For ten years I had the pleasure of taking public transportation to work while living in Boston. That became much more difficult a couple of years ago when I changed jobs. I started working for a company in Maynard, a small town about 20 miles west of Boston, and I've been driving to work ever since. Frankly, I don't like it. I could give lots of noble reasons - both economical and ecological - as to why I don't like it, but the fact is I'm simply not a car person. I don't like to pay insurance companies. I don't like to buy gas. I don't like looking for parking spaces. I don't like worrying about getting into accidents. And I don't like driving in traffic.
The most logical route to work would keep me on highways the whole trip, but I don't like highways much either. So as a treat to myself, for having to be in a car at all, I found a slightly longer route that takes me past Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts - you know, the place where Henry David Thoreau lived alone with nature from 1845 to 1847. (My cynical side rationalizes that if I'm going to pollute this world with carbon dioxide, I may as well go all the way and take a national landmark with me.)
Originally, my intention was to stop periodically on my way home from work, visit the replica of Mr. Thoreau's cabin, and transcend my way around the pond. In reality, I usually just speed by trying to get home and out of traffic as quickly as possible. I afraid I'm a commuter not a communer.
Henry David Thoreau was a poet, essayist, and naturalist. He spent a night in jail for not paying his poll-tax, but made the act a medium for protesting both the United States' war in Mexico and slavery. Mr. Thoreau is credited for inventing the concept of civil disobedience (that he writes about in his essay of the same name). As for Mr. Thoreau's influences, one of the sources of his ideas is the Bhagavadgita.
The Bhagavadgita (Sanskrit for "Song of the Lord") is considered one of the great and influential Hindu scriptures. It is a story, in the form of a dialog, between the warrior Prince Arjuna and his charioteer, Krishna (an avatar for the god Vishnu). The prince, about to go to battle, ponders the big questions of what is right and just, the nature of cruelty, justice, and duty, et cetera. Krishna responds in a discussion that wends its way into the nature of God and duty.
Let us seamlessly leap ahead to the beginning of the 20th century, where we find Mohandas K. Gandhi exploring ways of bringing about social change by way of his "passive resistance" campaign. Gandhi claimed that he first got the idea of civil disobedience by reading Thoreau's essay while in jail. Gandhi's brilliance lies in how he was able to create techniques for applying Thoreau's theory; this non-violent resistance took shape as strikes, boycotts, and protest marches.
Twenty years after Gandhi's death, Martin Luther King, Jr. was listening to a speech by Dr. Mordecai Johnson, the president of Howard University, describing Gandhi's life and teachings. King was so impressed that he immediately read as much as he could about Gandhi and through him discovered the tools that he would use in carrying out the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
And so the mantle is passed from 1st century India to mid-19th century United States to early 20th century India and back again to mid-20th century United States. It seems to be India's turn for some great leader to appear and offer a radically new approach to civil change - but I'll take anyone from anywhere. Even from the jerk in the car ahead of me.