Word: thoreau
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...This business of going forth into the woods is a universal symbol of spiritual quest. Thoreau used it in his years at Walden Pond. And as translator Patrick Olivelle - who in his rendering of the Buddhacarita has stressed its exquisite literary qualities - notes, Siddhartha's departure into the forest from his father's palace is itself "modeled after that of Rama in the Ramayana, although cast within a Buddhist theological and moral background." The Buddhacarita, Olivelle argues, is both an extension of Brahmanical texts and a potent challenge to them - repudiating Vedic conservatism and its emphasis on family units...
When Henry David Thoreau refused to pay delinquent poll taxes on the grounds that they would be used to support the Mexican-American War, he spent a night in jail. Harvard’s current conscientious objectors are treated a little differently. The Harvard Right to Life (HRL) campaign to encourage students to opt-out of the portion of their Blue Cross/Blue Shield (BCBS) insurance fees that fund elective abortions has ruffled more than a few feathers on campus. Some have argued the campaign—in the form of mass e-mails and opt-out cards delivered to student...
...while Harvard was responsible for pro-slavery sentiments, a number of Harvard graduates were outspoken abolitionists, among them Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Theodore Parker...
...accounts for its universal appeal," says Jo Lusby, head of Penguin's China operations in Beijing. But it can be equally argued that they perceived different components of the same thing: a searching song of the ascendant Chinese nation, seeking to know itself. The U.S. had its Whitman and Thoreau; China has Jiang, wandering the huge grassy expanses and singing of primordial elements - blood, death, soil - to which the nation is no longer attuned. "The heat caused by Wolf Totem ... is a symptom of Chinese people's collective depletion of spiritual belief," wrote critic Zhang Hong in the highbrow Wenhui...
...Getting umbrellas off the streets doesn’t mean we just have to throw them away, and critics fearing landfills piled up with mountains of umbrellas should have their concerns eased. Walking on Cape Cod, Thoreau found that his umbrella worked better as a sail to catch tailwinds than as a shield against the rain. There are plenty of good uses the enterprising umbrella owner might put his or her old weapon towards. They can be retrofitted into reflectors for studio photographers, or made into makeshift punch bowls...