Buddhist Romanticism

Buddhist concepts have been placed, reshaping those concepts toward
Romantic ends.
When we compare the Dhamma—the teachings of the Buddha—to the
religious thought of the early Romantics, we see that they differ radically on
a structural level in how they define all the important questions concerning
the purpose of religion, the nature of the basic spiritual problem, the cure to
that problem, how the cure can be effected, and the effect of that cure on the
person cured.
• For the Romantics, religion is concerned with establishing a right
relationship between human beings and the universe. For the Dhamma,
religion is concerned with gaining total freedom from suffering and stress,
beyond “human being,” “universe,” or any relationship at all.
• For the Romantics, the basic spiritual problem is ignorance of human
identity—that each person is an integral part of the infinite organic unity of
the cosmos. This ignorance, in turn, leads to an alienating sense of
separation: within oneself, between oneself and other human beings, and
between oneself and nature at large. For the Dhamma, the basic spiritual
problem is ignorance of what suffering is, how it’s caused, and how it can
be ended. In fact, the Dhamma lists among the causes of suffering the
attempt even to define what a human being is or a human being’s place
within the universe.
• For the Romantics, the basic spiritual cure lies in gaining an immediate
felt sense of unity within oneself and between oneself and the universe. For
the Dhamma, a felt sense of unified awareness is part of the path to a cure,
but the ultimate cure involves going beyond feelings—and everything else
with which one builds a sense of identity—to a direct realization of nibbāna
(nirvāṇa): a dimension beyond Oneness and multiplicity, beyond the
universe, beyond causal relationships, and beyond the dimensions of time
and space.
• For the Romantics, there are many ways to induce a spiritual cure, but
they all involve inducing a sense of receptivity to all things as they are. For
the Dhamma, there is only one way to nibbāna—the path of skills called the
noble eightfold path—against which all mental states are judged as skillful
and unskillful, with skillful states to be fostered and unskillful ones to be
abandoned in whatever way is effective.
• For the Romantics, the cure is never final, but must be continually
pursued throughout life. One’s understanding of inner and outer unity can
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