The American roots of meditation are not to be found in the 1960s and 1970s, but much deeper. The first settlers brought Eastern ideas to American soil when they arrived on the new continent, including in search of freedom of faith. In addition, many of the founding fathers of the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, belonged to secret Masonic fraternities.
Transcendentalism and theosophy (1840-1900)
The first time that interest in Eastern teachings arose was in the 1840s and 1850s, when philosophers such as Emerson and Toro learned about Hindu sacred texts translated into English from German (they were translated into German from Sanskrit). While Toro, whose ideas of civil disobedience were strongly influenced by Eastern philosophy, withdrew to Walden Pond to meditate in the bosom of nature, his good friend Emerson formulated his own version of the transcendentalist credo, which was a mixture of Germanic idealism, native American optimism and Indian spirituality. In the process of developing his own philosophy Emerson transformed the Hindu concept of Brahman (the divine foundation of existence) into a more universal concept, which he called the world soul (Oversoul).
Later in the 19th century, theosophists - members of the movement founded by Ms. Blavatskaya, a supporter and promoter of the Indian spiritual heritage - adapted Hindu texts to the capabilities and needs of the average reader, and followers of the New Thought movement practiced controlled visualization and meditation based on mantra borrowed from Eastern sources.
An important event of the 19th century in meditation was the so-called World Parliament of Religions, an international conference of religious leaders and teachers held in Chicago in 1893. For the first time in history, Asian teachers directly introduced their teachings to representatives of Western civilization on American soil. At the end of the conference, several Asian teachers (including the Indian sage Swami Viveka-Nanda and Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher Shoyen Aku) traveled to the cities of the United States to give lectures for all those interested in Eastern philosophy.
Yoga and Zen Buddhism in 1900 -1960.
During the decades following the World Parliament of Religions, Zen Moss Nayogen Senzaki continued Soyen Shaku's work of nurturing meditation seeds in the New World, and Swami Paramananda, a student of the famous Swami Vivekananda, established centers where curious Americans could meditate and study Indian spiritual teachings. (The Vedanta Society, which emerged from Swami Vivekananda's tireless work. Swami Paramananda and their disciples, and now thrives in the United States and Europe.) In the 1920s, Paramahansa Johananda, an Indian yogi from India, settled in the United States and his work eventually led to the emergence of the Self-Realization Fellowship, which now has followers throughout the Western world.
Perhaps the most famous spiritual teacher who appeared in the West at that time was J. Krishnamurti, who settled in Southern California in the 1940s and was fascinated by the teachings of English writers Oschos Huxley and Christopher Eisherwood. Despite the fact that Krishnamurti (who had been trained by theosophists as a "world teacher" since childhood to avoid formal meditation and religious dogmas, giving preference to dialogue and self-knowledge, Huxley and Eisherwood have done a lot to promote Hindu scriptures.
Already by the early 1950s, Zen-Buddhism had begun to have a significant impact on American counterculture. While the poet Gary Snyder (who later won the Pulitzer Prize for his book Turtle Island) went to Japan to explore the wisdom of Zen Buddhism, his buddy and colleague in the Beatnik movement Jack Kerouac popularized Buddhist concepts such as dharma, karma, and satoris in his novels. In addition, in the 1950s, the great Japanese scientist T. Suzuki began teaching the basics of Zen Buddhism at Columbia University (New York), where his listeners included the young Thomas Merton, novelist J.D. Salinger, composer John Cage, and psychoanalysts Eric Fromm and Karen Horney. Around the same time, books by former bishopric priest and Zen Buddhist aficionado Alan Watts, including The Way of Zen and Psychotherapy East and West, became increasingly popular.
