{"id":837,"date":"2009-10-01T09:48:20","date_gmt":"2009-10-01T09:48:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/10\/october-quotes-spiritual-america-buddhist-walt-whitman.html"},"modified":"2009-10-01T09:48:20","modified_gmt":"2009-10-01T09:48:20","slug":"october-quotes-spiritual-america-buddhist-walt-whitman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/10\/october-quotes-spiritual-america-buddhist-walt-whitman.html","title":{"rendered":"October Quotes: (A Buddhist?) Walt Whitman on a Spiritual America"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"october_quotes_spiritual_america.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>by Ethan Nichtern<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

An October Quote<\/a> to start the month. <\/p>\n

Question Number One: What does a Spiritual America<\/a> look like, and is there a difference between “spiritual” and “religious?”<\/p>\n

Question Number Two: Was Walt Whitman<\/a> America’s First Buddhist<\/a>? Or just a spiritual revolutionary?<\/p>\n

“Intense and loving comradeship, the personal
\nattachment of [hu]man to [hu]man–which, hard to define, underlies the lessons
\nand ideals of the profound saviors of every land and age, and which seems to
\npromise, when thoroughly develop’d, cultivated and recognised in manners and
\nliterature, the most substantial hope and safety of the future of these States,
\nwill then be fully express’d.
\nIt is to the development, identification, and
\ngeneral prevalence of that fervid comradeship…that I look for the counterbalance
\nand offset of our materialistic and vulgar American democracy, and the
\nspiritualization thereof. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n


\nMany will say it is a dream, and will not follow my
\ninferences: but I confidently expect a time when there will be seen, running
\nlike a half-hid warp though all the myriad audible and visible worldly
\ninterests of America, threads of [hu]manly friendship, fond and loving, pure
\nand sweet, strong and life-long, carried to degrees hitherto unknown–not only
\ngiving tone to individual character, and making it unprecedentedly emotional,
\nmuscular, heroic, and refined, but having the deepest relationship to general
\npolitics. I say democracy infers such loving comradeship, as its most
\ninevitable twin or counterpart, without which it will be incomplete, in vain,
\nand incapable of perpetuating itself.<\/p>\n

-Walt Whitman
\n
\nDemocratic
\nVistas, 1871
\n–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ethan Nichtern An October Quote to start the month. Question Number One: What does a Spiritual America look like, and is there a difference between “spiritual” and “religious?” Question Number Two: Was Walt Whitman America’s First Buddhist? Or just a spiritual revolutionary? “Intense and loving comradeship, the personal attachment of [hu]man to [hu]man–which, hard…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism"],"yoast_head":"\nOctober Quotes: (A Buddhist?) Walt Whitman on a Spiritual America - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/10\/october-quotes-spiritual-america-buddhist-walt-whitman.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"October Quotes: (A Buddhist?) Walt Whitman on a Spiritual America - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Ethan Nichtern An October Quote to start the month. Question Number One: What does a Spiritual America look like, and is there a difference between “spiritual” and “religious?” Question Number Two: Was Walt Whitman America’s First Buddhist? 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His writing has been featured in numerous print and online publications. He is the founding director of the Interdependence Project and the host of the I.D. Project\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s popular weekly podcast (available on iTunes). He is currently on the part-time faculty of Eugene Lang College at New School University in NYC, where he teaches Buddhism. Ethan lectures regularly at universities and venues around the country on Buddhism, meditation, contemporary culture, and activism.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/enichtern"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}