Buddhist Romanticism

authentic feeling of Oneness with the divine. Even though, in their
experience, this feeling was only temporary, it had intrinsic worth—so
much worth, they felt, that they need not concern themselves if their
pursuit of that feeling harmed other people.
For example, Schlegel—speaking through Julian, his alter-ego in Lucinde
—claimed that, after gaining an experience of Oneness through erotic love,
he came to feel a fraternal love for all beings, and that this love inspired
loving acts that had no need for rules. Thus the results of feeling One
naturally led to sociable behavior. But the way he pursued that Oneness
showed little concern for the effect of that pursuit on others.
Especially if they were philistines. The term “philistine,” which was
actually first used in Jena to refer to townspeople not affiliated with the
university, by this time had come to acquire its modern meaning as “a
person of no aesthetic sensibilities.” Novalis, perhaps because his
bureaucratic career brought him into constant contact with many
philistines, strongly defended the superiority of people who were authentic
—those who could romanticize their experience and see the infinite within
the finite. Thus authentic people were of more account than philistines, who
by definition were not authentic; and the feelings of the authentic—because
they were more sensitive—mattered more. They, in his eyes, were the
natural aristocracy.
Even Hölderlin, in his novel Hyperion, suggested that actions, in the long
term, have no effect on the universe, and so no harm is ever really done by
rash mistakes, regardless of their immediate effects. One’s quest for
Oneness with the divine justified one’s actions, just as the feeling of
Oneness provided solace that, despite appearances, all would be well. This
attitude became conflicted in his mind after Susette’s death, but the odes
and hymns he wrote during that period didn’t come to light until a century
later.
Thus the concept of nobility in Romantic religion was concerned, not
with the effects of one’s actions on others, but with the sensitivity of one’s
feelings. Duty involved no sense of honor. Instead of requiring sacrifices so
as not to harm oneself or others, duty simply required pursuing, in
whatever way necessary, the ultimate feeling: that of Oneness with the
divine.
That is the second difference.
• The third difference is that, whereas the Buddha didn’t teach until he
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