Seek Knowledge Even As Far As China

The title of this post is a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. The works of Emerson and Thoreau exemplify this hadith: they were out not only for knowledge but also for wisdom and, when they felt they had found it, they incorporated it in their own thinking and writing and then published it to the world.

Emerson and Thoreau initiated a native wisdom tradition refreshingly free from Christian supremacism. They sat at the feet of those whom they deemed to be sages regardless of time, race, religion, or geographic location. Their little circle of "Transcendentalists" dreamed an America neither Puritan nor mercantile. They tried, in vain, to reinvent the American experiment. The Mazeppist remembers them, along with Walt Whitman, as the "Refounding Fathers."

Pictured: The Great Mosque of Xi'an.