Reconciling Religion: Bulleh Shah, Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American Transcendentalist Tradition

Abstract

Ralph Waldo Emerson has always been linked to the thoughts and writings of the Sufi poets of Persia and other parts of the Muslim world, as he expounded on the ideals of humankind, culture and our relationship with the natural world.  In fact, his work has often been considered as a pioneering effort to help bridge the intellectual understanding gap between east and west.  This inquiry takes a look at a singular Sufi poet, Bulleh Shah, whose work has previously been unrelated to Emerson’s, yet whose own ideals and thoughts, though composed a hundred years before Emerson, bear a strong parallel relationship to those held by Emerson, Thoreau, and the American Transcendental movement.