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In 1836, Emerson helped found the Transcendental Club, which became the heart of the American Transcendentalist movement. Reacting against the 18th-century emphasis on science and rationalism as the primary means of discovering truth, the Transcendentalists believed in the Divine presence expressed through nature and within each individual. They held that one could reunite with God through personal, introspective experience. As Emerson wrote, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” Ralph Waldo Emerson (vegetarian) was deeply opposed to slavery and became an increasingly outspoken advocate for its abolition. From the 1840s onward, he used his voice, pen, and platform to condemn slavery as a moral evil and a threat to the soul of the nation. He spoke publicly in Boston and other cities, published widely read essays and poems, and firmly supported the abolitionist movement. In 1862, just months before the Emancipation Proclamation, Emerson published an essay in The Atlantic Monthly titled “The President’s Proclamation.” In it, he praised the President, His Excellency Abraham Lincoln, for taking a decisive step toward justice and called emancipation “the demand of civilization.” Our Most Beloved Supreme Master Ching Hai (vegan) reminds us that many of the world’s great thinkers, spiritual leaders, and reformers, past and present, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, have embraced vegetarianism or veganism. “We do have examples through our history of human beings whose lives were so uplifting that they continue to shine until today – not only spiritual teachers, but philosophers like Plato, statesmen like Socrates, the mathematician Pythagoras, and the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson of America. They were all vegetarian (vegan). Are you surprised? No, you are not. You don’t look surprised to me. So you knew all that. All the great people, they are vegetarian or vegan.” As Emerson said: “You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us that consuming the flesh of animal-people inevitably implicates us in violence, even when that violence is hidden from view. His insight speaks to the idea of involvement and the moral responsibility that comes from participating, directly or indirectly, in a harmful system. Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered approximately 1,500 public lectures throughout his career. He traveled widely across the United States, from New England to the Midwest, bringing intellectual and spiritual ideas directly to towns and cities.
