Interestingly enough, the Buddha and Mahavira, I would argue, were some of the first transcendental figures to grace our society.
The Buddha and Mahavira transcended social thinking and systemic thinking around power and the usage of power. Both princes living around 2500 B.C. , who sacrificed and renounced their respective birth-rights to Kingdomship , the Buddha and Mahavira fundamentally disagreed with the social and feudal political power structure of their time.
The Buddha and Mahavira were democratic, progressive leaders, who championed women’s rights, individual’s rights, minority rights, legal rights and individual free will by holding karma, a hypotheical system of rewards and debts transacted upon the inner abstract idea of a soul, as the barometer of justice guiding human action and consequence. Their emphasis on equal human and civil rights in regards to sex, race, and class was a transcendence of current world-thinking: the feudal monarchical system of society would blaze the entire Earth for almost the next 1500 years, until a group of courageous noble-court individuals in England in the 13th century A.D. challenged their King and demanded he be held at least partially accountable for his rule and governance over the land in an orderly and appropriate manner ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta ), planting the seeds for future democratic revolutions around the world, many centuries later, the most prominent being the work of America’s founding fathers in the establishment and formalization of the democratic sovereign of the North American United States in the 18th century A.D. , and the non-violent democratic political revolution of India in the 20th century, led by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and others.
Along with democratic and free thinking, the Buddha and Mahavira encouraged socratic and peer-to-peer discussion around all intellectual topics, including philosophy, ethics, meta-physics, sciences, mathematics, history, and literature.
While the Buddha and Mahavira held compassion and non-violence as their guiding true north principles, they held a practicability in their prescription and suggestion of democratic governance over monarchical governance: that a democratic state needed to act in self-interest to achieve practical goals for its society, which meant in certain cases criminal punishment and external warfare may become necessary to prevent evil elements from polluting a greater majority of its society . Of course, they recommended that all that can should be done to solve problems in diplomatic, civil, and un-harmful ways, when the option presented itself over a military solution.
Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the 19th century A.D., re-found the formal Transcendentalist movement, with an emphasis on transcendence equating to a deeper connection and understanding of mother nature, as well a deeper investigation and study of our human intellect and its implication manifested into a modern-day journey towards greater intellectual and spiritual enlightenment. Emerson mentored Thoreau in his young and early years, and Thoreau in turn, through his many literature essays and works prescribing his reform suggestions in regards to science, education, literature, spirituality and civil governance ( e.g. 'Civil Disobedience' written by Thoreau in 1869 : http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/walden/Essays/civil.html ) , inspired some of our greatest modern day heroes, including Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to bring about social, democratic, and civil change and reformation.
Before moving forward to grapple with the modern struggles and problems of our day, let us a take a moment to thank these great individuals whose past actions helped shape the outcomes that have led to our present situation, and which may help guide us rationally into the future choices we make as individuals and as a society.
