: One should view them as unreal. Although this view of freedom
taught that actions had no real consequences, the adoption of the view led
to many unfortunate consequences in real life.
THE ROMANTIC PROGRAM
As we have noted, the Romantics adopted Schiller’s doctrine that human
beings would achieve harmony and freedom only through an aesthetic
education. But because their understanding of human psychology differed
radically from his, their understanding of what was involved in that
education was also radically their own. Instead of trying to make their
audience aware of the need to bring harmony to two disparate parts of their
humanity—as in Schiller’s program—the Romantics saw their duty as
making their audience aware of the pre-existing unity and harmony within
themselves, within society, and within the universe at large. Having made
their audience aware of the idea of this pre-existing unity and harmony, the
next step would be to induce them to have a direct experience of the infinite
organic unity manifesting itself within them.
Thus there were two aspects to Bildung in the eyes of the Romantics:
descriptive—talking and writing about the infinite organic unity; and
performative—talking and writing in a way that would give rise to an
immediate sense of it.
The Romantics used many genres in the descriptive side of their
program, such as literary criticism and essays on applying the perspective
of organic unity to different aspects of life and knowledge. Also—in the
manner of Goethe and other novelists—they inserted passages in their
novels devoted to discussions of these topics, either among the characters
or as narrative asides. These descriptions were often ad hoc and
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